A good sign of how intellectually bankrupt the pro-"cancel" argument is that almost every single defense I've read grossly misunderstands the complaints. > Ha

A good sign of how intellectually bankrupt the pro-"cancel" argument is that almost every single defense I've read grossly misunderstands the complaints. > Have you met the internet? Chilled speech isn’t new. Members of marginalized groups online have from the start dealt with threats, insults, and harassment campaigns for the crime of articulating their ideas in public. But free speech defenders didn’t sound the alarm about the marketplace of ideas then. I’m not sure what’s changed. Free speech defenders don't complain about "non-marginalized" groups being hassled by a bunch of random accounts either. And nothing about "cancel culture" complaints preclude tamping down on abuse and harassment; they're barely even related. In fact, a common criticism of those complaining about cancel culture is that they _overemphasize_ politeness and civility, while allowing bad (and "bad") ideas to be expressed (the "pro cancel culture" habit, OTOH, seems to be about sticking to the a narrow range of approved views while acting as vile as possible). What free speech defenders _absolutely_ did do is defend the rights marginalized groups to say their piece; the rights revolutions of the last half century+ have all grown out of the foundation of a society where people fight for the right of unpopular speech to be heard. The complaint is about extending the consequences of political speech to every possible unrelated sphere of life, to letting those with the most cultural power codify their biases as the only acceptable speech, and in some cases to cutting off access to the modern public squares: "go build your own social network" does carry some weight as an argument, but by the time you get to "go build your own payment processor", you're making a mockery of the concept of a society tolerant of pluralism. The fact that right now the views protected by liberal values are rightwing is incidental: the purpose of these rights is to defend the cultural underdog, and diminishing them just hurts the marginalized in the longterm. This is something the left once knew: the ACLU's historical defense of the KKK/WBC et al has been rooted in a defense of these _rights_, not a defense of the groups. There is probably a well-reasoned argument out there for cancel culture, and I don't consider myself to be informed on a topic until I've heard a compelling argument from both sides. But this article, like most of what I've heard in defense of cancel culture so far, is pretty garbage.