But what if cancel culture doesn't let you? What if the very act of having any sympathy at all with the cancelled, let alone creating spaces where they can continue to thrive, marks you out for cancellation as well?

To put this into the context of the Cerf-Auden exchange, what if Cerf, on finding that Auden "sympathized" with the cancelled Pound, had not responded as he did, but instead had tried to get other publishers to refuse to publish Auden's work? Or had hired some private investigators to get some dirt on Auden? Or had, by devious routes, gotten someone to form a mob of rioters and vandalize Auden's house? Those things seem a lot more like what "cancel culture" is these days.