# How Liberal America Came to Its Senses  ## Metadata - Author: [[Jonathan Chait]] - Full Title: How Liberal America Came to Its Senses - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The era of left-wing illiberalism, often called cancel culture, appears to be coming to an end. This shift has been influenced by various factors, including the reelection of Donald Trump and changes in social media dynamics. As a result, many progressives are now rethinking their approach to free speech and accountability. - URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/cancel-culture-illiberalism-dead/681031/?gift=SKtFP-7gCBnFn1bNJdqPMjujmJGIc0u1lLdjlgvHsKs&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share - Source File: web-only ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > Numerous analyses have identified 2014 as the year when the trend achieved exit velocity. It was in December 2013 that Justine Sacco, a publicist with only 170 Twitter followers at the time, dashed off a clumsy tweet attempting to make light of her white privilege before getting on a flight to South Africa. By the time she landed, a social-media mob was [calling](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html) for her to lose her job, a request that her employer soon obliged. That same year, #cancelcolbert swept through social media, in response to a tweet by *The Colbert Report* that used cartoonishly over-the-top Asian stereotypes to make fun of the obvious racism of the Washington Redskins. Stephen Colbert wasn't canceled, but the premise that one misplaced joke could be punished with a firing was now taken seriously. (Both cases also demonstrated social-media mobs' difficulty distinguishing irony from sincerity.) That spring, Michelle Goldberg wrote possibly the first [column](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/cancelcolbert-and-return-anti-liberal-left/) diagnosing the rise of what she called “the return of the anti-liberal left” for *The Nation*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jfypg21gmcpem2ws40mt0jz5)) > Inevitably, the scope of targets widened. Harvard [fired](https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/11/us/harvard-law-professor-ronald-sullivan-loses-deanship-harvey-weinstein) the first Black faculty dean in its history after students protested his work for Harvey Weinstein's legal defense, establishing a new norm that the sins of misogynists and racists would now attach to the defense lawyers who represent them. Censoriousness also applied retroactively. In 2019, the comedian Sarah Silverman [said](https://pagesix.com/2019/08/12/sarah-silverman-fired-from-new-movie-for-blackface-photo/) she was fired from a movie over a resurfaced 2007 photo from a sketch in which her oblivious character wore ludicrously offensive blackface in an effort to see whether Black or Jewish people faced worse treatment. (The whole joke was that she mistook angry reactions to her racist getup for anti-Black discrimination; once again, a satirical take on racism was treated as racism itself.) A NASCAR driver [lost](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/sports/autoracing/conor-daly-nascar-racial-slur.html) a sponsorship over a report that his *father* had used the N-word—in the 1980s. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jfypkhbt76nmh4hxzzxe1ah9))