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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You have said that responding to speech one doesn’t like by calling for a boycott or firing of a speaker is just more free speech. You’re right. It is. “Total war” may also be used as a metaphor for that approach, as that approach is extreme and deviates from the traditional approach of either ignoring or refuting speech one does not like.

Within these highly aggressive market behaviors you also find another nasty tactic - turning the other side’s buzzwords into insults. Making the very term around which they rally a pejorative to the majority of society.

These are both free speech. They are also hacks of the system of discourse normal people have traditionally observed. They are tricks, devices, and they preclude the exchange of useful free expression.

And she’s a blogger. No killings.

When someone to the right talks about race and gets a critical response, you fret about "cancel culture" and talk about how we need to remember the Enlightenment. When someone to the left talks about it, you talk about how total warfare, without the fretting. "Precluding the exchange of useful free expression" is exactly what you say you don't like about "cancel culture," but you might as well be an Air Force colonel talking about Vietnamese body counts in 1967. "Yes, that napalm has a substantial impact on hard targets like that elementary school."