Rightwing Cancel Culture
What’s more traditionally American than black folks’ peacefully protesting as a way to demand that this country actually fulfill its promise of “freedom and justice, liberty to everybody”? In response, the people who now won’t shut up about being shut down —those who Debs, in the speech that got him jailed, rightly described as those “wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty”—were very keen on canceling Kaepernick for exercising the First Amendment rights they now claim to cherish. That group was led by Trump, who pushed hard to have Kaepernick fired. In a now infamous 2017 speech, the then-president targeted “NFL owners”—an overwhelmingly
Republican collective of billionaires—and essentially demanded that when a player knelt in protest,
they should throw “that son of a ***** off the field right now.”