The Dangerous Roots of Cancel Culture and How to Push Back—Interview With Jeff Myers | Crossroads

Back everyone. Now I'm sure you've all seen the different forms of censorship taking place online right now Parler has been deplatformed, many people have had their Twitter accounts deleted There's talk of broader censorship taking place. Now to understand what's going on here and how it relates to say the broader issues of cancel culture and of Marxism We've invited to speak with us Jeff Myers president of Summit Ministries. Jeff real great having you on. Joshua great to be with you Now first off, of course, we've seen the censorship of Parler We've seen calls for you know, different types of censorship even for example Deleting the scene of Trump in Home Alone 2. They're talking about removing that now I guess first off how does this relate to cancel culture? Well cancel culture goes back to a Marxist worldview You could go back to Lenin Victor Sebastian is one of Lenin's biographers said that he perfected the art of using name-calling And shame not to try to gain an advantage but to eliminate all Alternative voices back to Communist Manifesto uses the word abolish I think 33 times So when I was studying a Marxist worldview because I'm preparing 40,000 young people every year to go into college campuses and they need to be ready for it I realized that the Marxist does not have the view that our founders have that we may disagree But we have to hash it out The Marxist viewpoint is that when you disagree if you try to hash it out You're giving in to the other side. The only thing you can do is eliminate their voice And how do we see these voices being eliminated right now? Oh, I mean the examples are everywhere and it's not just elimination of conservative voices, right Charles Nagy who's a gay professor at University of Central Florida got got eliminated I mean, I just have a whole list here Phil DeStefano at the University of Colorado at Boulder had a professor who was asked Do you think that the vice president Harris could serve? Legally, he said well the court has never ruled on it. He didn't say yes or no He just said the court has never ruled on it and Phil DeStefano the president of the University said well We're not going to cancel him because we don't want to be perceived as the kind of people who cancel others Notice he didn't say he wanted East this guy Eastman voice. He just said we don't want to be perceived as that So now we're having this discussion on so many levels most of which are perception You know the vice president of communication at Boeing and then and then you look at your friends and family How many people have said I'm not even gonna listen to your voice anymore because nothing you could say Could possibly be relevant to the discussion. Can you tell us what cancel culture is how we've seen in the news? We've seen it discussed. How would you define cancel culture? I define cancel culture as first of all the the impetus on the part of corporations to stop voices That they believe don't advance the agenda of what they believe their platform exists to do same thing happens with companies big Executive an executive at Boeing Corporation was recently fired from his job for an article that he had written 30 years ago Articulating a viewpoint that he no longer holds which was that women should not be in combat in the military Okay, that's an example of corporate cancel culture It now extends into social media where you you eliminate you unfriend people or you do the kinds of things that try to stop other people from having voices you write into Corporations and say if you don't cancel your participation in that particular program with your advertisements Then I'm not going to shop there anymore. It's that use of force Idea to try to stop voices from being heard as opposed to engaging Civically and trying to really hash it out and debate it and discover the truth now does cancel culture only relate to Marxism This is rooted in it. Do you feel there's other things that have lent to it? What is the history of its development? How have we seen this whole thing develop cancel culture? I think started off probably with a boycotting mind mindset Hey, if you can if I can get somebody to stop saying what they're saying by using force Then I then that's a good idea it 70 It's it's largely a younger person phenomenon 18 to 34 year olds half of them say that they've engaged in cancel culture That they've signed on to a petition to get a professor fired or something like that a little bit more likely among Democrats than among Republicans but the fear is largely with conservative 75 percent of Conservatives have said that they have hold opinions that they are afraid to share because they believe they might be shamed or even lose Their job 75 percent. So that's that's kind of where the cancel culture has come from and where it's going I know a lot of people who believe in cancel culture or even just maybe not even call it cancel culture But engaging in it regardless a lot of them would argue that they're not Marxists How would you say cancel culture in Marxism relate? Well see the part of the problem is that if there is no truth or only words then you are your label if you decide You're LGBTQ or you decide you're Marxist or not So all you have to do is say I don't embrace the Marxist label and voila You are not Marxist what I'm telling what I'm telling our students at summit ministries is now everybody believes something Nobody is neutral when it comes to their worldview. You have to go back and understand. What does this person believe about God? What do they believe about the nature of reality? What do they believe about what constitutes right and wrong and when you start asking questions like that? You realize that whether they embrace the label or not, they may fully embrace a worldview now One of the big things we're seeing right now is not just censorship, but the creation of excuses for censorship And so you see a lot of people being convinced of course that these for example conservatives by nature of just existence It seems now advocate for some kind of violent overthrow of the government and this is being used as an excuse to de-platform Them censor them cleanse them is now the word being used, you know, of course people I think empathize with Narratives of you know, okay, we should oppose violence and so on How do you see people dealing with this issue where they're being labeled as being for example Advocating for a very extreme viewpoint that it may not represent everybody but some may be like that What do you what are your thoughts about censorship of this type? I think it's really important for as a conservative for conservatives to be clear that they do not advocate Anarchy and violence but the fact that they might be accused of advocating Anarchy and violence because they are a conservative is a category mistake It is an illogical error on the part of their opponents So the question is then how do you point that out? And the number one way to do that Joshua's just to ask the question when you're accused Do you think that's the whole story? There are 75 million Trump voters in the United States of America There were 25 people who got into the chambers and in Congress or or committed some act of violence You know, it's up to the person who's making the accusation to prove the connection between those two things and they know they can't do it So they're just relying on a lot of name-calling to try to substitute for argument and how does censorship tie into this? And now one one thing we've seen for example is people are talking about double standards The media for example was ironically saying, you know Why do protests whoever said protests need to be peaceful saying that protests should make you uncomfortable even advocating for violence in previous? Instances several even public officials doing so now that the political interest has changed we see the narrative changing But I think a lot of kind-hearted people they see this and they they want to back off because they don't want to get into this Argument, how do you perceive this whole issue? I think there's a there's obviously a double standard here But pointing out the double standard rarely helps you make your case It it you have to go back and be willing to ask questions of the people What did you mean by that when you say that this is an insurrection? How do you define insurrection when you say that that wasn't an insurrection? Why would you apply a different standard? It's it's it's like simple. It's high school debate. What do you mean by that? How do you define those terms? How do you know that is true when you start asking questions like that these carefully constructed? censorship arguments begin to collapse We see a lot of division taking place in society as well where you have people who are willing to fight and argue And people who are not willing to argue you have a lot of the the dialectical interaction of opposites Having conversation is falling apart right now and part of it is because people get very emotional very quickly Part of it is because really there's two extremely different world views that are fundamental to the perception of truth itself that seem to be Incompatible with each other. How do you how do you recommend people deal with this issue? Joshua, I think you are exactly right My perception is that we have a battle right now not between Republicans and Democrats or conservatives and liberals But between people who believe that truth exists and can be discovered and people who believe that truth does not exist And that we have to use words to To speak our truth, which is basically just our particular viewpoint to try to get other people to believe it So the people who want to discover truth are always trying to learn more Sharpen their knowledge so they can find the truth the people who believe that they just speak their own truth are always looking for Ways to sharpen their words. That's all they care about. There's no point in looking deeper for the truth So I think you're exactly right. I think it's important to point out that this battle exists now at Summit ministries we teach students the typical way the people handle these things are they they might be an avoider Well, you have your truth. I have my truth We just have to agree to disagree that kind of thing or an aggressor always looking for that mic drop moment You know just just to shame the other person we tell them stop looking at it One-dimensionally start looking at it two dimensionally as a triangle the top is the word advocate We are advocates for the truth and advocates for the other person Conflict is not like this from a Christian worldview It's like this two people side by side moving toward an unknown truth now Not everybody agrees that that's the way you ought to approach truth Once you continue to do that, then you gain the moral high ground within just a few conversations Now I know a lot of young people especially don't believe that truth exists They as you mentioned they believe in speaking your truth and that truth is Objective and each person has their own truth Essentially at the same time we see a lot of these same people trying to censor viewpoints Even though maybe these other people who gets here speaking their truth. How do you how do you teach young people to deal with this? Well, I remember in previous decades people would talk a lot about moral relativism that morality is relative to me Personally and they would say so therefore no one can make any truth judgments. It turns out moral relativism It's just like the swing of a pendulum It's what happens in the middle when people are trying to swing you away from one worldview to another, right? So if you want to replace the existing worldview, but what might be based on a Christian worldview You first of all have to convince people that worldview has no access to truth But it's only a temporary position because you're now trying to convince them next that your worldview has more Access to truth than the previous worldview. So it's very confusing but creating moral confusion It's the first step somebody has to take and trying to get you to Stop believing your current worldview and start believing another one now and when it comes to social media, you know One point I made on a recent interview is although I do hope alternative social media platforms do come about that You know, of course, I'm a young guy, but I grew up when we didn't have social media I remember when we could have face-to-face conversations and that actually seemed to be more civil What do you think the value is of I guess social media as opposed to direct communication? People who started social media companies had a grand idea that they could help people have better civic discourse but it is impossible because of the nature of communication in the 1960s a psychologist named Albert Morabian said that 55% of our communication is through our posture and facial expressions 38% of our communication is through our tone of voice only 7% is through our words. So if you're limiting yourself to your words, you're virtually guaranteed to have miscommunications Because you're limiting your pot yourself to 7% of the possible means of communication that's why it's so important to just get off of social media and go have coffee with somebody who disagrees and Talk about it ask that you can share your viewpoints and ask to hear theirs This is what our founders did now you mentioned the process of dialectical conflict He said that most people it's just head-on kind of clashing but from your viewpoint It's more of a forward motion of two sides moving together towards truth That's very similar to what Socrates taught actually this the Socratic method of asking questions and through this Socratic dialectic the opposites interacting right through the Socratic dialectic being able to through the questioning and interaction of opposites Come to a realization of truth. Do you think that's possible with today's say dueling conflicts of worldviews? I think it's a little bit tougher today, but it was tough in the day of Plato Remember there there was a platonic dialogue where Socrates was one of his characters and he was interacting with a guy named Gorgias Well Gorgias is just like the Marxists of today You know saying that nothing exists and even if it could exist it can't be known and even if it could be known nothing could Be communicated about it So it's we but the problem we have today is that we want to be able to walk side by side With others seeking the truth We're also now dealing with a lot of people who don't think that you Personally with your worldview could ever know anything. That is true. You must just be abolished So that's why at some ministries I advocate you start the conversation with questions not with challenges. What do you mean by that? How do you know that is true? Listen, you just made a statement condemning all conservatives Do you really think that's the whole story put the shoe back on the other foot? So that they the other people have to defend not in any kind of a defensive way But just in the normal course of argument They have to defend the underlying assumptions without getting them to be assumed to be true as the basis of cessation now one of the big issues people are facing right now is again this cancel culture where even the ability to have Dialogue itself is being canceled where people are having again accounts deleted They're being told basically that any kind of statement of their values is hate speech and they should be censored because of this How do you recommend people deal with the attempts to abolish their voices altogether? Joshua? I think this may be a little too extended of an analogy But if you were going into battle, you would want to have some familiarity with your enemies tactics The same thing is true in the world views We're dealing with a Marxist worldview Which I think is at the root of a lot of what we call cancel culture says that only the material world exists There's no God. There's no truth. There's nothing out there only the material world exists And if only the material world exists, there's only so much to go around, right? So if there's only so much to go around and we as people are all equal Then if anyone has more than anyone else, it's only because they stole it. There is no other possible explanation So taking it back is not wrong That's why the Marxist says you have to throw down the institution of the economic structure You have to throw down the government because the government says thou shalt not steal only after they already stole everything You have to throw down the family because they just keep perpetuating this system when they're raising kids And you have to overthrow the church because they keep all the flock in line So to speak so only when you understand the basis of a Marxist worldview Can you realize why a cancel culture person operating from a Marxist worldview even try to dialogue the way they do? That's why I'm saying it's so important to ask questions because you have to uncover those false underlying assumptions or you'll go nowhere And I know a lot of people are kind of there's other people going the opposite way where they're saying there's no use talking to the other side Why would I bother? Why would I want to deal with that? What would you tell people who have that understanding? I've heard a lot of people say that they just say I'm so disgusted But again, Joshua, if you think about asking questions, there's almost always room for that. I'm so disgusted I will never talk with a conservative again. Okay before you know, why would you say that? Why would you say that you're so disgusted when you see, you know when you say a conservative? What do you mean? You know, tell me what's going on with your worldview that you think this is point and see you've reunited the conversation There's almost always room for questions in the conversation and it's fairly low risk Why do you think it's become coming to the surface now given these are such old ideas technically? I'm not sure Joshua that it's just now coming to the surface I think what you're seeing is a lot of times people hold a worldview They hold it in reserve and then when difficult things happen out they come right? So when there are riots all of a sudden there are Marxist agitators who show up to try to stir things up and make it worse These people are sort of sleepers up until that moment. So in a way, I think we're all sleepers We're just going along with our lives. We're trying to be normal We're trying to help our families and then we get stirred up when something big happens and in today's social media climate People get stirred up just for a very brief period of time like for that 24 hours It may seem like the most important thing in the world, you know, it's life and death a week later Nobody cares. Nobody even remembers what happened So it's that's partly that always plays to the advantage of somebody who holds a Marxist worldview If your goal is to create conflict There's always something that you can do to create it The only way a person can really stop is to say hey look, I know you're trying to bait me I don't go for it. Why is it mostly the left targeting conservatives and not the right targeting liberals and so on Joshua I think it's the part of the left's strategy Believing that there is no truth and that we only have words To use words to try to stop other people from getting the opportunity to use words when I was in college My professors would say I may disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it That is no longer the perspective of the left So if there's ever going to be a breakthrough here, it has to be up to conservatives to say, you know what? I actually believe there is truth and I can discover it I can pursue it and I might not ever persuade that crazy leftist person, you know There's 70 some million people who voted for Biden. It's not the case that all of those people are irrational screamers You know, most of them are not most of them can be persuaded. So sure there's always going to be that one crazy professor You'll never persuade they'll flunk you no matter what drop the class go someplace else because not everybody is like that As long as we understand that I think there's hope of reigniting some good civic dialogue. How do you see this affecting society? What what impact do you feel this cancel culture has on society? I think Joshua creates a sense of fear that if I know I'm supposed to be bashing the other side But I don't know what to say then I just remain silent But if I understand that I'm not here to bash I'm here to seek the truth and I can invite other people Alongside of me and seeking that truth then we end up with a completely different understanding of the world now We see an interesting phenomena with this as well part of the reason why I think a lot of people on the left do want To censor people on the right deplatform them and so on is because they fear these ideas whereas a lot of people on the right fear this type of Retaliation by people and left and so there's this kind of dual nature of fear one trying to cancel the other the other afraid of Being canceled. How do you see people? How do you recommend people? I think deal with this phenomenon Oh, wow well people on the left have got to relearn the art of civic discourse and people on the right have got to learn to stop fearing the Boogeyman of the left if you were to take everybody in this country that has leftist tendencies and then count up the number of people Who are the real? Cancellers the ones who are really creating real damage. It's thousands not millions of people. So how do you reach them? Well, if you if you look at any successful movement, you realize they go in and they talk to people one-on-one They say look I you know I have a world view and I'm kind of nervous to have this conversation with you because I feel like you might judge me But I'd really like to know what you think and they're learning to talk about the talk They're learning to let people bring this out. Anybody in sales will tell you this is true The most loyal customer you have is the one who is allowed to call in and complain and feel like she's being heard That is true for the vast majority of people in our country so I think we're allowing our civic discourse to be destroyed by a handful of people whose goal is to create clash and who get us to you know get our Dander up and then get us mad and then get us clashing with other people and it's just it's never going to be helpful And why do you think they want to create this clash? I do think Joshua people want to create clash because their worldview tells them that they must that the goal for example when a Christian worldview The goal is hey, look, we're we're on this journey together Bible talks about this all the time There's the weight of God Jesus said I am the way that we're always going someplace We're always seeking truth, but that's not true with other worldviews with a Marxist worldview secular worldview postmodern worldview and so forth That is not the goal. There is they those worldviews believe there is not truth that can be found We have to make things happen and we do that through creating clash Karl Marx said the point of history Is not to understand it but to make it we will tell you what's going to happen in the future because that's what we're going To make happen. We will control it We will destroy the current systems and we will rebuild based on something new So you can't have a worldview like that unless you constantly have clash and according to a Marxist worldview By the way, all these clashes are about economics It's all about money any kind of clash that there is is going to be about money because there's only a limited supply, right? Only the material world exists. There's only so much to go around The conservatives are saying don't just keep dividing the pie up smaller and smaller make more pies create prosperity Let people have their shot and when you do that, everybody's gonna be better off tensions will start to go down It's just last question Is there anything you feel we missed any points you feel we missed you want to touch on or do you feel that? You know, I'm missing anything with this in general I think Joshua we've covered everything and I love your questions And I think the way you pointed out how the dialectic process works and Marxism is extremely important for people to grasp and understand There are lots of places they can go but I do want to encourage you the best Conversations are going to be the most personal ones for anybody who's watching this if you think that you're going to solve the world's problems By arguing against people on Facebook, you're wrong Not just because you might get canceled on Facebook But because the very way it's set up makes it impossible to really arrive at the truth It makes it oppositional by the way It is structured the most important thing anybody can say is could we have coffee together and talk about it? Hey Jeff Myers real pleasure having me on Crossroads. Thank you, Joshua