Congressman Mark Green: Cancel Culture Similar To China’s ‘Social Credit System’

In an op-ed for Fox News, Rep. Mark Green (R-CA) highlighted how cancel culture —  the impulse, among certain aspects of society, to destroy an individual’s reputation over statements that run contrary to progressive dogma — has eery similarities with China’s totalitarian methods of social control through its “social credit system.”

“As authoritarian rule in China reaches new heights with the Chinese Communist Party’s implementation of a social credit system, the United States should do everything in its power to resist following the same path,” argued Green. “China’s social credit system, designed to track every Chinese citizen’s social and economic behavior, is the CCP’s attempt at total control over its citizens’ lives. While the United States might not have an official social credit system, the radical left – through cancel culture and censorship of ideas – has created something that’s eerily similar.”

Green noted that modern totalitarians have wisely shifted their methods from the constant threat of violence or imprisonment to the constant threat of being ostracized by an all-too-willing populace.

“More than threats of physical force or imprisonment, China’s social credit system uses social shaming and ostracization to ensure total control of citizens. Anything from jaywalking, traffic violations, smoking in a non-smoking area, missing a payment or disturbing neighbors is used to determine one’s social credit score,” he noted. “‘Bad’ behavior lowers a person’s score and can make it difficult for them to buy, sell, travel, get loans or send their children to college. ‘Very bad’ behavior, such as political dissent, can get someone and their family members blacklisted, making it difficult for them to function in society.”

An episode of Netflix’s “Black Mirror” starring Bryce Dallas Howard unflinchingly illustrated how this type of social credit system would play out in a more “open” society like the United States.

According to Mark Green, the cooperation between government, Big Tech, and American citizens could create “a frog boiling slowly in a pot” situation wherein we succumb to a totalitarian society without ever fully realizing it. Some examples he listed:

What are the signs that the U.S. has its own social credit system? What else do you call it when a Democrat senator demands Republicans be put on a no-fly-list for how they voted, or when an editor is forced to resign for allowing a Republican to publish an opinion piece in the editorial section of his newspaper?

Big tech has increased its censorship of those they disagree with as well. Before the election, Twitter suppressed the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden, YouTube removed two videos from a Senate hearing about COVID treatments, and in another instance, Google blocked ads from a legal group against court packing. Then Amazon, Apple and Google exercised their monopoly power to deplatform Parler, the biggest conservative alternative to Twitter.

And this is just the beginning of the left’s activity to silence dissent.

A PBS lawyer was caught on camera calling for reeducation camps for the kids of conservatives, and numerous political pundits have called for cable companies to deplatform Fox News.

Though far-left progressives have largely dismissed the existence of cancel culture while simultaneously encouraging censorship, celebrities from across the political spectrum have denounced cancel culture. Speaking with Fox News, Marvel actor Don Cheadle stated that he believed cancel culture to be overblown.

“I guess it’s real to the degree that you listen to that noise. I don’t know that people are purely canceled because … I don’t know that there are any pure irredeemable situations unless it’s been deemed, not that you have said something off, but that you are that way and that there is stuff in your past that is consistent with that thing that you said, that one-off thing that looked like a one-off moment,” he said.

RELATED: Don Cheadle: Cancel Culture Is ‘Not Really Real’

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