How The Shiloh Hendrix Case Killed Cancel Culture

By now, you may have heard the name Shiloh Hendrix. Up until last week, no one outside of her friends and personal acquaintances knew she existed. Now she is at the center of one of the more intense social media controversies that we’ve seen in recent years.

It all began in the late afternoon on April 28 when the woman we now know as Shiloh Hendrix took her young child to a park in Rochester, Minnesota. At some point, a black child — reportedly five years old — tried to steal something from her diaper bag. Shiloh apparently responded in anger, and, as the story goes, she called the boy the “n-word.” A man named Sharmake Omar — a Somali immigrant, and not the boy’s father — allegedly witnessed this altercation and decided to pull out his phone.

The resulting video has gone extremely viral across every major social media platform. Here it is: 

Now, before we continue with this story, which takes several more twists and turns, we should note a few things. First of all, we don’t actually know for sure that the boy is five years old. That is coming from the man filming, who is apparently not related to the child. In the video we appear to get a glimpse of the the kid and, from that glimpse anyway, he definitely looks older than five. Omar has additionally claimed that the boy is autistic, which we also have no proof of. And we have no footage of the actual encounter between the kid and this woman. Did she scream the n-word in his face? Did she mutter it under her breath? Did she say it about the child after he had already run away? We don’t know. And, as far as I’ve seen, we haven’t heard anything from the boy’s parents. We don’t know where they were in all of this. Which is very strange.

There are many aspects of this story that are bizarre and unconfirmed. Here’s another disturbing detail: the Somali man behind the camera, Omar, was charged a couple of years ago with sexually assaulting a minor. According to the local news channel KTTC, those charges were dismissed. A separate report by the local ABC affiliate adds that the charges were dismissed “in the interest of justice,” whatever the hell that means. But whatever it means, now Omar is at a playground with his camera out, filming. Make of all of that what you will.

So there are quite a few details that still need to be filled in here. But the saga continues anyway. What happened next is quite predictable. The social media mob went to work. They set out to identify this (at the time) anonymous woman and ruin her life, or worse.

Here’s one of the guys who got things kicked off: 

She’s a danger to children. She shouldn’t be allowed at playgrounds. Please, internet, find her. And countless others joined in. In some cases calling for the woman to be imprisoned for saying a bad word. Many others were hoping that she would be found and physically assaulted or killed. Some were even threatening violence against her baby. I would say that encouraging people to beat a baby unconscious is worse than saying a bad word to a child. And yet there is no mob forming against that guy or the dozens of people who hit “like” on that video.

So this has all unfolded as you would expect. Leading to the predictable news that the Rochester Police Department is now actively investigating the woman. Others began calling for CPS to get involved and remove her child from the home. One guy, for example, wrote a letter to CPS, which he published on his website, claiming Shiloh is a danger to her own child.

Pretty soon, with thousands upon thousands of people whipped into a pitchfork mob, she had been identified by name. But not just her name. Her phone number was posted all over the internet. Her address. Her social security number. Her alleged places of employment. People were calling her phone and making death threats and then bragging about it openly.

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

Again, so far this story is following the script that we all know by heart. A random person is caught on camera doing something rude or offensive. The video is posted by some third party, usually someone who wasn’t even involved in the incident. And then thousands of sociopaths set out to destroy the person’s life and possibly get them killed — all for sport, as a form of sadistic entertainment. Nobody stops to think about the consequences. There is no consideration of proportionality. Saying the n-word to a child in a moment of anger is bad. But is it so bad that it warrants the total and permanent destruction of a person’s life? Is it so bad that they deserve to have their physical safety and the safety of their family put in jeopardy? Is it that kind of bad? To the social media mob, the answer is always yes. It’s always yes, that is, provided that the offending stranger fits certain parameters. And the most important parameter is that the person is white.

And we all know how this script ends. The offender, in a desperate attempt to call off the dogs, tearfully apologizes and begs for mercy — a mercy that they surely won’t receive. But that’s where the M Night Shamylan twist ending comes into play. Shiloh Hendrix did not apologize. Instead she posted a crowdfunding campaign on GiveSendGo where she doubled down, defended her actions, and asked for help to relocate and get her family to safety. Then the double twist. A different group formed to counter the outrage mob. They started donating to her campaign. She surpassed her original funding goal in less than a day. Within three days she had earned over half a million dollars. Now she’s somewhere north of 600 thousand. The woman who was supposed to have her life ruined by the mob is instead on her way to potentially becoming a millionaire.

This twist, as you can imagine, has outraged the outrage mob even more. But a large number of prominent people on the Right are also horrified by this turn of events. Colin Wright tweeted:

“The woke right is now mirroring the woke left’s tendency to glorify and martyr immoral degenerates solely based on shared racial identity. This woke one-upmanship is a race to the very bottom.”

Many conservative influencers and commentators who I like and respect have echoed this sentiment. They say that the people donating to this woman are behaving no better than the Left. They say this is the Right’s version of the Karmelo Anthony fundraiser that also raised half a million dollars. Even though he stabbed someone to death, which I hope we can agree is far, far worse than saying a bad word. Some have even speculated that this whole thing is some kind of psy-op meant to delegitimize the movement and make conservatives look racist. To that I must assure them, despite how it may seem, not everything is a psy-op. There are things that really just happen in life. And I think this is one of them.

I understand that some people on my side feel — to put it scientifically — icky about this whole thing. I understand why they feel icky. I understand why they don’t want to condone saying racial slurs to children. I don’t want to condone it either, and I don’t, and nobody does. But I think they’re missing the point. I don’t think they understand what’s actually happening here, or why. It is, in the end, a net positive that this woman has raised half a million dollars. I will not be joining with some of my conservative friends in wagging my finger at her donors. And I’ll explain why.

First of all, she has a legitimate need for the money. The mob is truly trying to get her killed. I do not believe that a woman should have her life threatened for saying a word, even a bad one. You can say “freedom of speech but not freedom from consequences for your speech” all you want. But if losing your livelihood and having your house burned down is a consequence of your free speech then you effectively do not have free speech. Supporting free speech means supporting someone’s ability to speak without having their family murdered for it. That should be pretty obvious.

Second, more importantly — and this is the part that I really need everyone to stop and think about — this is the most devastating attack on cancel culture that we have seen, possibly ever. Shiloh Hendrix has, without really trying, effectively ended cancel culture. As Mark Dice said in his video about this incident, Shiloh is the final boss of cancel culture. I think that’s right. This is the part that many conservatives seem to be missing. All they see is that this woman said something bad and is now getting rewarded for it. The whole thing is so unsavory that they can’t help but recoil. And yes it is indeed unsavory. You wish that Shiloh had said or done something that we could affirmatively defend. That would be much easier. No one wants to affirmatively defend cussing out a five year old — even though I don’t think the kid was actually five. But none of that is the point.

The point is that the only way to put an end to this routine — the routine where the outrage mob mobilizes to destroy someone’s life — is to disincentivize the routine. And the only way to disincentivize that behavior is to reward the person who is being targeted. We can complain all we want about the mob tactics and how they silence and punish people and exact vengeance in wildly disproportionate ways. We can condemn it. We can write thinkpieces about it and deliver monologues. None of that matters. None of that will stop them. The only thing that can stop them — the only thing that will make them think twice about doing this again — is if they know that instead of getting their target canceled, they might accidentally make them rich. And more important even than the money, they must know that their attempt to isolate and ostracize someone will fail. That for every person condemning them, two more will rally to their defense.

The motto of the cancel mob has always been “make this person famous.” And a lot of them were saying that about Shiloh. “Let’s make her famous!” The assumption is that the fame will have an exclusively negative effect on the person’s life. Making them famous means making them unsafe, making them bankrupt, making them persona non-grata. With this case, that assumption has been flipped on its head. Now the mob knows that “making them famous” might help them more than hurt them. Rather than the fame being punished, it’s rewarded. That’s the only way to stop this. The “making them famous” tactic now has a powerful disincentive attached.

Think of it this way. Justine Sacco is widely considered the Patient Zero of cancel culture. Back in 2013 she was on a flight to Africa when she tweeted, jokingly, that she hopes she doesn’t get AIDS there. When she landed hours later, she discovered that her tweet had gone viral across the country. The mob had “made her famous.” She lost her job. She was cast out of polite society. Her life, as she knew it, was over. And our culture, as we knew it, had also been changed irrevocably.

I wish that someone had started a crowdfunding campaign for her all the way back in 2013. I wish that while half the internet was trying to wreck her life over a dumb joke, the other half had made her rich. I wish people had donated a half a million dollars to her. I wish they’d donated $1 million. $50 million. That’s not because I think an AIDS joke is worth $50 million. It’s not because I think Justine Sacco is some great hero. It’s because that would have destroyed cancel culture in its infancy. The entire incentive structure around this online, left wing version of mob justice would have been broken right at the start. If they made her famous and she profited from the fame, rather than being ruined by it, then the “make her famous” tactic would have died right there, and that would have been the end of it. But it didn’t die there. Instead the mob was emboldened. Mob justice worked out well for the mob nearly every time for the next decade and a half. Now that has finally changed. You don’t have to like Shiloh or agree with her choice of words to see that.

Speaking of her choice of words, there’s another point that must be made here. The mob that tried unsuccessfully to cancel Shiloh Hendrix was far, far more outraged over Shiloh saying the n-word than they were over Karmelo Anthony stabbing someone to death. Indeed, many of them actively supported Karmelo murdering Austin Metcalf. They rewarded him financially for it. This is all part of the preposterous racial double standard that has defined American culture for generations now. It’s a double standard that declares it a greater crime for a white person to say a word than for a black person to kill a white person. In fact, killing a white person could even be a just punishment for saying that word, according to these standards. The rules surrounding this word, the moral weight granted to it, the arbitrary guidelines drawn around it — it’s all nonsense. It’s all entirely indefensible on both moral and intellectual grounds. People are fed up with it.

That child, if he is like the average black child in this country, did not hear the n-word for the first time from a white woman at the park last week. He’s no doubt heard it thousands of times. He likely hears it every day. He probably hears it in his own home. Are we supposed to believe that he’s heard the word a thousand times but it’s time one thousand and one that really traumatized him? The idea that the word is a common greeting for one race but unspeakably evil if uttered by a different race is laughably ridiculous. The idea that one race can say the word ten thousand times in a single day and the other race cannot speak the syllables under any circumstance, even if they’re just repeating what someone else said, or singing along to a rap song — that idea is, again, totally indefensible. Which is why no one ever has tried to defend it. Instead it’s yet another insane racial rule of the road that we’re supposed to just follow without ever asking any questions about it or expecting anyone to explain it or justify it. People are sick of that. It’s just that simple. They’re sick of it.

If it’s wrong to say the word, then it’s wrong for anyone to say it. If black people want white people to not say the word, then they need to not say it. If you say it, everyone else can say it. Point blank. It’s that simple. That’s how life works. Deal with it. And no matter who is saying it, it’s not any worse than any other slur or vulgarity. It’s not special. That word is not magical. It’s not some kind of mystical curse. It’s not some kind of dark incantation that conjures evil spirits from the netherworld. It’s just a word. It’s a vulgar word. A rude word. A word that I believe polite people shouldn’t say, for the same reason that they shouldn’t use any other vulgarity. I’m using n-word right now instead of saying the actual word for the same reason that I would say f-word or c-word instead of those actual words. These are vulgar words. But that’s all. The reflexive, indefensible, capricious, vacillating racial double standards are over. People are fed up with them. They’re fed up with the game and they don’t want to play it anymore.

That’s all this word has become. That’s all that our “race relations” have become. A game. A game with arbitrary rules and incredibly excessive punishments for anyone who breaks them. It’s the societal equivalent of a child trying to walk on the sidewalk without stepping on a crack. Eventually the kid gets bored with it and starts walking normally again. Because it turns out that if you step on a crack, you won’t really break your mother’s back. The rules are fake. And eventually people get tired of following them. Telling white people — and white people only — that they can’t combine two specific syllables under any circumstance is like telling them that they can’t touch their head unless someone said Simon Says. They’re not going to play the game forever.

White guilt is the fuel that keeps all of this going. White guilt is what convinces white people to follow arbitrary rules that make no sense, and to tolerate and even defend a system that is rigged against them with blatant double standards. It’s what has compelled white people to acquiesce to a culture that says every race can and should defend and root for their own, but white people — and white people only — should not be conscious of their race at all. None of it is fair or morally coherent. And the Karmelo Anthony case — where a black teen raked in half a million dollars as a reward for stabbing a white kid to death — was, for a lot of people, the final straw. The final straw of many, many straws. It’s no surprise that the Shiloh Hendrix case comes on the heels of that.

A lot of people online are fretting that this is the beginning of some kind of race war. But I don’t think it’s a race war, and it’s certainly not the beginning. There’s been a war waged on “whiteness” for a long time in this country. So this cannot be the beginning of anything. But it may be the end of something. The end of racial double standards. The end of cancel culture.

This is an ugly story in a lot of ways. But if history has shown us anything, it’s that ugly things die ugly deaths.