Ed Sheeran and the Fascists of Woke 2.0

A short take

Ed Sheeran has learned what many of us already know about the American Left. They’re only getting worse. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laughed off Woke 1.0.

But if you come from the Left, as I do, you know Woke 1.0 was just a glint in the eye of the strange embryo at first.

How it started:

How it’s going:

The cultural overlords who did not stand up to the mob years ago, when this madness began, are to blame. They raised millions of Veruca Salts: spoiled brats who don’t just throw tantrums when they don’t get their way. They come after you to silence you and destroy you, and they do it with lies and hyperbole. They get away with it because most people are cowards, especially on the Left.

In case you didn’t know, the story goes something like this. Macklemore (a two-bit nobody past his prime) was doing Ed Sheeran a favor by opening for him. Like many artists now, Macklemore is a “Free Palestine” and “Israel is committing genocide” kind of guy. If you want to be popular in Woke 2.0, you have to go along with what radical Islam has now mandated, and the oppressor/oppressed zealots go along with it.

It wasn’t Sheeran’s decision. Some venues didn’t want Macklemore’s politics at the show. They told Ed he could not play there if Macklemore was also playing. Because so many tickets had already been sold, Sheeran went along with it.

Sheeran did what many of us have done — at least I did in the beginning, until I was met with a fascist mob that told me what I had to believe and think, on the Left and, sadly, on the Right. He tried to hold the neutral line.

October 7 started the war. Yes, the carnage is bad in Gaza, but that’s the fault of Hamas. They know the more children who die, the better the propaganda. They could end it any time if they cared. They want to win the war for hearts and minds, and they have a fascist army helping them.

Being neutral isn’t allowed in Woke 2.0. Sheeran was nearly destroyed over it. At his recent, very well-sold and packed concert, he made this statement:

In it, he broke down in tears and said, “You find out who your friends are” when something like this happens.

You better believe it, buddy. I could not have believed what it was like to live through something like this unless I’d gone through it myself. It isn’t just about “genocide” and “dead children” in Palestine. It’s anything you brush up against that isn’t 100% compliant with the mob.

In my case, I was harassed and swarmed on Twitter for standing up for people who were being canceled, like the time they called Ansel Elgort a pedophile. These were the tweets I got, and this was before my politics changed.

Ansel Elgort was 26, and she was 17, of legal age in New York. It was a bad relationship, but that is not pedophilia, even if people on both sides of the aisle want to say it is. Facts don’t matter. The woman later deleted her tweet, but the damage was done, and his career never recovered.

This was June 2020. By then I’d already been through these kinds of swarms a few times. Every time, it wasn’t something I did. It was my speaking up for someone else. That is, until I decided to vote for Trump.

I thought, I’m just going to say what I really think and let the chips fall where they may. The chips did fall.

I’d made a joke on Twitter saying that “White Dudes for Harris” was “White power.” It was sarcastic and ironic, since they are the ones who have forbidden any white people to form groups or celebrate culture except this one time. I thought it was funny.

Thousands of people saw the tweet, and even some of my closest friends thought I was being serious, as though any white supremacist would ever support “White Dudes for Harris.” Think it through, people.

That caught the attention of a woke Leftist journalist, Rebecca Keegan, who decided it would make a great hit piece. So, she went around Hollywood and spoke to Oscar voters and publicists about my “extreme views.” For a time, it was the talk of the town, albeit in hushed whispers.

That was it for me and my 26-year-old “woman-owned” business I built from the ground up and helped to launch an entire industry of Oscar-watching, for whatever that’s worth. But after that piece broke, the door slammed shut.

Very few of them will even talk to me, let alone invite me to screenings. This had nothing to do with “Free Palestine,” because it doesn’t matter what it is. With fascists, it’s simply: conform or else. And it is not in me to conform. If anything, the opposite is true. I’m Gen-X. I grew up in a different time, a time of free thought and speech. I’ll never give it up.

This crazy mob of fanatics has been raised online as much as they’ve been indoctrinated in schools and universities. We’ve seen what they do, from attacking ICE officers to burning down buildings to beating up Trump supporters. This has been ongoing and escalating for ten years.

All they ever hear about is January 6th, which functions as Orwell’s “Two Minutes of Hate,” excusing them for what they do and justifying everything else.

I use the word “fascist” knowing it doesn’t apply exactly. They don’t have the military and the government fighting their war and dictating the rules — at least not yet. Maybe that’s what’s in store in Woke 3.0.

But these are their rules. They have co-opted every important word: love, hate, mother, father, boy, girl, fascist, Nazi, dictator, criminal, pedophile. They’ve stretched these words beyond comprehension and used them as weapons of war. So why not throw it back in their faces?

I didn’t have family members punish me, but plenty of friends are no longer friends, even those I thought really knew me. Some have reached out afterward in a kind way, trying to see the person they dehumanized. I appreciate that. But this is bigger than any one person.

I was heartened to hear the support and the applause from the fans at Sheeran’s concert. He has 59 million subscribers on YouTube, and his videos reach hundreds of millions. He didn’t have to go through this. He should have told them to pound sand.

The little tribe of monsters that rules Woke 2.0 is not the majority. This is tyranny of the minority. But since most people are afraid of being ostracized or worse, they hand them all the power.