Cancel culture not just a phrase
Cancel culture is not just a phrase. It literally means that specific things/activities/ideas are to be cancelled, voided, revoked, annulled, silenced. If the outrage mob can’t directly cancel an activity they disagree with, they will try to punish the fans or patrons of that activity. It is the new modern-day version of shaming, shunning, and banishment. Cancel culture is not a term made up to delegitimize criticism as Dara Quast naively exhorts. It refers to the very act of cancelling parts of our culture, past and present. Speakers are being shut down and books censored simply because they do not embrace left-wing ideology. Important conversations are being prevented from taking place and property is being vandalized or destroyed because of this ideology. Yes, it is a real thing and it is odd that Dara Quast does not acknowledge it. How is it that she is unaware of all this?
Her comment alluding to some form of privilege directed toward hard working people, is a flavour-of-the-day tactic used to get people to conform to a “fall-in-line”, or “think-in-line” ideology. This all-encompassing “racist” blanket is meant to mysteriously combine all “white people” as a homogeneous group who, by their very existence are responsible for, and have never done anything but, bad deeds. That is some feat of stereotyping and racism that is going around.
I don’t know where Ms. Quast has been living, but to even suggest that racist, sexist, and bigoted behaviour had been tolerated by her fellow Cowichan Valley citizens is as absurd as her asking if people in power should not be accountable for their remarks or actions. And, if this isn’t bad enough, she doubles down with a veiled suggestion that Mr. Foster degrades people of social conscience. This is truly bizarre. Then to top it all off, she infers that Mr. Foster does not have concern for those with lost opportunities or trauma and suggests that their misfortune somehow gives him comfort and security. Any one of these accusations is ridiculous. Combined they are beyond ludicrous, if not outright slanderous.
Ms. Quast might be surprised that most reasonable people would agree with Mr. Foster in his opinion that destroying property and stifling discourse (cancelling culture) is not the way forward.
Diane Moen
North Cowichan
