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Former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated on July 13 at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former Fire Chief and father of two who had lived his entire life in nearby Sarver, Pennsylvania was not so lucky. He was shot and killed while shielding his family from the gunfire. Two other innocent bystanders were likewise seriously injured in the shooting.

Since then, a number of liberals have brazenly announced their wish that the assassination attempt had been successful. Some have even mocked Comperatore. The Right-wing social media group Libs of TikTok has spearheaded a broad effort to have some of these people fired from their jobs, akin to what Leftists have been doing to Rightists who have expressed politically-incorrect thoughts for many years now.

Some conservatives have denounced this cooption of the Left’s “cancel culture,” mostly for bad reasons. In a refreshing change, Travis LeBlanc who is an excellent writer, has provided a well-reasoned argument for why a Right-wing cancel culture (RWCC) is a bad idea. Because his position is well-argued, I wish to offer a friendly rebuttal.

The first point I wish to address is LeBlanc’s view that the people who have been fired were “random normies,” in conjunction with a point I had seen online which contends that these people are blameless because the media had brainwashed them. “Normie” should not be used as a sweeping term to encompass everyone who is not on the dissident Right. I would rather define a normie as someone who is either apolitical or center-Left or center-Right, but not far-Left. The hallmark of the normie is a lack of agency. Whether a normie is on the Left or Right, they are passively dragged along by whatever their respective faction offers as the party line at any given moment, assuming they engage in politics at all. Although in their defense, despite their stupidity they are generally good-natured and simply want to get along with everyone. They’re a lot like hobbits.

In contrast, the far Left has a lot more agency. They actively push for their agenda, while the normies are passively pulled along. You can easily discern in campus politics who is a ringleader who revels in his power, and who is just along for the ride. The Democrat party line after Trump’s near brush with death, even if it was insincere and offered purely for optical reasons, was to decisively condemn political violence while offering their condolences to Trump and the other victims. It is obvious that the people we’re dealing with here are radical ringleaders instead of people who merely parrot whatever their media tells them from day to day.

For all their money and power, the elites need foot soldiers. The Left was eager to oblige them. They reveled in the opportunity to become rainbow commissars. There is no such thing as innocence now; only varying degrees of guilt. And we know that those who openly want Trump dead are probably a whole lot guiltier than the rest.

Furthermore, the average Leftist was in a far better position to push back against the years of rainbow terror than we were. We were silenced and disempowered. He who remains silent consents, and their silence ratified the anarcho-tyranny of their more radical cohorts. I do not know of a single Leftist who had questioned whether he had been going too far, either in terms of morality or pragmatism.

Furthermore, we may be in a culture war, but it is still a war. In the Second World War, for example, most of the random Siberians who were sent to charge the armies of Europe probably did so without being full aware of what was going on in the conflict. The Axis soldiers generally knew this about them, and even admired their insane courage. They nevertheless mowed them down when necessary, however, because the only other option was to be impaled on the end of a Cossack bayonet. Most of today’s Leftists have a much better idea of what they are doing than the Siberians who fought in the Red Amy did.

Much of the sympathy for those who have been doxed is centered on an elderly woman who lost her job at Home Depot. This is still a developing situation, but I’m willing to bet that the Home Depot lady has a social media footprint which will reveal her to be more of a vicious ringleader and less of a passive participant. She chose to be an enemy-combatant in the culture war, after all, and it is the height of arrogance and stupidity to think you won’t get hurt in a war.

LeBlanc’s next point is his strongest, which is that we will look insincere and hypocritical if we embrace RWCC after opposing the Left’s cancel culture for years. Instead of tiresome pontificating about “muh principles,” as the conservatives are offering on X/Twitter, LeBlanc tackles this from a purely strategic perspective.

The major flaw here is: to whom will we look insincere and hypocritical, and why does it matter? We are trying to make the Right stronger, not weaker. The far-Left hates us and the center-Left isn’t easily swayed. The proof of this is that Trump’s brush with death had almost no impact on his campaign’s polling numbers.

We should not forget Independents and the apolitical, either. If they are salvageable, they will understand that we have no choice. It should also be remembered that when the Communists, far-Left, or whatever else you want to call them were originally outsiders during the first half of the twentieth century, they were initially all in favor of an “open society,” free speech, and tolerance. As they cemented their power, they became increasingly intolerant until they eventually morphed into today’s rainbow commissars. The Left has in fact wallowed in hypocrisy for decades, although you will eventually realize that they are in fact very consistent when it comes to doing whatever they need to do to increase their power. Most sensible people are realizing this now, and will understand that we too must pursue our own interests as best we can.

The moderates and the apolitical will thus simply have to learn what we are up against for themselves. If they still cannot realize this after all that has happened, then they are unsalvageable. The opportunity costs of trying to court them are simply not worth the effort

This in turn leads to a broader issue: namely, how both the Left and the Washington regime get a pass for everything, while the Right is hammered into the dirt for even the slightest infraction. One way or another, this has to end.

Besides, I think a lot of moderates will understand that we have long since exhausted our other possibilities, not to mention our patience. I would have fully agreed with LeBlanc’s position in 2018, and would have been on the fence about it in the spring just before the 2020 Summer of Hate — despite the fact that I had been doxed in 2019. We tried to take the high road, and failed.

I would ask anyone who objects to RWCC to propose a realistic, concrete solution to the Left’s cancel culture. Will the Left abandon a winning strategy because we politely ask them to stop doing it?

Furthermore, long before the rise of what we now call cancel culture, there were decades of soft cancel culture, even if we didn’t yet call it by that name. Long before people began to be fired or harassed simply for saying “It’s okay to be white,” we were denied employment and educational opportunities just for being white as a result of affirmative action. Besides the more recent legacy of hard cancel culture, we are also owed retribution for the decades of its earlier, “softer” counterpart.

LeBlanc then asks if the Left has benefited from their cancel culture given that it is an unpopular tactic and has also radicalized the Right. He likewise points out that the Left is having an internal debate about it, and is even trying to walk it back. This is all too little too late, however. First of all, none of it is sincere. There is also a real possibility of it being a motte-and-bailey tactic whereby the Left’s extreme, indefensible instances of cancel culture will be abandoned, while its more “moderate” usages will continue to be tolerated because the masses will be satisfied at seeing any improvement in the situation. If this is how it plays out, it will only set the stage for an even more extreme wave of it the next time. If the Left were sincere, they would simply ardently disavow all cancel culture.

Furthermore, do people really respect sincerity? Or do they respect strength? Being able to dish out protection to friends or punishment to enemies means a lot more to people than sincerity. How many liberal females hate their fathers and obey the government on some level because their fathers are weak, while the government is strong? People are biologically hardwired to respect power and despise the weak. Those who don’t are an anomaly arising from the unsustainable security, wealth, and comfort of industrialized society, especially that which arose in post-war America. They are thus disproportionately older and will decrease in number as they retire to the great recreational vehicle park in the sky. The youth who will have to deal with the consequences of a decaying civilization are more open to wreaking vengeance. Yes, we can replace them.

LeBlanc also questions whether we can win a tit-for-tat cancel culture war of attrition with the Left. I think we can. A poll I conducted for the Homeland Institute about a year ago found that a charge of “woke” has about 70% of the stopping power of a charge of “racism” in regards to business boycotts. It will be interesting to see if these numbers change when we repeat the poll this year. I suspect that “wokeness” will be even more toxic.

Winning a fight is not about how hard you can hit, but about how hard you can get hit and yet keep moving forward. We have endured years of cancel culture, and it has made us tougher. The Left enjoys dishing out punishment, but is squeamish about taking it. A single punch can change a bully’s behavior, because most bullies are weak. Any objective damage we inflict on the Left will be multiplied by their fragility into significantly higher subjective damage. And in regards to our ability to inflict subjective damage, we may already be as strong or stronger than the Left, simply because they are highly neurotic. All that is needed is an organized mobilization.

A major concern is that some people are being canceled for wishing death upon Donald Trump, which is a far cry from being canceled for being anti-white. But we won’t go from zero to a hundred overnight, especially when the American Right has languished in learned helplessness for decades. We must teach them how to crawl before they can run. Giving the masses a small taste of vengeance may make them eager for more.

I will close with some insights from my friend Christian Secor, who had years of his life canceled due to January 6 — while those such as the Home Depot Lady were smugly pontificating about actions and consequences:

These libtards being canceled are the jury that would find you guilty of thought crime. You’re afraid to give them consequences while they would be happy to send you to prison for disagreeing. We saw this with Trump + every J6er who went to trial. They sent us to PRISON! No mercy

We didn’t start this culture war, but we will win it.