Did Donald Trump Kill Cancel Culture?

Of all President Donald Trump’s accomplishments, bringing down the oppressive left-wing cancel culture regime may be his most important long-term cultural contribution.

Shortly before his death in 1989, Italian philosopher Augusto del Noce called political correctness “a quiet totalitarianism” that would “stop the flow of free thought, breaking up nations from within.” Over the next three decades, that observation would prove prescient. Political correctness gave way to cancel culture, and the left used both to silence dissent and impose a de facto gag order on traditional conservative thought and speech in Hollywood and academia, on social media, and in virtually every other cultural institution.

Trump’s emergence on the scene in 2016 threatened that status quo – a brash, uncouth, but always authentic New York businessman who promised to take a wrecking ball to the establishment in both parties. The left initially responded with vigor, unleashing the full power of cancel culture not only against Trump, but also against his supporters. Anyone who publicly backed Trump was branded a racist and bigot and cast out of “polite” society.

Trump’s victory that year was the first major blow to cancel culture. Biden’s ascension to the White House in 2020 seemed to resuscitate it for a moment, but Trump’s historic comeback last November has put it in full retreat once more.

The signs that cancel culture has lost its potency as a left-wing political weapon are everywhere.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, for instance, has hosted Trump-aligned figures like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his new podcast. While some on the left have screeched about Newsom “platforming” these supposed “far-right extremists,” the response has been largely muted. Just a few years ago, the governor of the most liberal state in America sitting down to talk to Kirk and Bannon would have been unthinkable.

In April, liberal commentator Bill Maher also sat down to dinner with Trump and musician Kid Rock because, as he said “there has to be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away.” Again, the progressive base was outraged. But the very fact that Maher was willing to have a conversation with the left’s most hated enemy was itself a sign that liberal cancel culture has lost its bite.

Giampaolo Abbatelli, a retired political science professor who lives in Chile, told me in an interview that this effect is being felt internationally, not just in the United States. “Trump caused the cancel culture vehicle to go off the road,” he said. “The results of this crash can be felt worldwide.”

Italy provides another vivid example of how cancel culture is in decline throughout the West. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has adopted what some have termed an “Italy First” agenda modeled after Trump’s America First platform, is a strident critic of woke ideology and cancel culture. Meloni herself experienced cancel culture first-hand when some booksellers in Rome refused to sell her memoir, accusing her of evoking “fascist” ideas.

Like Trump, Meloni has also been castigated as a “right-wing extremist” for opposing illegal immigration and promoting the traditional nuclear family as the foundation of society. But also like Trump, she has only seen her political star rise in the face of cancel culture, and she is now viewed as perhaps the most preeminent elected conservative in Europe.

Meloni has made combatting cancel culture a top priority of her administration, even when that means protecting the right of individuals to voice controversial opinions. One such recent case was a conference in Gallarate, Italy, of hundreds of activists advocating for the “remigration” of foreigners throughout Europe, or returning immigrants to their countries of origin.

After the conference was effectively barred from taking place throughout the rest of Western Europe, it eventually settled in Gallarate – although not before the mayor of nearby Milan publicly opposed the event taking place there.

Remigration remains a controversial topic even among European conservatives, in large part due to the unsavory backgrounds of some of its most public advocates. In September 2024, Donald Trump himself experienced rage from leftist media after he used the term “remigration” in a social media post.

But as Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi noted, “democracy allows for debate on controversial ideas.” Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini also questioned critics, asking, “Why ban someone’s thoughts? We’re not in the Soviet Union.”

While cancel culture is a cultural phenomenon, the political fallout is impossible to ignore. In the U.K. for instance, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the term “woman” in that country’s Equality Act only refers to biological women. A few years ago, the mere suggestion that “trans women” are in any way different from biological women was enough to get you fired and possibly even investigated by police in the U.K. But as more and more people have found the courage to stand up to cancel culture and speak the biological truth about gender, that integrity has trickled up to the Supreme Court.

To be sure, the left-wing entities that pushed cancel culture in the first place as a form of political and societal control are only weakened, not destroyed. They still hold significant influence within cultural institutions throughout the West and are not likely to give up that influence willingly. But as long as there remain leaders like Trump who are willing to stand up to them and simply refuse to be bullied into silence, free speech and the open exchange of ideas will continue to thrive.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.