Not Entirely Similar
For those with an interest in recent history, and indeed surrealism, a catalogue of progressive cancel culture.
Among the sins punished with both swiftness and eyebrow-raising severity – questioning the benefits of rioting; questioning overt racial favouritism at the University of California, Los Angeles; saying that George Floyd wasn’t actually a moral exemplar; liking tweets in support of Donald Trump; questioning the methods of Black Lives Matter; showing the 1965 film of Laurence Olivier’s Othello to students at the University of Michigan; and teaching students of Chinese how to pronounce Chinese words.
And regarding the above, this:
The defining hallmark of cancel culture—the thing that marked it off as a new phenomenon, and which made it so oppressive—was that it targeted speech WITHIN the Overton Window, often with the explicit goal of shifting it.
If it’s “cancel culture” to fire someone for supporting… https://t.co/VASkrtu7dV
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) September 15, 2025
And also, from recent comments, this by Mr Wanye Burkett:
Maybe the principle here is that this is so unbecoming of a public school teacher [to publicly exult in the murder of someone with different political views] that not only should they lose this specific job, but maybe they shouldn’t work in another public school ever again. Maybe they’re just not suited for that kind of work.
That’s not punitive. That’s much more logical, instrumental. The idea in this latter case is that people have revealed themselves to be unsuited for a particular kind of employment.
Readers may wish to ponder whether the sins mentioned above – expressing doubts about rioting, or teaching Chinese pronunciation to students of Chinese – exist on the same level of inaptness as, say, a public-school teacher showing ten-year-olds shockingly graphic video of a man being shot in the neck, and killed, in front of his family, and showing that footage repeatedly, “numerous times,” while hectoring those same ten-year-olds on the merits of so-called “anti-fascism.”
Answers on a postcard, please.
Update, via the comments:
Regarding the example immediately above, John D adds,
It does, I think, invite questions as to the vetting of public school educators and the kinds of personalities the job seems to attract in high concentrations. It also invites questions as to what kind of environment, what kind of workplace assumptions, might make a teacher of ten-year-olds think that such behaviour would be considered acceptable.
I mean, if nothing else, and even absent any conventional moral inhibition, you’d think that one of the obvious considerations for a teacher of ten-year-olds might at least be the assumption that parents will find out. In this case, when their children arrive home bewildered and distressed. And to therefore behave accordingly. And yet.
With a hat-tip to Darleen.
Jesus wept. These people don’t just need firing, they need medication.
It does, I think, invite questions as to the vetting of public school educators and the kinds of personalities the job seems to attract in high concentrations. It also invites questions as to what kind of environment, what kind of workplace assumptions, might make a teacher of ten-year-olds think that such behaviour would be considered acceptable.
I mean, if nothing else, you’d think that one of the obvious considerations for a teacher of ten-year-olds might be the assumption that parents will find out. In this case, when their children arrive home bewildered and distressed. And to therefore behave accordingly.
And yet.
[ Post updated. ]