In a time where cancel culture is booming across the world, celebrities and popular historical figures are facing the rash of an angry mob trying to destroy, cancel and erase anything that displeases or contradicts their beliefs. People are being attacked, physically and socially, for having their own beliefs that contradicts what certain people want to push as a narrative.
Did you think that the Black Lives Matter protests were incongruent with the ‘final goal’ and had other purposes? Do you think that systematic racism does not exist? If you were mildly popular, or even not so, crazy amount of people would attack you all over social media, and rare times in public for your beliefs, literally trying to ruin your life. They claim you are not open-minded, and belittle you and attack you, as a person, rather than debating the idea itself, most of the times since they have no real counterarguments.
For these people to claim themselves as open minded is hypocritical since the they contradict the definition of open-mindedness. Being open minded is the act of accepting other ideas and trying to debate and find common ground, rather than the commonplace definition that being open minded is just refusing old views and beliefs. For example, standing with abortion (which I am with) is not being open minded, it is one side of an argument, and standing against it does not make one sexist, stupid or stubborn. Although many people try to debate and convince you of their opinion, others just attack you directly rather than attacking your ideas, or in other words, as we have been taught to be one of the greatest fallacies in thinking, ad hominem.
A lot of people have suffered from this outrageous attacks, either by being physically hit and injured or by getting fired from their jobs, or losing housing, scholarships or even friends. The constant affirmation among the mob disillusions them from the fact that they are producing real harm to an innocent person for their ideas, and others on social media seem to approve of this act as long as it lines up with how they view the world.
Ad hominem has attacked most importantly celebrities who are now afraid to state how they really feel about certain social issues and just want to appease their fans and the media to keep a clean slate and save their reputation. For example, celebrities who did not mention the protests and the BLM movement on their social media were either ‘canceled’, considered part of the problem, or had allegations thrown at them. If the celebrity talked a lot about these movements, they were considered as sucking off clout from all of the protests rather than fighting for the cause. Whatever they did, they have no way out, since there are two opposing mobs waiting to tear them to pieces. So, all they do is calculate exactly what to say and when to be able to stay relevant.
I don’t really care what these celebrities really do, but the problem that sticks is that millions of kids and adults look up to these celebrities as idols, in all matters of life. Celebrities are portrayed as geniuses, not only in their field, but in general. So people take advice from LeBron James in politics and from Carole Samaha in science.
Therefor, when we have the constant pressure from mobs and media on what to say on one hand, and their lack of knowledge on the subject on the other, what they release and talk about can be a complete disaster.
This craziness not only attacked people who are alive, but also the dead. Monuments and statues of historical figures who have done a lot of good in their respective countries and even the world are being vandalized and destroyed. Their books are being burnt and they are being attacked in ways never seen before (yes, facism)
Winston Churchill statues were vandalized in England, although he was mostly responsible for the free world as it is today, but he may have done some things that could be on the wrong side for morality for some people, but does that denounce what he has done for humanity as a whole? If it does, then trust me, most of history would just be erased, since back then they had other ideals than you do today, therefor lived on other standards, sometimes to a criminal extent. Gandhi was a child molester, politicians back then had slaves, philosophers were with communism. Many scientists were racist or sexist. Times have changed since then, and we have improved as humans, but to denounce all the great ideas they have created is just borderline insane since the idea and the creator are two distinct parties. If Hitler created the cure for cancer we would still use it, and we would appreciate the idea although it came from one of the most evil dictators in history. His war strategies written have been studied and used in militaries around the world.
In conclusion, to destroy a person’s life over an idea is stupid and to destroy an idea over the person who came up with it is stupider. If you have a problem with the idea attack the idea, and if you can’t, then you must evaluate your own position on the whole matter.