Another tired diatribe about how "the left" is "forcing people to silence".<p>Seuss Foundation not printing some books? It's "the left". Saying something your employer doesn't like and you lose your job? Definitely not a problem with the culture at your place of work or your boss, it's "the left". Twitter tells you that you're violating the terms of service and mutes or bans you? Definitely not a business decision of Twitter's, but some insidious conspiracy where "the left" is pulling the levers of power in the shadows.<p>People say something unpopular with a group of people and they do it in a way that has never been more public (YouTube, Twitter, etc) and are upset when that group angrily shows up and interacts in a predictably angry way. If you want to engage in public discourse in an era where humans are more connected than ever you have to suck it up and accept that there might actually be a negative response.
Bari Weiss isn't being entirely honest. The fact of the matter is that many people are free to speak their minds but with the modern Internet many more are free to reply and their responses are just the same as there before that time. And I focus on the Internet here because most of Bari's tripe originated on Twitter. She wasn't very happy that Weird Twitter and company heckled her there, so she ran off to write hit pieces on "Cancel Culture" as if anyone with some understanding of how the Internet works wouldn't notice. The sad thing is that the media being accustomed to a passive/mute audience loves this narrative. It casts all hecklers as cartoon/melodrama villains that deserve to be forced into silence while the plucky hot-taker gets to spew whatever nonsense opinion free of comment on the unmoderated (relatively) Internet and other online social spaces.<p>The reality is that there isn't a massive change in how people speak their minds other than people are becoming aware of how permanent some things are when it comes to the Internet so they're being tighter lipped as employers, would be "lolcow milkers", and assorted jerks will always be on the look out to be outraged by something. Ironically, she feeds into this cycle with manufactured outrage at hecklers. It's like trying to cast Statler and Waldorf as murderers when all they do is poke fun at mishaps and nonsense. Simply put, Bari doesn't like being heckled and demands the Internet be a passive domain for content generators much like cable TV and print media. Too bad for her, that's not baked into the design.