> Up till about 1985 the window [of what you can say without being cancelled] had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would have expected freedom of expression to continue to increase. Instead it has decreased.
I think that whether this is or true or not depends a lot on how you define your terms. If cancel culture only means "I expressed an unpopular opinion about gay rights on TV and then lost my job", then yes, the window is narrower now than in 1985. But if it also includes "I expressed an unpopular opinion about gay rights in a bar and then got beaten up," it is not.
The article was about heresy which he defined as a factually correct statement that will destroy your life if stated. It wasn't about being an unpleasant person with unpopular opinions.
PG is implying that the phenomenon of getting shunned for having said something right-wing on Twitter is new/different enough that it implies some shift in societal attitudes. I'm arguing that it is not, and the 1985 equivalent would be a progressive being shunned for being, let's say, pro-gay-rights in small-town Missouri. The mechanism changes with technology, but the cause has not changed since Hester Prynne at least.
I think that whether this is or true or not depends a lot on how you define your terms. If cancel culture only means "I expressed an unpopular opinion about gay rights on TV and then lost my job", then yes, the window is narrower now than in 1985. But if it also includes "I expressed an unpopular opinion about gay rights in a bar and then got beaten up," it is not.