Written by Dr. Andrew Childs |

 

A Growing Phenomenon

Communists employ many tactics to suppress truth and achieve their ends. Propaganda, indoctrination, enticements, informants (citizens reporting on one another), violence, and terror are some of the most common. One of their most effective tactics is simply to eliminate, or cancel, any opposition.

Understanding of terms is critical to any discussion. Thus, it helps to first define terms. “Cancel culture” is a term commonly brandied about. It most frequently refers to a form of systemic and organized exclusion (intense censorship) casting someone out of professional and/or social circles.

But could this term have an even deeper meaning? Might it not also be part of Communism’s battle against God, seeking to drive  Him out of our culture?

How Do We Read “Cancel Culture?”

“Cancel culture,” the modified noun, names a movement that seeks to silence dissent of ideas at odds with whoever holds the most access to the means of cancelation. This relates less to a desire for the best ideas to have intellectual pride of place and more to a very raw sort of power to control thought and expression. “Cancel culture!” the rally slogan, seems a more shocking concept, but may more accurately explain the ultimate motives behind the current frenzy for social, intellectual, historical, linguistic, artistic, literary, logical, biological, academic, historical, and Liturgical abnegation.

It seems inconceivable that there could be a desire to cancel culture in a very real sense, and yet this is how I  propose we read “cancel culture.” The business of the first reading – of political correctness and its alphabet penumbrae, of the various prefixed ‘informations’ (the mis-, the dis, the mal-, and presumably the cis-), the Orwellian newspeak (Orwell a writer? Nay more, a prophet!), or just good old-fashioned slander – seems positively trivial in comparison to the – I would argue more accurate – second (i.e., a program to destroy the values, beliefs, institutions, and achievements which bind us together as members of a society).

Definitions of Key Terms

As always, we begin by establishing clear definitions of our terms. First, “cancel,” according to a recent (but likely soon to be revised) edition of Webster’s dictionary, means “to make void, to revoke, to annul; to neutralize; to eliminate.” In short, those who would cancel a thing intend to make it such that the thing had never existed. Next, “culture” is both “a quality of enlightenment or refinement arising from an acquaintance with and concern with what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, etc.” and “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.” This second definition opens on to motive.

Ultimate Meaning

To cancel something as broad and comprehensive as culture would require superhuman effort, or, more accurately, preternatural support. “Cancel Culture” is yet one more socio-intellectual expression of the ancient battle between God and those who will not serve Him. Pope St. Pius X characterized modernism as the ‘synthesis of all heresies,’ marked primarily by the denial of the supernatural. Modernism represents in many ways the devil’s final stand (though we must realize that in dealing with purely spiritual beings, stands can last a very long time).

The devil has used clever men for millennia in his efforts to cancel God, and the present wave of nihilistic wrecking is just this, only seemingly more desperate: he used empiricists in his attempt to cancel God from reason, Protestants to cancel Him from religion, enlightenment thinkers to cancel Him from philosophy, national revolutionaries to cancel Him from politics, radicals to cancel Him from society, Freemasons to cancel Him from His own Church, and he now attempts, I would argue as the primary actor, to cancel our connection to God by erasing all links to the generations before us that showed the way to know, love, and serve Him, and how to express that knowledge and love through truth, goodness, and beauty—in short, culture. But note well: This only works if we let it.

Though we may well endure a particular damnatio memoriae at the hands of the mob, let us suffer well for His Name’s sake. We reject the attempt to cancel the culture that connects us to tradition and leads us to God.

O Holy Virgin Mary, Who destroys all heresies, pray for us!

The post Communism Cancels Culture first appeared on The Fatima Center.

These views are those of the Fatima Center and do not necessarily reflect the views of Immaculata South Africa

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Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.