Perhaps a bit galaxy brained here, but the old refrain that a the war on terror was doomed to fail because it is impossible to wage war on a tactic might apply also to cancel culture, which is not so much a discrete political bloc as a tactic used by many.

This includes signatories of The Letter. Weiss and Slaughter have cancelled others. They used cancel culture when it suited them and discarded it when it suited them. That is to say, they used it tactically.

Others have pointed to the ways that “cancel culture” and “free speech” overlap. In such a reading, The Letter calls for constraints on speech that cancels.

But signatories used cancel culture tactically. This makes The Letter appear as yet another tactical move.

“Freedom of speech” and “cancel culture” are always in a contingent balance with one another because they’re basically analogues for liberalism and democracy, respectively.

Mouffe’s Democratic Paradox is here informative. She writes that liberal-democratic political theory always privileges either liberalism or democracy—it is only through liberalism (FoS) that democracy (CC) is possible or vice versa.

The different hegemonic arrangements of liberalism and democracy are used to further different ends. Similarly, the relationship between FoS and CC is one of balancing their tactical utility.

You cannot fight a war against a tactic. Rather than try to square the circle of this interminable debate, we should focus on the substantive politics we wish to pursue and pursue them, remaining flexible on tactics.

Sorry for doing a Big Thread, I normally hate this sort of thing.