Cory Morgan: Backfire of Attempt to Cancel John Rustad Holds a Lesson for All Political Parties

People have grown weary of cancel culture tearing down the careers of prominent celebrities and politicians over politically incorrect social media posts.

Twitter (now X) has been the prime platform for individuals to self-immolate over innocuous postings. It’s a short-form platform for expression that encourages candid, quick statements. In seconds, people can quickly convey an opinion or reaction to a large audience. The nature of the platform creates a minefield as reactionary mobs await with figurative torches and pitchforks for a public persona to offend breaking what they consider acceptable orthodoxy.

Nowhere has cancel culture backfired more magnificently than in the case of BC Conservative Party Leader John Rustad. When Rustad caught the eye of the online outrage mobs due to retweeting what they felt was an inappropriate view, they swarmed, causing the leader of the BC Liberal Party to panic and eject Rustad from caucus. Rather than destroying Rustad’s career, the cancel effort set him on a new path from being a middling and relatively unknown provincial politician, to a man vying with NDP Leader David Eby to become B.C.’s next premier.

In February 2023, Rustad joined the Conservative Party of B.C. and by March had assumed the leadership of it. At the time, the party was languishing under 10 percent support in public opinion polls and had no seats in the legislature. People dismissed Rustad as a political has-been taking over a fringe party in an act of sour grapes. They couldn’t have been more wrong, and the rise in support for the BC Conservatives since Rustad took the leadership has been meteoric.

While John Rustad is a solid political figure and communicator, he wouldn’t have been the first choice if one was to predict a leader who would bring the BC Conservatives from the fringe to leading the polls as an election nears. The irony of the attempted cancellation of Rustad is if Falcon had just left things alone, BC United would still be a strong party and could have been in contention to win today. The ejection of Rustad created the political machine that would ultimately swallow the United Party.

Politicians should be taking notes. Not only can public figures survive cancellation attempts, but they can also flourish under them. Voters are exhausted from watching politically motivated character assassinations under the most trivial of circumstances. They are now ready to punish the cancellers. If the chattering classes’ hysteria over 11 alleged traitors residing in Canada’s Parliament matched the ink and time dedicated to X postings from politicians or strange things some politician may have said at town hall meetings, perhaps the names of the compromised politicians would have been revealed by now.

The public wants to hold leaders accountable, but not for something they may have whimsically posted on social media 20 years ago. People want to see figures held to account for what they are doing here and now. We have a foreign interference crisis in Canada at every level of government. If the social media warriors really want to tear people down for the betterment of the nation, they would be better served dedicating their energy to these corrupted politicians than worrying about old social media statements.

Cancel culture is a trend that has hit its apex and is on the wane. Citizens certainly seem to think so. Hopefully, activists and politicians realize this too.