Far-Right "Cancel Culture" Movement was the Main Focus at Trump's Phoenix Rally on Tuesday

by Kara Machowski

The president held the second rally for the primary election in Phoenix on Tuesday afternoon, again hundreds of people, most who refused to follow the Phoenix mandatory mask order, at the Dream City Church -seats seemingly packed tight. Arizona is one of eleven states that are seeing record breaking numbers in confirmed coronavirus cases, deaths and hospitals are beginning to overflow. But, President Trump again refused to follow the law and influenced his rally attendees to break the law as well.

The president’s opening speech was riddled with lies, half truths, and he took responsibility for actions and Obama and his administration took and their victories. From telling the American people that mail-in-voting leads to voter fraud, with no evidence what-so-ever and telling them that absentee ballots “are fine” because that’s how he’ll be voting. The president took claim to making America the #1 producer of oil and natural gas, an accomplishment that took place in 2014 by the Obama administration while Trump was asking for Obama’s birth certificate.

The false claims could go on, but the main focus on the rally and the article is the concentration on the “Cancel Culture” movement that has been circling in the far-right instead of addressing the nation’s unrest or the seven lynchings that have occurred in the last two weeks. The president invited four guests to speak during the his address; NCU students, Chris Thomas and Jack Bishop, Turning Point USA's Ambassador Reagan Escudé, and University of St. Thomas in Minnesota student Nia Moore. The first three spoke about the new far-right movement, Cancelled Culture.

Jack Bishop

Thomas and Bishop spoke about how they were spray painting an advertisement for a rally for Charlie Kirk and Laura Trump on NC State’s “Freedom Expression Tunnel” where students are allowed to paint their free speech. Bishop spoke first and claimed that he was “attacked” by "thug" members of “ANTIFA” while spray painting. He claimed that a group of protesters congregated and began to spray paint over their advertisement. Bishop attempted to stop them by blocking the advertisement and was subsequently hit in the eye by spray paint, on purpose or an accident, he didn’t clarify.

Chris Thomas

Chris Thomas spoke next, relaying the same incident at the Freedom Expression Tunnel and teared up as he explained his medical conditions that he was made fun of for; an inability to grow hair normally and his body’s response to heat; sweating. While name calling is never appropriate in any setting, ahem, Mr. Trump, it is not a hate crime or any form of hate speech, if anything the protesters were exorcising their own freedom of speech.

Reagan Escudé

The next guest speaker was a sparkly and bubbly Reagan Escudé, Turning Point USA ambassador and student at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. She spoke about how she was recently brought to such emotional disdain to Christian pastors kneeling in respect to the Black Lives Matter movement and few who asked to be forgiven for ‘being born white’. Reagan was so astounded by these actions that she took to social media to express herself in a video that ended up going viral expressing how Black Lives Matter is anti-Christian and subsequently lost her job.

Escudé went on to say that her problem was a small blip in retrospect to the Cancel Culture Movement. What she said next has gone viral and is a complete example of how a person cannot understand another person’s idea unless they’ve lived in that person’s shoes. Escudé stated,

“Aunt Jemima was canceled. If you didn’t know Nancy Green, the original first Aunt Jemima, she was a picture of the American dream. She was a freed slave who went on to be the face of the pancake syrup that we love and have in our pantries today. She fought for equality, and now the leftist mob is trying to erase her legacy.”

Not only is the statement obtuse, the idea that the American dream ever should ever involve slavery, but Nancy Green was not the original face nor did she have anything to do with its creation. Instead the brand got its name from the minstrel song “Old Aunt Jemima”, Chris Rutt, the proprietor of the pancake flour heard the song and felt it represented the Southern “Mammy”, another racial stereotype.

For many, the signature bottle filled with warm golden, brown syrup was a representation of our childhood, a feeling that Quaker Oats and Pepsi benefited from for years. But for many within the colored community, Aunt Jemima was used as a racial slur. From women in the kitchen being called “Aunt Jemima” to screams within restaurants from disapproving patrons. One key point made on CNN Wednesday afternoon was that African American women didn’t want to be called that and they didn’t want their kids to be called Aunt Jemima. But this is a concept that Escudé doesn’t understand and isn’t willing to grasp.

Nia Moore

The last guest speaker was Nia Moore, a student from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Nia is another member of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, a conservative organization that has close ties to the NRA. The organization has been connected a number of controversial movements in the past years, from the remaking of “Pepe the Frog”, a popular lackadaisical child’s cartoon frog into a fascist, Islamophobic, Nazi. However, Nia Moore did not possess the kind of ambiance that you might find in the conservative group. In fact, compared to its organizer and other radicals like Matt Lamb, she seemed timid.

Moore made a point that stuck out over her common anti-BLM rhetoric, such as; “if black lives mattered they wouldn’t be pro-abortion”, a statement that hold no resonance in the movement and more-so belongs within the women’s Pro Choice ideology. But when she said; “Black Lives Matter only makes a scene during election years,” then followed it up with a statement that abolished the integrity of the previous, “How convenient that they made the biggest scene of all during the year of the most important election of our time?” Unfortunately it wasn’t convenient for George Floyd, Amam Aubrey, Brianna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, their families, or any of the other black men who were lynched in the past two weeks.