Gatekeeping, Cancel Culture and Neotr

Cancel Culture and the Original Meaning of the Term

Hey guys, John with the Conversations That Matter podcast, another hot take from my work truck. Actually, I'm just about to walk into the gym, but I wrote down on a little card four things, four terms that I think have shifted in meaning, and it's important for us to understand what these things mean since we're using these terms.

I was actually on the phone with a friend earlier. Some of these terms were coming up, and I realized we really gotta know what we mean by these terms because different people mean different things by them.

And even in just a few years, it seems like they've changed definition. So gatekeeping, cancel culture, right, left, and netter or neoter. I wanna talk about these things. Some of you might not have heard of some of these.

These are definitely words used in the online discourse.

A lot.

We'll start with cancel culture. Cancel culture, when it originally was used, I think it started in Great Britain in 2000, I don't know, 14, 15, but then in 2020 in the United States, it was, of course, a very commonly used term to describe what was happening when there were people, and sometimes people long dead in the case of statues, who were being drummed out of polite society.

There was no place for them anymore. They didn't even have the right to feed their families anymore because they were so nefarious and they had said things that were so egregious. If I didn't get canceled, I suppose that I got close to that in 2020.

The thing that probably saved me is the fact that I have an independent platform and I'm able to, at the time, I even had a business where I was able to operate on my own, but getting a job in 2020, and this doesn't just go for me, this goes for a lot of people, would have been difficult with all the online social justice warriors digging through every single thing someone said or taking out of context things they've said to make them look like they were, at that time especially, some kind of a racist or evil person.

And for me, it was things I had said in defense of Confederate statues specifically. I defend all of them, but that was the egregious thing. And this is when all these statues were coming down. So that's cancel culture.

It's you do not have a place. It's very similar to, I suppose if you were gonna draw a parallel to some kind of a heresy trial. Like you have committed heresy, you're going to be excommunicated now, but not just from the church, this was from society.

All the social institutions, including business, including government are gonna line up to ensure that you are not able to get a job. You're not able to feed your family. And I know guys who have gone through this where it's been a struggle.

They've had to fall back on family to make ends meet because they just don't have the ability to even get a job at a company that does manufacturing or something simple because of things that were said online about them.

And I don't, my case, if I had a case, was very mild compared to some. But what I've noticed is today cancel culture is used about the slightest little things. You decide that, I don't know, you're not going to associate with someone anymore, or you don't want to be at a particular event, or you don't want to have them at your event, or you're not going to have them as a guest on your podcast.

And people start saying they're being canceled. Or you record a podcast and you don't air it with someone. I mean, a lot of this stuff is specific to the online world. Or you decide not to hire someone because they've been imprudent in some way or said things that would be a liability that you've done the cost-benefit analysis, it's not worth it.

Is that all cancel culture? Some of it could, like it could be part of a, I suppose, a bigger attempt to cancel someone. But in order for cancel culture, at least the way it was used to work, you have to have the social institutions all aligned to drum someone out of respectable society.

And that's really not the case as much now. There are guys who will say they're canceled and really all it is is they've been told that they're not going to be able to, I don't know, like associate with a certain organization.

And it's like, because of that one thing, they're canceled. It's like, well, no, you could still, you still have plenty of ways to make money and feed your family. Like you could still do that. It's just that you have different, and this has always been the case.

You have different people in different stations that have different sets of risks that they're willing to take, depending on the goals they have. That's always been the case. So someone who's really pushing the Overton window hard on an issue isn't going to necessarily be able to, I would say, associate as strongly with someone who has to operate within that Overton window.

And that could be just a prudential thing, but that doesn't mean you're being canceled, right? So I see this out there a lot, like cancel culture being used very loosely. The classic example in my mind is J .D. Greer.

J .D. Greer has said this over and over that, you know, he's being canceled. And it's basically people have left his church because he's a leftist. And it's like, I'm being canceled. No, that's not, like, first of all, they're leaving your church.

They're not kicking you out of your church. Secondly, you can still feed your family. They're not saying that you can never get a job anywhere or you shouldn't be allowed to have any kind of influence whatsoever.

They just don't want to participate at your church. You're not being canceled, right? But it's used so loosely now. And so I still want to use it in the way that it was originally intended to be used.

Otherwise, it just, it doesn't make any sense to me. It's just like, you know, I don't want to associate with you. That doesn't mean it's canceled culture. All right, what was the other one? Gatekeeping, gatekeeping, yes.

Gatekeeping, Overton Windows, and Who Gets to Belong

This one is being used a whole lot, my goodness, especially in chat groups. So not maybe as much on like, well, you see it on the X feeds too, I guess, but like more chat groups. Like people will complain they're being gatekept out of something or people are gatekeeping, especially on the right.

They don't want to take on the risk of having certain elements in their organizations or at their events or on the stages with them who have exercised maybe either imprudence or again, they push the Overton window in ways that someone who has to operate within that can't really risk or whatever the case may be.

That's now considered gatekeeping. And the thing I wanted to say about this is I do think there's an assumption behind this that there's like the left gatekeeps and it's like the William F. Buckley's of the right who gatekeep.

They gatekeep actual conservatism out of the movement. So they're bad guys. And the question is not whether there will be gatekeeping, I think, but what kind of gatekeeping. There's always gonna have to be gatekeeping.

And the real question is, is it being done from a liberal frame? Is it being done in ways that are ideological, rigid, universal, liberal? That's the way that usually when people have complained about gatekeeping in the last five years, six years, that's what they're talking about.

They're saying there's guys on the right who have institutional power who are gatekeeping out legitimate conservatives. I think William F. Buckley again, and they do it because they actually have some kind of an allegiance to the liberal order.

They really do want some kind of a neutralist, semi-multicultural society. They conceive of maybe the basic building block as individuals and not as families and so forth. And so for them, you choose your attachments, right?

You're not someone who was born with them and born into them. They're all chosen. And there obviously are chosen attachments, but like they see that as the only legitimate type of attachment. I mean, so they're liberals.

And someone who grates against those things, then and thinks in terms of groups or and thinks that actually there's cultural and social elements that need to be considered when crafting policy, they become pariahs.

And so this is gatekeeping from a very liberal frame, but if conservatives are in charge or if they do gain power in some institutions, they are starting to gain power, like legitimate American conservatives, traditional ones, are they just supposed to let anyone in?

And I would say like, obviously not. Every movement has to have limitations. Even the left does have some limitations. Now they have relationships with their nefarious types where they benefit. They have a mutually beneficial relationship where they won't necessarily act to condemn those elements.

They'll always keep their guns pointed at the right and they'll use those people, right? And, but the thing is like, they're still going to keep them, keep the most nefarious elements away from the microphones.

They still don't want those guys platformed. Their reward systems aren't going to propel these people into the public eye. So there's still some gatekeeping going on and every movement is going to have a gate.

You can't, if it's gonna survive, you can't just let every person, no matter who they are, into your movement or else you won't have a movement anymore and it can be hijacked so easily. So that's the real question is you're gonna have it, who should be the gatekeepers?

And so when people complain about gatekeeping as sort of like a universal bad, they're really complaining about gatekeeping from a certain perspective. So if you gatekeep from a conservative perspective, and I'm talking about the political arena here, then like that should be a good thing, I would think.

If you're gatekeeping a theological institution from an orthodox perspective, that should be a good thing, right? We're not gonna let in people who disagree with the very reason we are joined together for a common purpose.

What's the point of that? That's where all these institutions, these more liberal institutions without gates allowed all these leftists in and then the leftists shut the door behind them. And now you have compromised institutions that are very hard to get back into because they are gatekeeping.

Well, there's a certain logic to this. It does create strong institutions in the sense that like, they're going to maintain their leftism because that's the only kind of person that gets rewarded in those institutions are other leftists.

So they have an in-group preference for themselves and their own ideologies. Maybe conservatives should having Christians, traditional Christians should have a preference for themselves if they want to achieve power and use it for loving one's neighbor.

So anyway, I just wanted to say that like gatekeeping is not like some big negative in a universal sense. It's only gate, it's negative when the way that we've seen it traditionally done, which is where people from a liberal frame gatekeep actual conservatives or actual Christians sometimes out of movements where they actually have more in common with the people that that movement is supposed to represent.

So, all right. It's also, I would add one thing, I guess it also goes along with managerial elitism. There's a chapter in my book, Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age, where I talk about this and the managerial elites tend to be loyal to themselves and they do preserve somewhat of a liberal order.

And so they are threatened by someone who doesn't tow that line. So, all right, let's see. Right-left, let's talk about that, right-left. So, I've noticed lately, like there's always obviously been conversation about who's on the right, who's on the left, politically speaking.

But lately there's been, I think, a move to try to claim the mantle of authentic rightness or authentic conservatism. And I'm speaking about the American context here. And you have guys who think that the farther away they get from an egalitarian utopian standard or a leftist standard or a woke standard or whatever you wanna call it, liberal standard, like the farther away you get from that, the more far right you are, the more against that you are, the more you offend those people and transgress their standard, then the more authentically right-wing you are.

And so when people, when even the left calls like the far right, like nefarious elements in their minds that are egregiously violate their whole plan, often they're not thinking in terms of like authentic conservatism so much as they are those they see as, I guess, the greatest, as representing the greatest distance between what they believe and what they see as the enemy.

So a good example would be like someone, I've used Andrew Tate before, but he's a great example for it, I'm sorry. You know, someone who, like Andrew Tate, has a record of essentially abusing women and being really living for himself in a very selfish, provocative, and arrogant manner and doing all the, like making it really look really bad to have a lot of money.

Cause he just, you know, spends it on sports cars and he's got this life that's very decadent, but he really, he isn't investing in a family or the kinds of things that actually traditional conservatives would value.

But the left finds him to be particularly egregious and like he's far right because he violates their standards in super aggressive ways in their minds. He is, you know, they are gonna be all about like, you know, women's equality.

And then you have a guy that not just recognizes there's a difference between men and women, which is bad enough in their minds, but he gives men basically the justification to manipulate women and use them.

And so he gets like, so is he authentically like more right wing than someone like myself, right? Who I don't believe in those things. Cause I'm bound by a Christian value system. And in that Christian moral order, you don't abuse women.

There is a difference between men and women. That difference though is complimentary. And so I believe in a patriarchal type of structure because I think it's unavoidable, but we have limits to what we can, what we should be doing to women as the weaker vessels, as scripture says, right?

So this, what I'm saying offends the liberal order very deeply, but not as much as someone who's explicitly just abusing the strength they have in a dynamic with those who are weaker women. So, so is Andrew Tate to my right or my left?

Obviously, anyone who's thinking straight knows Andrew Tate is not to my right. He is not positing a positive standard that comes from anything related to a Christian, traditional, and especially an Anglo-Protestant type of society, which is what I aim to, to advocate for.

So, so there's a lot of examples of this in different various ways. I mean, people that think one way on race, are they, you know, are you super right-wing if you're like a super white supremacist, biological reductionist type that sees DNA and IQ levels or something as like the main determiner?

Does that make you super right-wing? Well, it's out of step with the conservative tradition in the United States, for sure. I'd say it's also out of step with the teaching and the teaching distilled in scripture throughout generations.

It's not, it's more of a product of modernity than anything else. But again, it's like Andrew Tate, the left finds those things particularly egregious to what, to their project. So, so who do we listen to then on this?

Like, does the left get to define the right and left? Do they get to define what those, that scale looks like? Or, and I guess you could phrase it this way, is there one pole in that scale? Is there one standard, the left standard, and then anything that deviates is against the left, which means it's right-wing, or are there two standards?

And traditionally there has been in the United States. You do have a tradition that really exists more on the populist levels, especially as of late, but it is a tradition that seeks to conserve Christianity and the ability to fulfill our duties before God, which means there's gonna be some like, there's a decentralized tradition and individual rights tradition.

There's gonna be passing on things that are unique to our particular context, from our forefathers to our children. There's a very big emphasis on the importance of family in this tradition and small communities with high trust.

Like, okay, so all of that I'm describing, and I could go on, but all of these things are things that develop over time. They're rooted, they confer identity, they make one secure. That's how you know who you are.

There's a pattern they follow. There's celebrations associated with all of this. There's formalities. And so all of that, this is like, this is conservatism, and it's resistant against innovation. It's resistant against things that would smash all these things or conform all these things to a very centralist agenda that uses coercion, strong coercion, to make sure that everyone conforms to some kind of like rigid ideology.

Conservatism, conservatives have resisted various forms of 20th century modern ideology, including communism, including fascism, like all the other modernity kind of reductionistic takes. On what life should look like.

Conservatives have resisted those things traditionally. So that's another pole. And I would argue that the closer you get to that pole, the more actual right-wing you are, at least in an American frame.

But if we are stripped of that, if we don't know about that pole, and the only standard you have left is the left's egalitarian utopia, then yeah. So a guy like Andrew Tate starts looking real, he's real right-wing, he's more right-wing than Franklin Graham, you know?

No, he's not. That's ridiculous. He is a force for disrupting and crashing society. He may get a few things right. He may understand some things the left has gone bonkers on, like men and women are different, but if you take his advice and you start living the way he lives, this lonely, pathetic existence, then you will destroy your society, right?

No Enemies to the Right and the Left’s Institutional Power

So I just wanna say that about right-left. Like I'm kind of, like the guys who are like, oh, I'm getting canceled and gate-kept out because I'm too far to the right or stuff. Like they bring all these assumptions to these words that I don't know that they're always merited necessarily.

And then, okay, neoter netter. So no enemies to the right, it's a term, I guess, you know, some guys who are lesser known have used the term for years, but really the person who made it popular in the recent memory is Charles Haywood.

And I've posted a number of things about this online that Charles Haywood, I've tagged him, and I mean, I've had him on the podcast and he's always said, basically, that I understand what netter is or neoter, at least in his framework.

And maybe there's guys who are using a different framework, that could be, but he's the one that really, you didn't really hear about the term until Charles Haywood brought this up. And again, I will just briefly explain this.

And with the Charles Haywood approved interpretation of it, in my opinion, because I've explained this to him or I've tried to put it in my words to him and he's like, yeah, that's what it is. So the whole idea behind this is that the left holds institutional power.

And because the left holds institutional power and they're doing the most damage on our world, our society, our families, then to be co-belligerents or to allow others on the right, who are just opposed, who have their guns pointed in that direction, is the morally feasible and reasonable thing to do given limited resources.

So you can't focus on every threat, right? So there are times I think, like I said, I mean, gatekeeping is unavoidable and that kind of thing, but like the majority of your time should be spent if you're gonna enter the political fight on those who are the greatest threat.

The left is the greatest threat. I mean, how much authority does the right even have? How much, I mean, you could say Donald Trump is the administration right now, but all the cultural institutions, the media, Hollywood, education, all the influential institutions are pretty much still controlled by the left.

Even a lot of big business is controlled by the left. So that's what he's saying. He's saying, identify your enemy. And then I've given the analogy of like a prison camp. Like if you're in a prison camp and like, you know, you have guys that are coming from different perspectives on how they view the problem that you're facing, but they're all aligned against the prison guards.

Like you're gonna automatically practice no enemies, you know, no enemies in the camp or whatever. Like your enemies aren't those guys. The enemies are those who are restricting you and keeping you in the camp.

So you may find there's liabilities within the ranks. You may have to distance yourself from reckless behavior and that kind of thing, but you're not going to treat them like enemies in the sense of drawing the eye of Sauron upon them.

And so the institutional power being in the hands of the left is very important for this, because it's not a universal principle. It is a particular principle for a particular time when the left has that.

They have a hammer. They can smash anyone they want with their hammer. And no enemies to the right means you don't use their, you don't like get them to use their hammer against other guys and thus reinforce their liberal frame or their woke frame.

You don't reinforce their moral authority. You handle stuff outside of you. And this is tempting for some guys. Like, you know, you see like your political competition and hey, I know some skeleton in the closet the left wouldn't like.

I'm going to use the left's hammer against them, but you just reinforce the left's authority when you do that. So that's the whole point of no enemies to the right. Don't reinforce the left's frame. Know who the bad guys are.

It does not mean that you do not have corrective things you say about people, you say to people in your own ranks. It does not mean that you never gatekeep anything. It does not mean that, you know, you can't handle disagreements privately or in some cases publicly.

But what it does mean is when you do those things, you're not using the left's frame and you're not using their hammer when you do it. You do it, if you're going to do it, if you're doing it from the frame of conservatism or from, in my case, like a very Christian conservative frame, that's the basis upon which you make your critiques and criticisms.

So that's been the whole point of it from the beginning. And it's, I mean, I really was pleased with like Elon Musk just had this guy with a few months ago now, but he was, he's working for Doge and I guess last month and it was discovered he had some, I guess, particularly racy posts that he made online.

And Elon, initially, I guess he was going to be fired, but then Elon decided, and JD Vance even got in on this, that the guy had apologized and they said, you know, basically it's fine. Like we're going to put him back in the position that he was in.

He wasn't even in that authoritative of a position. And I think a lot of that was because we're not going to reinforce your stupid frame. You know, you excuse your worst actors for all kinds of things.

And yet you rigidly enforce your egalitarian standards on us and even a little misstep that may legitimately even be a misstep from a Christian conservative point of view for different reasons. Even that kind of a misstep though, you know, it's like there's no redemption, which is another aspect, by the way, of cancel culture.

It's not just that you can't feed your family. It's there's no redemption. There's no coming back from this. You are gone forever, which is another reason when guys are like, I'm canceled. And it's like, okay, you got disinvited from a podcast.

Like guys, like, you know, that could be symptomatic.

Of that.

Maybe you are being drummed out of polite society and that's just one aspect of it. And you know, you can never come back. But I, but often that's not the case. Anyway, going back to Netter or Neoter.

Yeah, the whole point of this though is, is who carries a hammer and how, from what frame do you critique egregious behavior? How do you find egregious behavior? And so Elon was like, okay, in our scale, this is not good behavior.

This is bad, but it's not to the level of egregious behavior that the left is making it. And so it's not something that you can't handle by just saying, you know what, I'm sorry. That was dumb to post that and come on back in.

And so he did not buy into their frame and that was brilliant and that was good. And we should not buy into the left's frame on these things or a liberal frame. We should never own positive vision. And so those are the four words I wrote down.

I'm thinking of other ones now that are used like post-war consensus that are originally when Reno used it, you know, it meant one thing and now it's just becoming like, it's becoming overused to the point.

It's like any problem roots back into like, that's the post-war consensus. And anyway, I won't get into that now. I just wanted to talk about these four. Maybe there's other words you could write in the comments.

So there's other terms that you see being overused or definitions changing or the way they're using is as it enters modern popular parlance. It's not a particularly useful word to use. Let me know. I'm interested in these kinds of things.

Language is very important to me because I think it reflects who we are and it's what honestly helps us understand and create categories in our own minds for the reality in which we live. I know there's been linguists who study different languages to show that people think differently in different languages because language interacts with the way that we view the world and it also shapes the way that we view the world.

It's not determinative in every way, but it's indicative. And I think these shifts are somewhat indicative. I think there was a giant, that giant has stumbled. It's still there, I think. There's still like the left woke culture, it's still there.

But that giant has taken a major blow in society. And there's people who are still kind of acting like that's the enemy, like that's still, or it's the only enemy. And like they frame a lot of the disagreements that happen into like, it's that giant against them every time, like they're getting gate kept, they're getting canceled, they're being treated like they're too far on the right, they're not getting a netter or neoter protections.

And it's like, well, have you considered maybe that's not the giant? Maybe what happened in 2020, that's not the same thing you're dealing with now. It could be, but it may not be. So just some food for thought out there.

This is really so particular to the online discourse. And I apologize to those who are like, John, please get back to talking about institutions that are compromised and helping restore them and being part of institutional takeover and so forth.

And I hear you loud and clear. There's not really much more right now I wanna say about these things, but I did feel like I wanted to say that at least, and maybe it will help a few people to think about what they say when they use these words before they use these words.

There is kind of like a boy who cried wolf scenario starting to develop that I just don't like, there's a lot of cachet in being canceled now. And like, I was, it's kind of like, the early Christians who were persecuted and those who were like persecuted first had kind of like a moral superiority almost.

Like, I was right when no one else was and everyone else was going along and stuff.

And I'm like, I don't know.

I was pretty early on, I guess, in some of the huge backlash that I faced. I mean, I have a hit piece against me in the Huffington Post. And that actually came a little later. I think that was like 2021, but I had armies of, I had like hardly anyone to defend me in 2020.

It was really, I felt lonely a little bit. I was like, what is going on? So like, I understand that feeling, but I still don't make the mistake of like everyone who criticizes me, they're coming from that frame and they're thinking of me in those terms and that's their issue.

And like each person has their own, I would say, issues and justifications for why they believe what they do and why they find maybe particular behavior terrible in their minds. So yeah, that's all I wanted to say.

Hope that's helpful for some of those out there. Like I said, hot take video. We will get back to, I think, some more substantive videos next week, including this Sunday. If you're listening on the audio, this won't be on video, on audio.

No, sorry, Sunday, Monday. Monday, ha. I am putting out my presentation on audio from the, I'm trying to remember the name of it, Christianity and Politics Conference. Yeah, in Washington. It was about politics.

Why can't I remember the name of the conference that I spoke at? Menace or Mandate, I think was the name of it. Political Christianity, that's what it is, Menace or Mandate. So that's gonna be Monday.

You gotta subscribe to the audio feed for that. But I give a lot of things, including many of the things I talk about in my chapter on Christianity and liberalism from this book, Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age.

And then, yeah, next, or Sunday after next, I guess, I'm posting on the audio feed my sermon from John 7 from a few weeks ago. So you can expect some changes on this podcast. I might do a little more hot takes now and then because it's easy for me as I'm thinking, as I'm driving or something, and I park and I just do a quick video.

But I'm gonna be doing, I think, I want to at least focus more on institutional takeover, identifying compromised institutions, and then working as much as I can with people who can bring some prudence and sanity to these institutions.

And there are starting to be guys who are kind of qualified to do these things. And at least they're making themselves more known. I mean, it seemed like in 2020, I'm like, is anyone qualified? Is anyone, does anyone care?

But the other thing is, I want to do more biblical content, more teaching, preaching type stuff. And this is part of another, I guess you could say, change that's happening in my life. I am, I'm going to be transitioning somewhat in my own, my own life.

And I think this will affect the platform where I'm less, this might be maybe, I don't know, I don't want to speak too soon, but this might be one of my last podcasts on, where I focus on like internet drama.

I've been thinking about where my time goes and what really matters from the goals that I have. Not saying someone else shouldn't focus on those things, but I really want to get to some substantive content.

And I'm realizing more and more, especially as like John MacArthur is getting so old. And I don't see in the younger ranks who are waiting in the, at least the popular, I mean, there's plenty of expository preachers, but at least like popular names that are building platforms.

I don't see that emphasis as much on biblical theology, expository preaching, just letting the Bible say what it says, explaining it to people. And I do, I really do think that that is so important. You know, this podcast started as something that was supplemental.

Guys were buying into social justice. I was explaining and refuting it. And it's become something where it's, you know, it's a little more positive. I'm trying to, I'm still like critiquing like I did in this video, you know, but I'm trying to build like a positive vision of American heritage, Christian tradition.

But these are, I see all of this as somewhat supplemental. Like I really do believe that understanding what the word of God says and conforming your life to it is the most important thing. And we had guys in 2020 who were good expositors, but they didn't do the greatest job necessarily with applying what scripture says to particular settings.

And it would be, I think, just as imbalanced to have a platform, at least if you're a pastor, which I'm not at this point, but where you're making applications all the time, but you don't really teach what the Bible says.

And I don't know, I'm just thinking more and more, we need more good Bible teachers. On the local level, I think there are some good ones, but also like on a broader level. And so I'm in process thinking through all this, but I think that this will change this platform a little bit and not saying I'm going anywhere.

I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna stop doing what I'm doing, but I want the percentages to be different. I think there's gonna be, I need more content out there that is more teaching, preaching type stuff.

So you can pray about me as I'm thinking through that. There's some great needs in my area with churches that are gonna be, that are going to be needing that or do need it now. And I have the opportunity to help serve in those ways.

So yeah, appreciate it. God bless, bye now.