Best post I found about cancel culture on Reddit

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Great response! Exactly! I don't want to align myself with those sorts of people. The term 'cancel culture' was also coined and proliferated online by right wing reactionary types whom I'm not at all in support of in any way.

Cancel Culture does the opposite of causing new thinking because it enforces conformity. The above argument is based on the false premise that all new ideas are good and all old ones are bad. Cancel Culture claims to want to cancel biased thinking and thinking in stereotypes yet you premise your argument that all of us opponents of cancel culture are inflexible. You scold us for not wanting to listen but you advocate for a policy that eliminates any chance you will be able listen to the people you want to cancel.

Bad people sometimes espouse good ideas. Opponents of ideas will always try and discredit these ideas using guilt by association. It always has been this way and always will be that way. The key is not to let good ideas be defined and hijacked by the bad people that sometimes espouse them. This is a difficult and sometimes unwinnable endeavor but always a worthy one.

Cancel culture is just a political dogwhistle. The behavior is not new. It does not exist on a particular point of the political spectrum. People love the right to free speech, they just don't like the responsibility or accountability that is part of it. They also love cancel culture, but don't call it that, when it is to their advantage.

We just had an impeachment trial where the president's defense against inciting an insurrection against his own government was he was the victim of cancel culture.

Let that sink in for a bit...

I know there are plenty of people who think the way you do, but it’s still remarkable to me to see it spelled out like this. The implication of your post is that you believe everyone who gets “cancelled” must necessarily have the “wrong opinions”, and they just need to change them. You seem to be one of these Whiggish types who thinks that moral and political progress is as inevitable as technological progress, as if there’s some benevolent sky god making it so. Do you not suppose that if the “accepted view” on something changes, it might sometimes just be down instead to powerful people imposing their will on society? And indeed that publicly shaming and cancelling people might actually be one of their methods of changing what society’s “accepted views” are? And that what the “accepted views” are often are different from country to country?

I suppose it stands to reason that the people least concerned by cancel culture are the people that constantly change their views according to what “authority” dictates, in other words people with no real convictions of their own beyond the conviction of their own goodness.