This whole cancel culture myth

Have a look at the review of books in schools going on throughout right leaning states in the US, or consider the attempts to ban books, films, music in Ireland throughout the 20th century.

Or similar in Russia or Middle East states. Or in China right now also. Where exactly do you think the thought policing is happening in a real and impactful way?

Are these Leftist administrators who are doing this? Is this more acceptable than saying someone shouldn't spread false information about a disease that has killed millions of people?

Blame whoever you want.

Doesn't change the results of the referenda that brought about progressive changes that you want to pretend didn't happen.

It's not a misreading though is it, you have previously and frequently expressed dismay at those, particularly women who advocate for their own gender or cause that affects them. Dismissing it as a 'permanent culture of victimhood' I think wss the phrase used more that once in spite of all the evidence that it took people raising their voices for their cause which was warranted in order to initiate change.

But here suggesting the right 'didn't lick it off a stone' implies they are only doing it as others have shown them how to do so and suggests that well if it was ok for the feminists to do so then of course others can, but lets remember those feminists and they definitely weren't entitled to any advocacy on their own behalf.

I am always curious when people are focused on the argument cancel culture that sprang from universities or wherever more than they are about the subjugation of thought and advocacy that was largely in practice until universities became too big for the narrative to be controlled entirely. The topic of whether or not cancel culture emerged entirely from such places and if so whether or not that invalidates it is probably worth a separate thread of its own. In the US, certainly throughout recent history, much of the policy makers came through so called ivy league places of education which was attainable largely to those only from a particular wealth and background. What type of philosophies or polices can we assume would have been nurtured in those environments which then found their way in to houses of legislation and members only clubs and board rooms do you think? Were they fine and just but a couple of hippies arguing against war in Vietnam or wherever was the foundation of mindset that is negatively impacting society more than 50 years later?

Or how about the UK? They have 7000 secondary level schools, and nearly 40% of their Prime Ministers came from just one of them, Eton college. That rises to 75% when looking at the numbers that have studied at either Oxford or Cambridge. We've seen efforts from some of these noted alumini to introduce draconian laws to impact the right to protest which led to the scenes we saw at a vigil for a murder victim last year but the introduction of that legislation causes much less concern for some than someone asking Jimmy Carr to not joke about a particular demographic being murdered en masse. Is this drawing of legislators from such a narrow pool of the UK electorate acceptable? I presume it is given those who call for change and talk about lack of opportunity or representation for others in society, who make up significantly larger numbers percentage wise are dismissed as possessing a victimhood as the status-quo is sought to be preserved.

I'm not rankled by the 'average IQ middle class women' comment, it's a view I pretty much expected, I am curious about the blinkered analysis that leads for that to be the focus. Although as I pointed out, if someone such as Hazel Chu, intelligent and qualified and all as she is, can be targeted as she has been in the past and will be in the future, and other prominent advocates from a non-stereotypical Irish background receive similarly forceful and negative attention, we can hardly be surprised that they think twice before putting themselves in the firing line.

Yes, I thought about that afterwards, he was well known for being sexist in general. It was excused as being "contrary" or "old school" but he definitely was one of those, who thought you could just say anything to people and get away with it.

I try not to get involved in cancel culture, if I stopped listening to a musician or stopped watching a show because I didn't like the people who made it then I wouldn't have any entertainment left. I actually go out of my way to avoid listening to interviews of my favourite actors and musicians as I know I will end up disliking them. It is better to live in blissful ignorance and just enjoy the media.

Preface: I neither like nor endorse the following person or the comments that led to their cancellation. I am merely adding it because it fits the description of the posters question. Someone that said something, that offended a lot of people, but did not engage in criminal activity, and was cancelled as a result.

Milo Yiannopolous was cancelled as far back as 2017. After he made comments that were interpreted to be in support of pedophilia. He was then cancelled, and for good reason. The cancel started as a mass backlash through social media, such as Twitter, then progressed to formal cancellations of books, talks, etc.

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/21/milo-yiannopoulos-book-deal-cancelled-outrage-child-abuse-comments

'I am old enough when it was the right wingers who were the censorship types.'

If you've seen the documentary 'The Rocky Road to Dublin' there is a film portrait of a member of the censorship appeal board Liam O Briain.

The film is meant to be a hatchet job on traditionalism but imo O Briain comes across as considered, sensitive and intelligent.

And while it's outside the experience of Irish history, there were plenty of Stalinist students on American and European universities campuses in the 1920s who were pro-censorship, pro-Bolshevik and anti-Christian.

They only lacked the power to clamp down on ordinary speech.