The Left has a strange definition of “anti-fascist” these days. To a progressive, if you are anti-fascist, you must express your solidarity with the government and big corporations on the social justice issue du jour. Anyone who fails to do so — according to their logic — must be subjected to browbeating, cancelation, and intimidation. Those who don’t fall in line must be doxxed and have their employers contacted, and anybody sponsoring their business or paying for their product is to be skewered as a bigot worthy of societal banishment — all in the name of tolerance, freedom, and justice.
It makes no sense.
And unfortunately, that is the point.
It does not have to make sense.
It just has to scare the right people into believing lies about conservatives in order to increase Leftist power and diminish conservative influence. The end goal is to cut off your funding and relegate you to the shadows of society.
Sometimes though, it does not take a big campaign to get sponsors or businesses to end their support. All it can take is a tweet from a handful of people. Sadly, there have been dozens of examples of this ludicrous action happening over the years, but we boiled it down to five ridiculous cancelations, and we even have some advice for how to help beat this cancel culture.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson
Perhaps nobody has been as canceled by his advertisers over the past five years — and still come out on top — as the host of Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
In 2018, Carlson made comments regarding immigration that drew ire for seemingly implying that certain immigrants make America “poorer and dirtier.” In a segment addressing a caravan of thousands of Honduran migrants coming to the border, presumably to be let into the country or sneak into the U.S. illegally, Carlson remarked that this sort of immigration system was unsustainable for a variety of reasons, and that we needed immigrants who could help an increasingly automated economy.
“It’s obvious that we need more scientists and skilled engineers, but that’s not what we are getting,” he said. “Instead, we’re getting waves of people with high school educations or less. Nice people, no one doubts that, but as an economic matter this is insane. It’s indefensible, so nobody even tries to defend it.”
Whether you agree with him or not, progressives launched a movement to get Carlson kicked off the air for supposedly saying that immigrants make the country dirtier — except he didn’t say that. Regardless, for that comment, Carlson lost at least 26 advertisers who kowtowed to the Left. Companies fled, but Carlson stood his ground.
Shortly after the boycott began, Carlson addressed the issue head on, noting that the Left never tried to argue with his point. They just took the last line, blasted it around the internet, and attempted to cancel him. The host ultimately said, “we will not be intimidated” and promised to keep covering difficult topics. In 2022, it would appear Carlson has won that battle as he now holds the top cable primetime show in the nation.
President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center Ryan Anderson
Ryan Anderson is among the most influential thinkers in the conservative movement, even if not a household name. Anderson has been sounding the alarm on a number of social issues — traditional marriage, abortion, and most famously transgenderism — for quite some time now. He wrote a best-selling book, “When Harry Became Sally,” which is an expose of the Left’s assault on children and transgender ideology indoctrination throughout American life.
That book, after being up for sale for several years, was “removed from Amazon’s digital marketplace after the company claimed it framed ‘LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.’”
According to Anderson, “The phrase ‘mental illness’ does occur in the book twice—but not in my own voice: once quoting a ‘transwoman’ writing in The New York Times, and once quoting the current University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins,” Anderson told The Daily Signal.
This one came — no pun intended — totally out of left-field.
CrossFits’ Greg Glassman
In 2020, Black Lives Matter and other leftist groups marched through the streets, in many cases burning those same streets, in protest of the killing of George Floyd. Corporations and others rushed to support their cause, donating $10 billion collectively to BLM groups and other organizations supporting “racial justice” following those marches.
At the time, the nation was shut down due to COVID-19. Nobody was supposed to get close to anybody outside their household. But certain health professionals argued those massive protests were okay because “racism” was also a health crisis, and that BLM protests were a necessary risk. However, if you tried protesting government mandates, those same health experts said you were a danger to all. Again, you might notice it does not make any sense — a virus does not stop its spread depending on who is protesting.
Many poked fun at this, including CrossFit’s former CEO Greg Glassman. In early June, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a research center, tweeted, “Racism and discrimination are critical public health issues that demand an urgent response #BlackLivesMatter,” while linking to a longer statement.
Glassman tweeted, “It’s Floyd-19,” while lambasting the agency for its failure to address COVID-19, saying, “Your failed model quarantined us and now you’re going to model a solution to racism? George Floyd’s brutal murder sparked riots nationally. Quarantine alone is ‘accompanied in every age and under all political regimes by an undercurrent of suspicion, distrust, and riots.’ Thanks!”
Those tweets outraged many, and despite an apology, Glassman resigned after sponsors and gyms associated with CrossFit began dropping their contracts, criticizing Glassman, and expressing their support for the BLM movement.
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham
But it isn’t just BLM that you can’t criticize, you have to stay away from gun control activists, too. In 2018, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham linked to a story from The Daily Wire, remarking that school shooting survivor David Hogg was “whining” that he had been rejected from four colleges he’d applied to while a senior.
“David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.)” Ingraham said.
In response, Hogg put out a list of Ingraham’s top advertisers and demanded his Leftist following call each of them to request they drop Ingraham, or face a boycott. The pressure campaign worked and Ingraham lost a total of 24 advertisers from companies like Office Depot, TripAdvisor, Expedia, Hulu, Johnson & Johnson, Wayfair, Nestlé, and Nutrish.
Michael Knowles & The Daily Wire
Harry’s Razors claimed to offer “Shave, Body, Face and Hair products for all men.” They were at one point a sponsor of Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles and his podcast, “The Michael Knowles Show.” As far as we know, Knowles is indeed a man. But it seems Harry isn’t for “all men,” rather the company is only for progressive men.
In March 2021, one random Twitter user @Flyingsodacan1 — who as of present day has 45 followers — tweeted their disgust that Harry’s would dare be associated with, let alone give money to, Knowles.
“@harrys is sponsoring Michael Knowles,” Mr. FlyingSodaCan1 tweeted. “The same @michaeljknowles who is spreading homophobic and transphobic content. He had Joseph Nicolosi jr as a guest on his show and equates being trans to having schizophrenia. It is wrong that Harry’s or anyone sponsors this vile content”
The Twitter user was referencing an interview from years before in 2018 when Nicolosi appeared on Knowles’ show and indeed compared transgenderism to a mental illness.
Regardless, that one tweet was enough for Harry’s to “cancel” Knowles.
“Thanks for bringing this up,” Harry’s official Twitter account tweeted. “We condemn the views in this video, which are inexcusable & at odds with our longtime support of the LGBTQ+ community. We’ve ended our relationship with this show & are looking into our sponsorships to prevent any values misalignment going forward.”
But rather than just take it, The Daily Wire’s Jeremy Boreing decided to take matters into his own hands, launching “Jeremy’s Razor’s” in March of this year. Anybody can buy them or use them. They are available here.
The Left is successful at getting corporations to agree to their demands because it’s often that a competing business willing to stand by conservative simply doesn’t exist. Jeremy’s Razors will stand by conservatives, and hopefully shift the market and give notice to corporations that the the next time they cancel a conservative they make up to find new competition who will beat them the old fashioned way — in the free market.
A previous version of this article incorrectly said that corporations and others had donated $90 billion to BLM and related organizations. The amount was $10 billion.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.