I only recently learned about the concept of "flak" [0], as described by Chomsky in "Manufacturing Consent". It occurs that Cancel Culture de-platforming shares

I only recently learned about the concept of "flak" [0], as described by Chomsky in "Manufacturing Consent". It occurs that Cancel Culture de-platforming shares a lot in common with the last hundred years of coordinated character/credibility attacks by establishment media, to ostracize heterodox opinions. While such flak attacks aren't always centralized (sometimes there are Fox-News-style "talking points", but often it's an emergent media consensus with no clear ringleader), de-platforming is an even more distributed phenomenon, where the Two-Minutes-Hate du jour can have a viral, snow-balling character. Don't dare speak up against it, lest your head be next on the chopping block. Without having read the linked book, I wonder how well the strategies would back-port to surviving flak from the traditional media, who still wield outsized influence over which opinions should be considered acceptable, which candidates are "electable", etc. The message discipline in both the MSM and Cancel Culture is frankly impressive: when the same simple story is repeated consistently, whether via sound bites or memes, it tends to stick; and the payload always carries enough emotional charge to bypass all nuance and intellectual charity. "What I tell you three times is true." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model#Flak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model#Flak