Why Greg Lukianoff, Rikki Schlott, and FIRE’s crusade against “Cancel Culture” disarms society against its worst impulses and incentives
I was an early and eager convert to the gospel of The Canceling of the American Mind. In the aftermath of October 7, Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott’s work felt like a necessary sanity check. They pinned down exactly how a toxic “cancel culture” allowed radical “oppressor vs. oppressed” ideologies to hijack our institutions. Their work personally moved me to stop whispering; it gave me the push to lean into taboo topics where one-sided, radical perspectives were spreading without a hint of pushback.
But lately, that revelation has curdled. I’ve come to see their approach as fundamentally lopsided. While they’ve built a brilliant case for a “Free Speech Culture,” their nods to “freedom of association” feel like anecdotal afterthoughts. By demanding a near-absolute resistance to social consequences, Lukianoff, Schlott, and FIRE are effectively calling for unilateral disarmament. It is a stance that has inadvertently provided cover for the explosion of anti-Semitism and the virulent bigotry we see today—leaving us defenseless against those who use free speech as a shield for dehumanization and the endorsement of violence.
1. The Trap of “Suicidal Empathy”
There is a massive difference between granting grace and granting immunity. We should have empathy for the person who stumbles into a sensitive “minefield” or makes an honest mistake. But a “Free Speech Culture” that drifts into suicidal empathy—a virtue so detached from reality that it refuses to penalize those who show a clear, unrepentant intent to harm—is a danger to itself.
The current debate is stuck because we’ve conflated social jail with social death. Cancel culture is a mob seeking “social death”—the total, permanent destruction of a person’s life, often over clumsy or negligent behavior, or an offense signaled by a hyper-sensitive fringe. That is cruel. But the response shouldn’t be to abolish the police.
A healthy society needs a “social jail”—a situational ostracism for those who violate our universal moral taboos. This isn’t about political tribalism; it’s about a shared refusal to tolerate the rejection of someone else’s humanity or the endorsement of discrimination and harm. We need to distinguish between a clumsy mistake and a revealed intent to destroy. One deserves grace; the other—once confirmed after a fair chance to pivot is rejected—requires a stay in social jail.
2. The Rationalist Fallacy
The central flaw here is the cozy belief that bigotry is just a debate. It isn’t. Overt, hateful bigotry is rarely a set of “propositions” looking for a counter-argument; it is an assertion of power.
Greg often asks, “Am I safer for knowing less about what people think?” Of course not—I want to know exactly who the bigots are. But we can monitor the fire without letting it burn in the living room. Information is for awareness; social consequences are for protection. Granting an unrepentant bigot the same professional standing and platform as those who uphold our shared humanity isn’t “openness”—it’s a subsidy. Suggesting that “more speech” is the only remedy for eliminationist rhetoric is like suggesting the cure for a physical assault is “more movement.”
This is the Paradox of Tolerance: if you extend unlimited tolerance to the intolerant, the tolerant end up destroyed. We have to reserve the right to refuse “debate” with those whose starting premise is to set the debating floor on fire.
3. Stigma as a Principled Necessity
“Cancel culture” is a clumsy term for a broken process, but we can’t let it kill an essential social function: the taboo. Cancel Culture is the illiberal mob—erratic, performative, and often focused on minor infractions. But a Social Taboo is a shared moral agreement that certain behaviors—overt hateful bigotry, dehumanization, or the endorsement of discrimination and harm—are simply beyond the pale.
We need a principled approach to stigma that is resistant to the excesses of the mob. This means the lines we draw must be non-tribal and based on universal standards rather than shifting political winds. History shows that such stigma is more effective than “more speech” could ever be. The KKK wasn’t defeated by a superior syllogism. It was marginalized because society made the hood a source of unbearable social shame. We didn’t “debate” the hood off the Klansmen’s heads; we made it too heavy to wear.
It is a stance that has inadvertently provided cover for the explosion of anti-Semitism and the virulent bigotry we see today—leaving us defenseless against those who use free speech as a shield for dehumanization and the endorsement of violence.
4. Beyond Jurisdictional Confusion
FIRE often argues they are merely protecting the legal rights of public employees. That’s fine for a courtroom. But their cultural advocacy goes much further, pushing for a universal norm where we never use professional punishment.
By blurring the lines between legal protections and cultural norms, we’ve created a vacuum. We need to stop pretending that “freedom of association” only protects the speaker. It must also protect the community that wants to exercise its own freedom to dissociate from hate. The solution to bad standards isn’t no standards—it’s finding a principled, consensus-based way to draw a line in the sand.
My Asks for Greg and Rikki
If this movement is going to lead us through the current crisis, its leaders need to clarify the boundaries:
- For Greg and FIRE: Where is the line between legal defense and cultural license? Does a private business owner act “illiberally” when they fire an unrepentant bigot, or an employee who endorses political violence, to protect their staff and their values? At what point does bigotry stop being a “viewpoint” and start being professional misconduct?
- For Rikki: How do you personally assess the morality of the people with whom you associate? If you judged someone to be dangerous or unrepentantly hateful, would you remain in their circle? Would you stay friends with David Duke’s golf buddy, or would you finally draw a line?
Conclusion
A truly free society doesn’t require us to be indifferent to the destruction of our fellow citizens’ dignity. We shouldn’t use the law to silence hate, but we absolutely must use our social power to marginalize it.
If we dial back our retributive impulses against hate entirely, we aren’t creating a culture of free speech. We are simply leaving the gate unlatched for those who would use our own virtues to burn the house down.
