Is the Efficient Rhetorical Fortress insufficient? You tell us!
Part 3 of revising and refining our ideas for the paperback edition of “Canceling.”
This week we’re rounding out a series of posts revisiting Chapters 5, 6, and 8 of “The Canceling of the American Mind,” my most recent book which I co-authored with
. In the first section we covered the rhetorical no-man’s land between the left and right’s respective rhetorical fortresses, specifically outlining the Obstacle Course and the Minefield. The second section delved into the political left’s Perfect Rhetorical Fortress.Now, we’ll cover the political right’s version: the Efficient Rhetorical Fortress.
As we mentioned in the previous two parts, our goal here is to get feedback from you so we can improve our ideas and clarify our concepts for the paperback edition of “Canceling,” which will be out in March of 2025.
We welcome any general thoughts or suggestions, but are also specifically interested in strengthening our arguments with better/newer stories and examples, and expanding upon our work with rhetorical tactics we might have missed or ideas we neglected to include the first time around.
Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, or shoot us a DM here on Substack. We’re grateful for your eyes, ears, and minds, and we’ve already collected a ton of great feedback from you. Keep ‘em coming!
But before we move on…
The people have spoken: the term is FASHCASTING
If you’ve been keeping up with this series (and with ERI, or my podcast appearances more generally) you’ll likely recall the term I coined to describe the tactic of labeling people “conservative,” a “right winger,” “far right,” “fascist,” or “neo-confederate,” as a way of dismissing a massive percentage of people in one fell swoop.
That term is “fashcasting” — and while I initially spelled it differently, I was never quite happy with it. Thankfully, I posted a poll on X asking for your votes, and another one after
made me (she is VERY intimidating) because her favorite option wasn’t initially listed. Well, she was right, because her choice, “fashcasting,” won 63.7% of the vote.And that’s not all. Some very clever followers came up with other ideas that I love.
coined “MAGA-cadabra,” which works very well as an incantation one would say when fashcasting. He also came up with “wokus pocus,” which is brilliant and perfectly encapsulates the mechanism powering the right’s Efficient Rhetorical Fortress — which we’ll get into now.The Efficient Rhetorical Fortress
As readers of “Canceling” will note, there’s one very big difference between the left’s rhetorical fortress and the right’s: Where the left’s Perfect Rhetorical Fortress is convoluted and labyrinthine, the right’s is lean, mean, and incredibly effective despite its lack of bells and whistles. That’s why Rikki and I called it the Efficient Rhetorical Fortress: it’s…well…efficient.
And as we mention in the book, the reasons for this have to do with each fortress’ origins. The left’s originated in academia and was developed on campus, where barricade after barricade was added through constant iteration. Every identity category was incorporated into the Demographic Funnel (which, thanks to a reader suggestion, we may rebrand as the Demographic Sieve. This is the kind of great feedback we’re looking for!), expanding it with specific approaches to identity categories in order to disqualify nearly everyone on Earth with the “wrong” opinion: race, sex, sexuality, cis- or trans-identification. Then come the layers where one’s character, relationships, and perceived behavior can be weaponized against them.
Meanwhile, the Efficient Rhetorical Fortress arose from everyday politics, talk radio, cable news, and social media. It is rooted in the right’s distrust of authority, antipathy towards “elites,” and vilification of the left or “liberals” as a whole. The whole thing is built upon three simple rules:
1. You don’t have to listen to liberals (and anyone can be labeled “liberal” if they have the “wrong” opinion).
This is the right’s analogue to the left’s fashcasting, which, for now, I call “wokecasting.” (Do we like that term? Are there better options? Should I do another poll? Let me know in the comments!)
The principles are exactly the same, they’re just aimed in the opposite direction. If you can dismiss someone as being “one of them,” they’re automatically disqualified and don’t need to be engaged with.
2. You don’t have to listen to experts (even conservative experts, if they have the “wrong” opinion).
Now, to be clear, in “Canceling" we spend a lot of time pointing out how often the expert class has shot itself in the foot, both in academia and over topics like COVID.
has a great post on his Substack about the real problem of “elite misinformation,” and ’s fantastic 2018 book (and winner of my Prestigious Ashurbanipal Award), “The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium” outlines many of the ways elites have, deservedly, lost the trust of the public in recent times. But it is counterproductive, nonetheless, to dismiss all experts just because you don't like what they're saying.3. You don’t have to listen to journalists (even conservative journalists if they have the “wrong” opinion).
These rules are all you need to dismiss almost anyone you disagree with — including fellow “conservatives.” But with the MAGA subset of right-wingers, there is an additional rule:
4. You don’t need to listen to anyone who isn’t sufficiently pro-Trump.
With the sometimes blind fervor of MAGA fandom added on, you have a citadel against productive discourse that is impressive in its simplicity and effectiveness.
Just think about it: try to think of a single person you couldn’t pigeonhole into one of these categories if you’re a right-winger intent on silencing dissent. Anyone who doesn’t identify as a conservative is automatically a liberal, which makes them untrustworthy and/or evil. Anyone who claims to be conservative (or even just “anti-woke”) but disagrees with you is secretly a liberal, a “RINO” (Republican in name only), “crypto-woke,” or “controlled opposition.” Anyone who claims to be an expert on a topic is automatically a member of “the elite,” or “academia,” both of which are left wing and therefore untrustworthy. Anyone who writes for a newspaper or appears on cable news and isn’t explicitly on your side is automatically part of “the mainstream media,” which is, of course, “captured” and therefore untrustworthy.
Despite their differences, both the Perfect Rhetorical Fortress and the Efficient Rhetorical Fortress serve a very simple function: dismissing the opinions of anyone you don't already agree with. We are increasingly living in self-confirmatory partisan bubbles — in terms of residential partisan segregation, and also in our social media lives and our news-consumption. This is a serious problem. If anything, we need to be challenging ourselves to listen to people we disagree with on important topics, and creating systems and structures to help us do it more effectively. Instead, we’re doing the opposite. These two fortresses give us every excuse we need to avoid the sometimes painful but always necessary process of engaging with dissent.
If there’s anything left after the four steps of the ERF, we’ve yet to see it — but let us know if we missed something!
Right-wing Cancel Culture
One thing that’s particularly fascinating about the right’s rhetorical fortress is the sheer amount of “friendly fire,” or, as David French put it in a 2022 article for Sapir, “Right-on-Right aggression.”
In “Canceling,” we go into great detail on a number of instances of, to quote David French again, “fratricide.” These include Daniel Darling, the senior vice president of communications for the National Religious Broadcasters, who was fired after publishing an op-ed in USA Today entitled “Why, as a Christian and an American, I got the COVID vaccine.” The NRB claimed Darling had engaged in “willful insubordination” by violating a policy of neutrality on the vaccine. This, by the way, was a policy that NRB CEO Troy Miller violated himself, when he called the vaccine “stunningly effective” in an email urging members to attend NRB’s summer convention.
Megyn Kelly was also famously tarred and feathered by Steve Bannon and others for challenging then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. She eventually left her job at Fox News as a result of the backlash and pressure, and unfortunately then found herself the victim of left-wing Cancel Culture shortly after joining NBC.
Trump’s conservative targets for cancelation are, of course, numerous: conservative writer and Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer, National Review editor Rich Lowry, CBS News journalist Sopan Deb, National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg, Republican strategist and commentator Karl Rove, and the entire Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, just to name a few.
Most recently, Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation, backed by a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, are creating a list of government employees who are likely to be disloyal to Trump — or, as the Heritage Foundation describes them, “anti-American bad actors.”
We hope it’s clear that while the Efficient Rhetorical Fortress doesn’t have much by way of moving parts or complex structures, it is just as (if not more) formidable and effective at shutting down dissent, debate, and discussion. Combined with the Obstacle Course, the Minefield, and the Perfect Rhetorical Fortress, what we’re left with is a discourse where every potentially constructive argument can be undermined or avoided.
Thankfully, there is a solution and hope for the future. We get into our proposals in the book (which we encourage you to pick up!), but the long and short of it is: Revitalize a culture where free speech, free inquiry, intellectual humility, and human relationships that go beyond politics can develop and flourish.
Tell us your thoughts!
Now it’s your turn. Is there anything we’ve missed here? Anything that should be expanded upon? Anything we should revise or reconsider?
Most importantly: Are there any recent examples of right-wing Cancel Culture we should be sure to include in the paperback edition of “Canceling”? Let us know in the comments (or DM us if you’re shy!).
SHOT FOR THE ROAD
Last month,
and FIRE hosted a fantastic debate in San Francisco around the question, “Has criminal justice reform made our cities unsafe?” , a USF law professor who spoke at FIRE’s 2022 and 2023 Student Network Conference, and FIRE board member Foster argued against the proposition. On the other side of the stage was Michael Shellenberger, author of “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities,” and , a community organizer and former Oakland, CA mayoral candidate. All four debaters were phenomenal, as, of course, was the always excellent who served as moderator. Sign up for a paid subscription to to enjoy the full debate now!FIRE is the sponsor of this wonderful debate series, but we have not yet successfully raised the money to support the debates. As we round out our fiscal year, please consider a donation to FIRE, the hardest working free speech organization in the business.
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It has been a while since I read either the Cancelling of the American Mind or the Coddling of the American Mind, so the idea I am trying to articulate may have been covered in one of these two books, and I have simply forgotten it.
My understanding of the concept of rhetorical fortress is that we can label other people as being “right wing” or “socialist” or something else, and safely ignore anything they have to say. In a sense, it is a group form of ad hominem attack.
I see one other phenomenon that I think is also a significant factor in how we view people and news sources, and it comes at bias from the opposite direction. It is survivor bias or what is not there.
Historically I had been liberal in orientation. I am college educated, live in a large city, am not religious, and have an upper middleclass income. My (previous) orientation is predictable. I graduated from college in the early 1980s.
A few years ago, my youngest son came home from college (Madison WI) complaining how woke his collage was. Every topic was a land mine. Woke? Really? My experience was college was a bastion of free speech. What are you talking about kid? Yea, I know college is a little on the liberal side, and Madison more than others, but come on….
A couple things happened to change my view. I retired and had more time to read, and I chose to read broadly. I happened to read the Coddling of the American Mind, many of Thomas Sowell’s books, and Abigail Shirer’s book “Irreversible Damage” among dozens of other books. The picture I got from these sources was different, and more in line with what my son was seeing.
Recently I was talking with several friends about political topics and new sources, and I told them I was far more skeptical now about news sources than I had been in the past. It should have been evident to them, if they were listening, that my previously more liberal views, had changed. They told me that both left leaning and right leaning news sources had some slant, but the right leaning sources were significantly more misleading than left leaning sources. Left leaning news sources were much more honest. They told me that the New York Times, certainly had a liberal opinion page, but the news pages themselves just told the news, no spin.
In some respects, the New York Times does just tell the news, but its political bias is visible if you are looking at both what is there, and what is not there. Part of their bias is what they choose to cover or not cover, and if they do cover a topic, how often. Part of their bias it is what is missing or not emphasized. If you watch Ben Shapiro, he talks about some of the obvious (at least to me) cognitive decline of Joe Biden. I don’t recall the New York Times spending much time pointing this out.
If I had a wall in my house that was 50% red and 50% green, but if I wrote endless stories about the red side of the wall, you might easily assume that the wall was mostly or all red. I would not be lying about the color of the wall, but I would be allowing you to draw the wrong conclusions.
I see this emphasis, or lack of emphasis, playing out in the war in Gaza. Many liberal news sources talk about the deaths happening in Gaza, but don’t talk about some/many of those deaths being Hamas fighters or caused by Hamas. They don’t talk about the terrible things Hamas did on October 7th. They don’t go into any of the history Israel has with its less than friendly neighbors and the stated objectives of Hamas and Iran, i.e. the end of Israel as a state, and the death or removal of all Jews from the area. They allow you to believe that all Hamas wants is to live freely in peace. My friends told me that the tunnels that Hamas had built were there to allow them to sneak food into Gaza from outside sources. This was done because Israel was starving them. Hamas may in fact be moving some food or other supplies around via the tunnels, but the tunnels are really about smuggling weapons into Gaza. Wherever they are getting their news from, it is failing to paint even a remotely accurate picture.
So my friends, and probably me, are dismissing sources because of some rhetorical fortress but we are also failing to be critical at all of the sources or tribe we do listen to.
There is another aspect to all of this, both on the left and the right, where the position is 'I don't have to have a proposal about how to address this problem. All I have is my feelings.' Most practical politics, of course, start there and getting together a group of people who are unhappy about problem X is a good first step towards creating a policy for fixing it. The problem is that a great deal of worthless communication goes on where all that is communicated is 'I feel bad' and 'you people are to blame'.
As a practical matter, this means when it comes to discussion and debate it is always a good idea for the people who would like to solve problems to expel the people who just want to wallow in their outrage and hurt feelings. But neither the left nor the right are interested in this message. They both send the people with the right kind of 'lived experience' or 'traditional values' to prevent anybody from considering that the other side might have a few good ideas or made some good points in this disagreement.
If you get to design any more debates, can you try:
Resolved: Your feelings are not you. They are the buttons other people use to manipulate you.
I think that we will need to detach people from their identification with their own feelings before we can make a lot of progress on this front, but I don't think that anybody is interested in this aside from those few who are trying to find meaning in Stoicism and certain forms of Buddhism.
Giving up a life centred on your own feelings appears to be a hard sell.