Conservative Party’s Embrace Of Cancel Culture Is A Big Mistake

Conservative Party members want their party to be a bastion of free speech and free expression.

One of the biggest and fastest-growing areas of divergence between common-sense conservative Canadians and the radical left is the whole issue of ‘cancel culture.’

Freedom of speech and freedom of expression used to be widely supported in the Western world, yet the radical left is increasingly pushing for further and further government control over speech.

And beyond that, the left seeks to create a society in which everyone is afraid of saying anything ‘controversial,’ and where people are memory-holed and un-personed if they ‘dare’ to go against the status quo.

Yet, amid this attack on free expression, many common-sense Canadians, including most conservatives, have been rejecting cancel culture. They recognize the importance of ensuring that different voices and controversial ideas are heard, because diversity of thought (the kind of diversity the left seems afraid of) is what made the Western world so innovative in the first place.

Unfortunately, the Conservative Party of Canada hasn’t gotten the memo.

Rather than open their leadership race up to more people, and rather than trust their members to vote freely, the Conservative Party has been banning people and exerting top-down control over the leadership race.

The latest example is how the party has dealt with Jim Karahalios. The party banned Karahalios from the leadership race, and then, once a judge struck down that ban, they disqualified him the very next day.

The CPC is not even pretending to be holding an open contest, as they are picking and choosing who is allowed to run, and trying to silence controversial candidates.

Note, this isn’t about whether you agree with what those candidates said.

For example, I think Richard Decaire’s comments on LGBT people were dumb and would lead to him getting decimated in a general election. That said, the party still should have let him run, and should have trusted their membership to vote freely and make their own choice.

You can’t call yourself a pro-democracy party when party elites decide instead of letting the membership choose.

The more the Conservatives embrace leftist cancel culture, the more they will depress and demoralize their own supporters, pushing people towards other parties like the PPC or out of politics all together.

Further, in order to have credibility in attacking Trudeau’s increasingly anti-democratic moves, the Conservatives must embrace democracy and trust the Canadian People, rather than being a rigid, top-down, centralized organization.

Embracing cancel culture is a huge mistake by the CPC, and they will pay a huge price with their own supporters if they continue down this path.

Spencer Fernando

Photo – YouTube