Tangentially, what's truly the difference between banning speech and cancellation culture, I wonder?
If you can lose your job and thus your ability to provide food and shelter for yourself and your family for daring to speak up against the prevailing group think, is that much different from being sent to jail for saying the same?
Political correctnes people and "minority" interest groups have turned into the biggest bullies, it's so darned scary - I for one fear this slippery slope to a very totalitarian society.
The difference is that the government can't (yet) legally reverse your identity from your IP address and throw you in jail for having an anonymous discussion online.
But if you publicly said "my name is Joe and XYZ racist thing", people have the right to cancel you.
Historically this public/private distinction has been violated lots of times in the U.S., e.g., WWI, McCarthy. I don't think it's totalitarian; it's usually relatively limited. Most of the time, for most topics, the government leaves you alone and you can say what you damn well please.
What sort of things do you fear being bullied for saying? I can honestly say I'm not afraid of being "cancelled" for going against some sort of group think. So I'm curious what kinds of things that people that hold your opinion are afraid of being punished for saying, could you give some examples?
Yeah there's a wide range of currently contentious topics - pick either one of them.
It really is about whether people can tolerate hearing things - or even knowing they speak about them - that they don't agree with, without turning into (in the worst cases) a savage frenzy of bullies. The ability to discern nuance seems to be getting lost.
If you can lose your job and thus your ability to provide food and shelter for yourself and your family for daring to speak up against the prevailing group think, is that much different from being sent to jail for saying the same?
Political correctnes people and "minority" interest groups have turned into the biggest bullies, it's so darned scary - I for one fear this slippery slope to a very totalitarian society.