The essay specifically says it's not worse than in the past. No one's being burned at stake for example. And by the way, that's one reason I continue to believe in moral progress.

The essay does claim things are worse than 10 years ago. But 70 years ago? Things are better now than during McCarthyism.

> I don't even think it's really a thing with a political valence, I think it's just a human thing.

It's definitely a human thing. However, like I said, if you deny the political valence that currently exists, you're either not a clear-eyed observer of the present or you're part of it. And of course no one is saying "in 2022, the right never cancels anyone" just that present day punishments for heresy in the US are clearly politically-valenced.

My biological grandfather got expelled from his private university and disinherited by his parents during the Vietnam war in 69, because he was a communist hippy basically, and went in Europe to help boat people. Lost all he had, and the only jobs he could get were basically undeclared construction/farming jobs in the Appalachians.

So anecdotal evidence to your point. If any of the deplatformed people has had a worst experience, I'd love to hear it.

Since you claim "gender is a social construct" or "immigrants are good" are examples of heresy - can you provide examples of people fired over stating these opinions? I'm not aware of such instances but maybe they're just not as visibly reported.

Is this the definition of "heresy" being used by the article? That at least one person has lost a job because of the belief? That would at least make me happier, to have a somewhat testable definition. But the article seems to be using it more broadly than that.

I haven't seen any examples of those specific ones in the news and I don't have examples I'm personally familiar with. But the "Parental Rights in Education" bill is a handy example of the same phenomenon coming from the right; teachers will certainly lose their jobs or be forced to resign due to having the wrong beliefs in the wrong profession in the wrong state (and other states will almost certainly pass similar laws soon). Maybe that is an isolated incident, but I'm skeptical.

Frankly, I would really like to see someone try to gather and present data on this. It's really hard because the definition of what you're even looking for is wishy washy and most of the information is private; there isn't a public database of reasons why people didn't get, were forced to resign, or were fired from jobs.

"Gather data so we can analyze this phenomenon" is a dodge. Some people, when confronted with a contrary opinion, transform into David Hume and demand that we all become empiricists. Would you demand evidence that the "Parental Rights in Education" bill does what you said? If we're going to be empiricists, let's wait on that and gather data before rendering a judgement.

Anyway, after 30 seconds of googling: https://www.canceledpeople.com/about

Yes. I'm very much interested in data on what happens as a result of that bill and others like it that end up passing. It will be hard to gather and take awhile, but I hope someone will try to do a good job of it rather than only reporting on inflammatory anecdotes, which I'm sure will also happen.

I'm not demanding empiricism, what I'm saying is that I find this whole debate to be overly influenced by high profile anecdotes, which people cherry pick to tell their preferred narrative.

That project is a definite step in the right direction, and if people start citing analyses of it when writing articles like and OP, instead of just throwing out definitive statements as unsupported premises, then I'll be much happier with those articles than I was with the OP.

One interesting thing to note is that that project has an explicit list of heresies that are beyond the pale (section 3 under "what is not included"). I think that's intriguing!

definition of "heresy" is quite clear in the article:

- the fact that it's heresy takes priority over the question of truth or falsity

- it outweighs everything else the speaker has done (I would add that the implication of that is "disproportionate punishment").

By this definition, yes, getting excluded from your family for stating some opinion is proof that said subject is taboo/ said opinion is "heresy" in your family. But, all kinds of families are broken in all kinds of different ways; surely you can find fascist families in USA - that doesn't make the USA society fascist. You can find atheist families too! (and nobody would claim the US is atheist). The question is: is the concept of "heresy" making a come-back at the level of the entire society?

> the "Parental Rights in Education" bill

Didn't know about it (I'm not a US citizen), and yes it's a dumb and wrong law by the sound of it. Even so I think it falls a bit short of fitting the definition of "legal enforcement of heresy" unless it extends outside the classroom (to opinions stated - privately or publicly - by teachers in their spare time).

(btw, I am not claiming heresy is only enforced by the US left. However, this fact only makes things worse, not better - it's sad that this practice is excused by "the others are worse" mantra. Even if/when it's true, and "the others" really are worse.).

To your aside at the end, I've said here that I'm a bit skeptical about how new this problem is (I think it is more the case that it has become a trend to complain about it), but what I'm really pushing back on is the OP's casual statement of the premise that it is uniquely a problem of the political left, which I think is poorly supported.

To the rest: I agree that the definition used in the article was broader than just people getting fired. You asked me for examples of that specifically, which made me think you thought the definition being used was that more narrow one.

Don't know about getting fired, but it's not hard to recall stories about people getting shunned by their relatives or expelled from their family for expressing such views.

Yeah that's the other thing: when did losing a job become the only thing that counts as bad?