The Republican Party has become the very cancel culture it pretends to rail against

The Republican Party has become the very cancel culture it pretends to rail against PBS: Canceled. Transgender kids: Canceled. Books that contain a passing profanity or, heaven forbid, something suggesting that sexual attraction is a thing that exists: Canceled.

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When Republican lawmakers and talking heads speak these days, this is what I hear:

“I HATE liberal cancel culture and believe in absolute free speech! I would also like to ban, do away with or silence Disney, NPR, Bud Light, the FBI and CIA, this big pile of books over here, M&Ms, Mr. Potatohead, college professors, any Democratic lawmaker I don’t want to hear speak, “wokeness,” any mention of diversity, drag shows, people who defend drag shows, people who defend people who defend drag shows, any mention whatsoever of the existence of LGBTQ people, this other big pile of books over here, the entire Department of Education, PBS and Oreos.”

It all makes perfect sense if you have too much time on your hands and too few functioning brain cells to process the meaning of the word “hypocrisy.” And it confirms that today’s mainstream Republican Party — the party of Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson — has become the party of cancel culture, a bubble-dwelling collection of right-wing caricatures who speak an intolerant and often conspiratorial language most regular Americans, and particularly most younger Americans, can’t understand.

And it's happening all over the country.

DeSantis would welcome Twitter to Florida, but not any woke employees

Consider a recent comment from DeSantis when he was asked about the possibility of Elon Musk relocating Twitter’s headquarters to Florida: “You know, I know Elon Musk, and what I would tell him is like, ‘Ok, if you’re going to move Twitter to Florida, are you bringing woke employees to Florida or are you bringing just your people?’ If it’s just his people then it may be good.”

So the “woke” are unwelcome. People who disagree with DeSantis’ anti-woke stance — whatever that happens to be, since it changes from day to day — are unwelcome.

DeSantis continued to praise Musk’s attempts to de-woke-ify the social media platform: “So I really applaud him for taking on Twitter, trying to moor it back towards facts and truth and stop (parroting) the ideology and trying to censor beliefs that conflict with it.”

Allow me to translate that into English: DeSantis is glad Musk is silencing people he disagrees with because, in his mind, that will stop them from trying to censor things they believe are wrong.

The woke must be silenced because ... free speech?

It’s worth keeping in mind the things “the woke” at Twitter want to ban include: Nazis, bigots, misogynists, racists and others spouting violent rhetoric. That, by DeSantis’ logic, is bad. That stifles free speech. And the best way to stop that free-speech stifling is to silence “the woke” and not welcome them to your state.

Some conservatives will argue this kind of thinking — the thinking that leads a governor like DeSantis to try to cancel a huge corporation like Disney because it spoke out against one of his policies — is not what the Republican Party is all about. To that I say: Prove it. Because as best I can tell these days, that is ALL the Republican Party is about, a grand old departure from the party’s previous belief in limiting government intrusion into people’s lives.

How the GOP stopped worrying and learned to love 'cancel culture'

In states like Tennessee, North Dakota, Montana and Oklahoma, GOP lawmakers are working to ban drag shows.

Republican-led legislatures in Florida, Iowa, Utah, Indiana and several other states have taken away a parent’s right to get gender-affirming care for a transgender child.

Florida passed DeSantis’ now-infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law, restricting K-12 teachers from discussing sexuality or gender identity in the classroom.

Books are bad so we must ban books, says the party of limited government

And Republicans, from high-ranking lawmakers down to small-town school board members, have been banning books at a feverish pace. The non-profit free speech group PEN America studies school book bans and found that last fall, there were “1,477 instances of individual books banned, affecting 874 unique titles, an increase of 28 percent compared to the prior six months.”

The group wrote in its report: “These efforts to chill speech are part of the ongoing nationwide ‘Ed Scare’ — a campaign to foment anxiety and anger with the goal of suppressing free expression in public education. As book bans escalate, coupled with the proliferation of legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities, the freedom to read, learn and think continues to be undermined for students.”

The Washington Post reported that a New Jersey school board recently rejected a sociology textbook in part because the book gave an “accurate description of Michael Brown, who was killed by police in 2014, as an ‘unarmed Black teenager.' The book’s offense? It didn’t also describe Brown’s size and weight, or that he was scuffling with a cop when killed — apparently failing to depict the victim as threatening enough.”

'I believe it's my responsibility to watch out for my children'

A recent Indianapolis Star report said the young-adult shelves at the Hamilton East Public Library in Fishers, Indiana, “are mostly empty.” Books have been pulled because the library’s conservative-led board ordered a review to suss out any books that might contain profanities, descriptions of criminal acts or any “instance of visual depiction of sexual nudity as described or any level of written description, even incidental, of sexual conduct as described.”

Protesting the review and possible book bans, Fishers parent Matthew Rhea said during a recent board meeting: “As a parent, I believe it’s my responsibility to watch out for my children, not to have other people watch out for my children. I don't know why other people think they need to help me with my children's education.”

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Only Republicans can protect us from the egregious sexuality of Clifford the Big Red Dog

In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt wrapped up the month of April by vetoing a bill that funds the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, one of the nation’s most-watched Public Broadcasting Service networks. He claimed the network aims to “indoctrinate kids.”

His evidence? Episodes of “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and “Work it Out Wombats!” that included lesbian characters.

“Some of the stuff that they’re showing just overly sexualizes our kids,” Stitt said, remarkably not choking on the absurdity of that comment.

It almost seems like the GOP's mainly straight followers are afraid of something

PBS: Canceled. Transgender kids: Canceled. Woke Twitter employees: Canceled. Bud Light, because the company partnered with a transgender influencer: Canceled. Books that contain a passing profanity or a mention of criminal activity or, heaven forbid, something suggesting that sexual attraction is a thing that exists: Canceled.

This is today’s free-speech-loving (as long as it’s their speech and not yours) Republican Party. The party of un-intrusive government (unless you’re up to something that doesn’t fit their mainly white, mainly straight and often male world view).

Diversity? Canceled! Equity? Canceled! Inclusion? Canceled!

If I didn’t know better, I’d say there’s something these folks are afraid of. Can’t imagine what it might be. But I suppose I should look it up soon before all the books that explain it get banned.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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