Houston Southard
a name that looks so fake you'll care just as little to learn it's not
GreG lukianoff - Canceling of the american mind
Hypocrisy is a dish best served red.
Most of this focuses on the kind of cancel culture that makes its way to Fox or the NY Post, where a professor or executive faces backlash saying something that went against leftist grain. It emphasizes the issue as two-sided, but focuses on looking at the SJW type of cancellation while simultaneously characterizing the political right as an injured minority.
It's a flat argument painting people as what've changed when the culprit is the mode of communication. Social media amplifies messaging, resulting in the types of effects associated with cancellation and a growing incapability of expressing disagreement without character assassination.
The authors profit by sowing discord from this fear mongering (with most of the citations coming from their co-owned FIRE), engaging instead with the indignant moral outrage around “can you believe that people are doing that?” wrapped in the sort of superiority of idolizing free speech.
Within the chapters are case studies of various fields that allow the authors to lump together many cancellation anecdotes. They combine the banner of "think about how scary it would be IF something happened” while pointing to the chilling effect cancellations have on speech, so even when (mostly) nothing happens, people who hear about it then don't speak because something - or nothing - may also happen to them.
To their small credit, the authors do discuss how the right has more specific acts of threatening speech resulting in violence or policy regression (roe rollbacks, book banning, thrusting god into government). That's the bigger concern of cancel culture: that it downplays threats to health and safety if favor of highlighting and dismissing criticism of the movement.
As much as the authors criticize the use of straw man arguments, their entire book - with its zeitgeist to elevate marginalized voices - is dependent on it. The answer doesn't appear to be shouting them down while claiming they are the antagonist of free speech. It ends up arguing with itself in the corner while there’s actual tangible things going on in the real world.
In the spirit of their spirit, cancel this purchase.