So the policing of speech may be vastly more common than it was, say, 15 years ago. But the discourse itself is vastly greater in scope. Political correctness has in fact run amok, but so then has everything else.
In fact, the increase in bias at the NYT and WAPO may be more than offset by increased attention paid to podcasters like Bret Weinstein or Ben Shapiro. The intent to introduce “anti-racism” curriculum into schools may be more than offset by the way that the virus is creating a situation that lowers the status of school teachers among parents.
people left-of-center [are] wondering why, suddenly, to be anything but radical is to be treated as a retrograde heretic. Thus the issue is not the age-old one of left against right, but what one letter writer calls the “circular firing squad” of the left: It is now no longer “Why aren’t you on the left?” but “How dare you not be as left as we are.”
Here is where I think Pluckrose and Lindsay have the explanation, in Cynical Theories. The liberal philosophy that these older left-of-center academics share is incommensurate with what I would call the “folk” postmodernism of the younger leftists.
3. I think that there is at least a 30 percent chance that cancel culture has already peaked. The mobs, whether on Twitter, on campus, or in the streets, are engaged in bullying and making dominance moves, which create fear but also resentment. Academic administrators and progressive mayors are Neville Chamberlains, and I sense that an increasing number of people want to see a more Churchillian approach.