A specter is haunting Western democracies:

It isn’t the surging pandemic
It isn’t mass death
It isn’t catastrophic unemployment

It is the supposed end of free speech and the advent of “cancel culture” https://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

Trump defined the new menace – “cancel culture” – to civilization in his speech at Mount Rushmore.

He claimed that far-left fascists were “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees” http://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

Days later, a group of well-known writers including Salman Rushdie and J.K. Rowling published an open letter in Harper’s magazine.

They, too, agreed that the forces of “illiberalism” were rampant on the left as well as the right http://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

Given the bizarre timing and nature of the complaint, it does not feel rude to ask: “What are they on about?” http://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

In the 1990s, Black writers were hard to find and there were hardly any voices from India.

One or two writers were tasked with articulating the experiences of whole continents (as in the New York Times’ praise for Rushdie: “a continent finding its voice”) http://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

Today, conservative as well as liberal and left-wing outlets feature a multiplicity of opinion and analysis.

Much more variety is still needed — human experience is always growing — and many publishers are sincerely trying to achieve it http://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

Given this progress, the picture that Trump and highly prominent writers draw of narrowed and darkened intellectual horizons seems wholly unrecognizable, even paranoid http://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

Could it be that increasingly diverse voices and rich conversations are a threat to their free speech — or more accurately, the prerogative of famous and powerful people to speak at length on all sorts of things without interruption or disagreement? http://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

J.K. Rowling seems intent on tweeting her disapproval of transgender people.

Certainly, a closer examination of the critics of cancel culture confirms the suspicion that many of these self-appointed defenders of free speech prefer monologue over dialogue http://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

Trump, who routinely advocates sackings and boycotts of his detractors, is the world’s leading exponent of the very thing he attacks.

But commitment to liberal values is also not widely upheld among the anti-Trump signatories of the Harper’s letter http://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

The letter includes writers, professors, journalists and novelists who have:

Campaigned against academics
Outlined “permissible” forms of torture
Championed the illegal war on Iraq
Proposed a “Muslim ban”
http://trib.al/QxaMTjk 

Trump might be voted out in November.

But the writers, journalists and academics guilty of cruel blunders and terrible misjudgments will remain as entrenched as ever http://trib.al/QxaMTjk