Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process

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Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process
a book by Alan Dershowitz

(our site's book review)

Cancel Culture Is the Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process—It Plans to Rob You of Your Freedom

The Amazon blurb says that In Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process, Alan Dershowitz—New York Times bestselling author and one of America’s most respected legal scholars—makes an argument for free speech, due process, and restraint against the often overeager impulse to completely cancel individuals and institutions at the ever-changing whims of social media-driven crowds.

Alan Dershowitz makes an argument for free speech, due process, and restraint against the often overeager impulse to completely cancel individuals and institutions at the ever-changing whims of social media-driven crowds

Alan Dershowitz has been called “one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America” by Politico and “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights” by Newsweek. Yet he has come under intense criticism for his steadfast and consistent championing of those same principles, and his famed “shoe-on-the-other-foot test,” to those who have been “cancelled” for any number of faults, both real and imagined.

Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process is a defense of due process, free speech, and even-handedness in the application of judgment. It makes the case for restraint and care in decisions about whom and what to cancel, boycott, deplatform, and bar from public life, and offers recommendations for when, why, and to what degree these steps may be appropriate, as long as objective, fair-minded criteria can be determined and met. While Dershowitz argues against the worst excesses of cancel culture—the rush to judgment and the devastating results it can have on those who may be innocent, the power of social media to effect punishment without a thorough examination of evidence, the idea that historical events can be viewed through the same lens as actions in the present day—he also acknowledges that its defenders ostensibly try to use it to create meaningful, positive change, and notes that cancelling may itself be a constitutionally protected form of free speech.

Cancel Culture is the greatest challenge and threat to free speech and due process since the rise of McCarthyism

"'In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have.'—President Harry Truman"

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men"—Edward R. Murrow

Cancel Culture Is the Greatest Challenge and Threat to Our Rights Since the Rise of McCarthyism

In the end, Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process represents an icon in the defense of free speech and due process reckoning with the greatest challenge and threat to these rights since the rise of McCarthyism. It is essential reading for anyone interested in or concerned about cancel culture, its effects on our society, and its significance in a greater historical and political context.

About Cancel Culture and Alan Dershowitz

“Alan Dershowitz speaks with great passion and personal courage.” —Eli Wiesel

“Alan Dershowitz is a living profile in courage.” —Steve Forbes

“Over [his] storied career, Dershowitz has remained more or less unchanged: loud, provocative, brilliant and principled.” —Politico

“The fearless, peerless Alan Dershowitz.” —Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi, Great Britain

“The truth has no greater defender than Alan Dershowitz.”—Benjamin Netanyahu

“There are great legal minds; there are those who can also communicate well on television; then there is Dershowitz. The professor is uniquely capable of arguing a position, while putting a premium on legal and ethical legitimacy, not its popularity. Bravo, Dershowitz!”—Chris Cuomo, Anchor and Reporter, Cnn

College students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like, wrongly believing that they are so fragile that hearing the wrong words or concepts will shatter them

“Anyone interested in the true merits of criminal law and very fine writing must read Alan Dershowitz’s book.”—Truman Capote

“Love him or hate him, Dershowitz has lived a life that matters, hugely and enduringly. He is a man in full at a time when most of us aspire to be little more than a presence on Twitter.”—New York Times Book Review

“Courage and principle are rare today. Professor Dershowitz has them both.”—Senator Ted Cruz

"In the end, Cancel Culture represents an icon in the defense of free speech and due process reckoning with the greatest challenge and threat to these rights since the rise of McCarthyism."—politics-prose.com

"Where we used to be able to disagree with each other civilly, over the past several years respectful discourse has been harder to find. Now, individuals on both sides of the aisle are calling for the “cancelling” and “de-platforming”—the removal of individuals’ access to public platforms and from positions of power—of those who don’t agree with them. Cancel culture has become so widespread, it has ruined lives, damaged reputations, and jeopardized the futures of young people whose lives have barely begun." (Source: The case against cancel culture, BRITTANY HUNTER, Pacific Legal)

The thought police jumped right out of Orwell's 1984 novel and into the liberal narrative's PC censorship agenda

Alan Dershowitz is one of the most celebrated lawyers in the world. He was the youngest full professor in Harvard Law School history, where he is now the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus. The author of numerous bestselling books, from Chutzpah to Guilt by Accusation to The Case Against Impeaching Trump to The Best Defense to Reversal of Fortune (which was made into an Academy Award–winning film) to Defending Israel, Dershowitz has advised presidents and prime ministers and has represented many prominent men and women, half of them pro bono.

This is how a liberal debates—never with ideas, always with feelings

Surveys Show That Most People Hate Cancel Culture, Political Correctness, and Wokeness

"When asked what makes each panelist optimistic about the future of cancel culture, Haidt [Professor Jonathan Haidt] chimed in first, saying, “A lot of survey work shows that most people hate cancel culture, political correctness, and wokeness—even most people on the left.” . . . Strossen [Professor Nadine Strossen] paid PLF [Pacific Legal Foundation] a great compliment saying she stays optimistic in part because of “programs like these. There is such a growing interest in an opportunity to learn about and empower people to raise their voices. I also just read a survey that shows that people in this country are not politically active at all, and unfortunately, they are not raising their voices at all to counter the excesses of cancel culture.”" (Source: The case against cancel culture, BRITTANY HUNTER, Pacific Legal Foundation)

YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are all hard at work censoring conservative views on their platforms

"The Trump administration acknowledged these [unfair student sexual assault accusation handling] problems, among others, and issued a [genuinely wise] rule to correct them. Although the Trump administration was often criticized for inattention to administrative procedure, this Title IX rule won praise from even liberal-leaning outsiders for its thoroughness and responsiveness to the student, parent and educational institutions’ concerns. . . . Though the Biden executive order merely asks the Education Department to “evaluate” the Title IX rule, Biden’s campaign promise to withdraw it makes the outcome of that evaluation virtually certain. Because the rule safeguards important free speech and due process principles, rescinding it would be a significant mistake." [but Biden simply wants to please the true President, Harris, so justice be damned] (Source: The Hill: Biden executive order will lead to due process deficits on campus, ALISON SOMIN, Pacific Legal Foundation)

Before the term “cancel culture” came along, I called it “coercive conformity”—says Dershowitz

Utopia! Given that one man's heaven is another man's hell, the obvious first step on the road to utopia, then, is to get everyone thinking the same, believing the same, and feeling the same so that every man's heaven is like every other man's heaven. Uniformity, conformity, similarity (yawn). The conforming has to be to a common set of values. Enter the liberal narrative. Only stupid liberals accept its tenets unquestioningly, while smarter ones question it in their minds, but keep silent about it for fear of canceling and lob loss. Conservatives, of course, are not impressed with the liberal narrative horse puckey and they laugh at it or even curse at it, but never take it seriously. They think of it as pathetic, naive, racist, divisive, and foolish.

J.S. Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Many Others Warned Against Cancel Culture

"Cancel culture, as it has recently come to be known, may be a new dinnertable topic, but it is not a new phenomenon. Anything but. As Strossen points out, J.S. Mill warned against it emphatically in his classic 1859 defense of free speech, On Liberty. A generation earlier, Alexis de Tocqueville, the greatest observer of democracy in America, warned of exactly the same danger. Before the term “cancel culture” came along, I called it “coercive conformity,” and others called it other things. By whatever name, it is controversial. . . . Cancel culture amounts to a spate of overhyped anecdotes, not a national problem [say those trying to minimalize its impact]. But, as Strossen shows, recent survey evidence finds that Americans are more fearful to voice their real opinions now than at the height of the McCarthy era. Almost a third worry their livelihoods will suffer if they fail to self-censor. On campus and off, millions feel the chill." (Source: RESISTING CANCEL CULTURE, NADINE STROSSEN, Perspectives on Higher Education)

"Meghan McCain, co-host on 'The View,' ripped into cancel culture Friday, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a cheerleader's First Amendment rights" (Source: Meghan McCain Rips Internet Cancel Culture on 'The View', Nick Koutsobinas, Newsmax)

Thunk thunk—a person's reputation, career, and social media presence can all be beheaded in one fell swoop in today's cancel culture world—and this happens a lot

Harper’s Magazine Published a Letter Against Cancel Culture, Signed by Some 150 Public Intellectuals, Writers, and Academics (e.g., Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie)

"There have been some attempts from different quarters at a pushback against this, but the most recent such effort at a course correction is an open letter decrying the phenomenon appearing in Harper’s magazine. The letter, signed by some 150 public intellectuals, writers, and academics including figures like Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie, has provoked a polarizing response. . . . Yet because the Left is the cradle of civil liberties, we have a special responsibility to guard against illiberalism. After the experiences of the twentieth century, we will forever have a solemn task to constantly be on our guard against any recurrence of the morbid group dynamics that helped give rise to them, and within our own movements before anywhere else. There is a need to let progressives who support free speech know that they are not alone and to give them confidence to speak out against censorship and illiberalism on their campuses, in their organizations, in their communities, or wherever someone imposes it, whether this comes from the right, center, or left, from the state or civil society." (Source: The Threat to Civil Liberties Goes Way Beyond “Cancel Culture”, Leigh Phillips, Jacobin Mag)

She just heard him say something that disagreed with her politically correct beliefs

"Indeed, in his [Bret Easton Ellis'] telling, the most pernicious consequence of Trump’s otherwise inconsequential election is that it gave woke culture the license to run riot. “Everyone has to be the same” now, Ellis grumbles; everyone is forced to applaud the same politically correct television shows and cheer for the same politically correct heroes. “And if you refuse to join the chorus of approval you will be tagged a racist or a misogynist.” A pampered generation raised on victimhood—“Generation Wuss,” Ellis calls it, in contrast to his own hard-bitten Generation X—has exploited Trump’s rise to impose its sniveling paradigm on everyone else. “When did people start identifying so relentlessly with victims,” he asks, “and when did the victim’s worldview become the lens through which we began to look at everything?”

Political correctness is wrecking our colleges

"The irony of [Bret Easton Ellis' book] White is that it is a book-length exercise in playing the victim. It is Ellis who, in his skirmishes with the social media thought police, claims to have been condemned by “a new fascism” that “willingly censored people and punished voices, obstructed opinions and blocked viewpoints.” It is Ellis who says he has been “subjected to an ever-widening social and professional fatwa” because he refuses to recognize “how hateful and dangerous Donald Trump is.” (He doesn’t, however, give many examples of actually losing out on opportunities because of his opinions, and he continues to write screenplays and books, including this one, published by the venerable Alfred A. Knopf.) It is Ellis who believes he has been left behind by liberalism, once it “hardened into a warped authoritarian moral superiority movement.” " (Source: The Strange Liberal Backlash to Woke Culture, New Republic)

NY Times, my feelings were hurt when I learned that you still hire evil white oppressors—would you please fire and cancel them all?

"Hmmm, one might imagine that getting the news right for readers would be their highest priority. But that’s an outdated view of the [NY] Times, which now sees itself as America’s ultimate enforcer of social and racial justice. Virtually every story has an agenda, and facts that don’t fit are minimized or omitted. [The same is true across the mainstream media, but unlike the mainstream, Fox News usually gets it right and Newsmax almost always gets it right.]

The anti-American radical leftist Marxists have a very special plan for the Founders—flush them down the nearest toilet, along with the Constitution and our rights

The New York Times' Relentless Attacks on Donald Trump Stoked the Paper’s Hubris and Its Lie-Filled Rewrite of American History (the 1619 Project)

"Its relentless attacks on Donald Trump stoked the paper’s hubris and its bid to rewrite American history with its error-ridden 1619 Project, which put slavery at the center of the independence movement. Such grandiose callings require a relentless commitment to ferreting out evidence of human imperfections." (Source: Michael Goodwin: New York Times firings – here's how cancel culture claimed two more victims, Fox News—from Michael Goodwin | New York Post)

For all the talk of diversity on college campuses these days, the only diversity that is really not apparent is intellectual or thought diversity. Unless you’re aligned with the radical Left, even moderates, let alone conservative voices, are not allowed to be heard

You will never again think another conservative thought—you will instead join the ranks of the mindless leftist conformists, believing only liberal narrative propaganda like critical race theory

Scott Walker: The Biggest Issue We’re Dealing with When It Comes to College Campuses Is Cancel Culture

"Scott Walker: The biggest issue we’re dealing with when it comes to college campuses is cancel culture. Why we call this the Free Speech Caucus is, it’s a step . . . to create some balance. For all the talk of diversity on college campuses these days, the only diversity that is really not apparent is intellectual or thought diversity. Unless you’re aligned with the radical Left, even moderates, let alone conservative voices, are not allowed to be heard." (Source: Scott Walker Makes the Case for Free Speech, NR Interview, National Review)

Parents who are complacent about many other things will not sit by idly while their tax dollars are being used to indoctrinate their kids—they sent their kids to school for education, not indoctrination

Everyone knows that—to the Democrat Plantation—black lives only really matter during election years.—RedController

If one watches what the Black Lives Matter people and the Democrats do—not what they say— black lives only really matter during election years

"School leaders are extremely serious about advancing their radical agenda. But parents who are complacent about many things will not sit by idly while their tax dollars are being used to indoctrinate them." (Source: The Coming Backlash against Woke Public Schools, Michael Farris, National Review)

The indoctrination of our young with divisive, polarizing lies and identity politics is spreading like a disease in grade schools, high schools and colleges, but the people are fighting back

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Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process

a book by Alan Dershowitz(our site's book review)

a book by Alan Dershowitz

(our site's book review)