Cancel culture is equal parts willful ignorance and educated arrogance, usually cozily ensconced in the heart of a single individual. The indoctrinators make use of the empty-headed, while dismissing their own dearth of knowledge as a petty irrelevancy.

Case in point, the 60's sitcom Hogan's Heroes, where a group of troublesome Allied POW's conduct sabotage and intelligence operations from their prison camp, under the noses of the arrogant, self-assured Nazis.

The show mercilessly mocked the German characters, highlighting their puffed-up (but unmerited) cockiness in every episode before outfoxing them embarrassingly by show's end.

The cast was purposely chosen for more than acting ability. The characters were written to poke holes in the whole Eugenicist/Master Race ethos that lay at the root of the Nazi's arrogance.

The Allied prisoners boasted a black man, stereotypical Frenchmen and Englishmen, along with Americans who were the antithesis of German ideals, with nothing to recommend them aside from their wits and willingness to get the job done.

Best of all, the lead German characters of Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz were played by Jews who had escaped the Nazi's during their rise to power, along with three other Jewish members of the cast - one who played a German General, another an American POW, and Robert Clary, who played the Frenchman, LeBeau.

Clary had the most skin in the game, as he was not only familiar with the Nazis from first-hand experience, but was himself a survivor of the infamous Buchenwald Concentration camp.

Remember, this series came out barely 20 years after the end of WWII, received by a public with fresh memories of the "Master Race."

The actor who played Colonel Klink only agreed to do so on the condition that no episode would ever end with Klink and the Germans victorious, no matter how small.

What about the millions of Americans of German descent? Weren't they infuriated by the rude stereotypes portrayed in the series?

Didn't they demand the show be canceled as a bigoted exposition of ethnic hatred?

Nope.

During its six year run, the show had its most loyal following among German Americans, who, unlike the ignorant harpies of today, recognized the need to demolish the ideology that animated their former countrymen, understanding the unequalled power of mockery as the best weapon to do so.

Were all Germans like those so haplessly portrayed in Hogan's Heroes? Of course not, and the American people, along with the German Americans of 50+ years ago never once thought they were.

What is the most dangerous element of Cancel culture? The regrettable consequence of shows like Hogan's Heroes never being made in the first place.