Cancel culture is not a threat to civilisation

A spectre is haunting Western democracies. No, it is not the surging pandemic, mass death or catastrophic unemployment. It is, if you believe Donald Trump and some of his critics, the end of free speech and the advent of “cancel culture.” Trump defined the new menace to civilisation in his speech at Mount Rushmore, claiming that far-left fascists were “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.” Days later, a group of well-known writers including Salman Rushdie and J.K. Rowling published an open letter in Harper’s magazine agreeing that the forces of “illiberalism” were rampant on the left as well as the right, and that “the...