A Threat to Tolerance: The Terror and Intimidation of “Wokeness” and Its “Cancel Culture”

Tolerance is clearly expressed in the founding documents of the United States. Without the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, the United States would be a different country, with a different culture and society. When Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” she was thinking of the French author Voltaire, but her words apply more accurately to the United States than to France during the Enlightenment Era.

If tolerance is central to America, then intolerance is a poison to it. Henry Olsen, writing in The Washington Post in July 2020, cites contemporary examples of such narrowmindedness:

The intellectually intolerant mob claimed two high-profile victims Tuesday with the resignations of New York Times editor Bari Weiss and New York Magazine journalist Andrew Sullivan. These are just two examples of the deadly virus spreading through our public life.

The current version of bigotry is often called ‘woke’ or ‘wokeness,’ and at some point in the past may have arisen from a sincere desire for justice. Today it still garners support from people of goodwill who mistakenly assume that this social trend is still a quest for justice, when it is in reality a terrorized weapon of intimidation.

“Today’s ‘cancel culture,’” writes Henry Olson, “stems from a noble goal — ending racial discrimination.” But it is now wielded against people who express themselves on a wide range of topics: it is wielded against them for merely disagreeing with those who generate this version of political correctness.

It has transmogrified into something sinister and inimical to freedom. Battling racism is good and necessary; trying to suppress voices that one disagrees with is not.

Whether it is called ‘wokeness’ or ‘political correctness,’ it is in any case truly intolerant. It is an attempt to police thought, speech, and the written word.

It seeks to do the one thing that America has always sworn not to do: enforce uniformity of thought. Indeed, this principle, enshrined in the First Amendment, is so central to American national identity that it is one of the five quotes inscribed in the Jefferson Memorial: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

The victims of this “cancel culture” — in this case, an editor and a journalist, but there are many more cases — are excluded in the name of inclusiveness, a delicious linguistic contradiction. They are hounded by narrowmindedness in the name of broadmindedness. The “woke” individuals demand that these victims receive no tolerance, because in “woke” thought, it is only by denying them tolerance that the institutions can be truly tolerant.

Weiss’s resignation letter describes numerous examples of her colleagues judging her guilty of “wrongthink” and trying to pressure superiors to fire or suppress her. She explains that “some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name.” Others, she wrote, called her a racist and a Nazi, or criticized her on Twitter without reprimand. She notes that this behavior, tolerated by the paper through its editors, constitutes “unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge.”

Sullivan’s reason for departure is less clear — though he said it is “self-evident.” He had publicly supported Weiss, writing: “The mob bullied and harassed a young woman for thoughtcrimes. And her editors stood by and watched.”

In other words, both Weiss and Sullivan — like so many others — seem to have left their jobs because they were targeted for refusing to conform to its ideas of right thinking.

The founding texts of the United States — The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights — create a framework of liberty in which each individual human being is acknowledged a sovereign and autonomous agent who can think, speak, and write as she or he pleases. This intellectual foundation is detailed in the writings of Thomas Paine and John Locke.

But freedom and individualism are not valuable to those who promote political correctness and wokeness.

The mob even sacrifices people whose only crime is familial connection on its altar.

In an update of Orwell’s famous novel, individuals are pressured to confess to “thoughtcrimes” in media campaigns which amount to show trials. A “show trial” is staged: its outcome is predetermined, and it is a cautionary example to others. So it is with the “cancel culture” of wokeness: there is no chance to be judged innocent, and the purpose of the attacks is to intimidate others into silence.

Such tactics work best when they force people to confess to seek repentance for the crimes they may or may not have committed.

Whether or not the individuals persecuted by wokeness are guilty or innocent does not matter to those who are “woke” — wokeness is the process of terrorizing the masses by making an example of a few isolated individuals. Whether or not the individuals did what they are accused of doing, and whether or not what they are accused of doing is right or wrong, doesn’t matter. The public understands the message clearly: do as you are told, or suffer.

The woke inquisition uses the same tactic, forcing those caught in its maw to renounce prior statements they find objectionable. NFL quarterback Drew Brees surrendered to the roar while noted leftists such as J.K. Rowling and Noam Chomsky are being pilloried for their defense of free speech.

“Wokeness” and “political correctness” are nothing new. They go back centuries and millennia. They’ve been called “chauvinism” and “bullying,” or “bigotry” and “intolerance.”

The reader need simply ask: Are human beings free to speak and write? If so, then the dignity and value of each human life is recognized and honored.

Are people subject to intimidation and fear for what they’ve said and written? If the answer is “yes,” then decency is threatened.