Commonwealth Policy Center

There’s a new term in our vocabulary called cancel culture. It’s an act of ostracizing and canceling out a person or group from social media platforms. Instead of discussing an idea one might disagree with, they attack the person by mocking, bullying, and publicly humiliating them on Twitter or Facebook.  I’ve been targeted by cancel culture and I can assure you its painful. Now a group of writers and influencers penned an open letter opposing cancel culture.  Malcolm Gladwell, J.K. Rowling, Stephen Pinker, and Gloria Steinem were among the 150 original signatories of an open letter criticizing cancel culture. It’s encouraging that even some on the political left realize that free speech is threatened when intolerance and bullying take the place of civility and public discourse.