Like a Flock of Demons Released Upon the World

“Cancel culture” is one of those modern, politically charged terms that get thrown around so often they become easy to dismiss. One is tempted to toss it into the bin of overused-and-functionally-meaningless phrases, alongside “alt-right” and “woke.” Is cancel culture merely a figment of the FOX-watching, gun-toting, Trump-bedazzled MAGA imagination? Or else is it the go-to tactic of every MSNBC-binging, craft-brewing vegan with a Karen complex? When Florida conservatives banned Students for Palestine groups from the state’s college campuses recently, did that count as cancel culture? Into this morass of cultural noise, a new book has arrived, claiming to sort out what’s what.

Rikki Schlott is the co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind, along with Greg Lukianoff. The book explores the rise of cancel culture—meaning, the measurably increasing frequency in which people are threatened with social harm, loss of a job, maybe loss of a social media platform, or even physical harm if they express unpopular beliefs. The authors packed the book with loads of real-world data and illuminating case studies, aiming to show precisely what they mean by "cancel culture," and how big of a problem it is.

I recently sat down with Rikki to discuss the book and the problem it was meant to help solve. What follows is our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity.

Nathan Harden: I'm interested in your biography. You had an early exit from college.

Rikki Schlott: I was an undergraduate at NYU when the pandemic happened, studying history, planning on law school. And then the pandemic struck. I left school and did lockdown with my mom. I had something very much like a libertarian red pill awakening being in California and feeling as though my liberties were being eclipsed for the first time in my life, and that really animated me to start writing. I stopped hiding Jordan Peterson books under my bed, which I literally did at NYU when I was a student there for fear of being cancelled or called out. I wrote an op-ed for the New York Post about NYU and the culture of conformity there and issues with free speech. That was when it was like, OK, everyone now knows. I'm kind of out of the political closet here and lost some friendships but also found that there were so many people who felt like I did even at NYU.

NH: And how did you end up connecting with Greg Lukianoff, your co-author?

RS: I had been on a leave of absence at NYU because Zoom school during the pandemic was just not an adequate substitute for me. Around that time, I reached out to Greg because I was writing an op-ed about whether Gen-Z could be uncoddled by the pandemic, which was a little bit optimistic. And I think the answer is, so far, not so much, but that's how we crossed paths. And we realized that we had a lot of common values around free speech. We were a nice combination of minds, intergenerationally and politically. We're both fairly moderate but come down on opposite sides of the aisle. He had a vision to do this collaboration, to follow up on his previous book, The Coddling of the American Mind, but also to lean into cancel culture. And that's how the book came to fruition. 

NH: We hear the term cancel culture a lot, but what do you mean when you use the term? What are some real-world examples? 

RS: We define it as the uptick of campaigns to get people fired, disinvited, de-platformed, or otherwise punished for speech that is or would be protected by First Amendment standards, and then also, along with that, the climate of fear and conformity that has arisen. The examples that stood out to me tend to be the ones that involve younger people. So, an example that I found disturbing was Alexi McCammond, who was tapped to be the Editor in Chief of Teen Vogue. She'd been a celebrated reporter in her late 20s. Vogue offered her the job with the knowledge that some rather unflattering tweets from when she was a teenager had resurfaced. She deleted them and apologized for them. It was part of her conversation with Vogue in the interview process. She discussed that, you know, her views when she was 17 no longer aligned with her ten years later. She'd evolved as a person. So, Vogue extended the job offer. But then some Vogue staffers wrote an open letter that went viral on Twitter. There were calls to fire her. Some advertisers pulled ad dollars. McCammond resigned due to public pressure before she even started the job.

NH: Do you think any of us would look good if our lives were defined by our lowest moments or our worst lapse in judgment?

RS: Everyone has something they did as a teenager that they would rather not have out in public. Yes, they were very unflattering and unwise tweets and stuff that I would never send personally. But I think it demonstrated just how graceless we can be. People can evolve and change, and that's something that we should celebrate So, I think that's a particularly alarming example for me as a young person. 

NH: Jonathan Haidt, the well-known author and psychologist who wrote the foreword to your book, described 2014 as the year that freedom of speech took a turn for the worse in our country. He wrote that “it was as if the flock of demons had been released upon the world.” What is it that changed around 2014?

RS: That's when Gen Z arrived on campus. My generation arrived on campus with a very different set of beliefs about free speech. There’s a complete lack of understanding of basic civics and what classical liberalism is, and how free speech requires you to suppress the more reflexive censorious tendencies that we might have. Gen Z arrived on campus embracing the great untruths that Jonathan and Greg wrote about in The Coddling of the American Mind. I read their book when I was in college, and it totally aligned with my own observations about a generation that had basically grown up online and had watched Twitter mobs and cancel culture on Tumblr and brought that with them into the real world. They happened to waltz onto campuses where administrators had already put up the tripwires, set up the bias response teams, set up trigger warnings, and so forth. All of a sudden there was a brand-new alliance between students who did not understand free speech values or were actively hostile towards them and administrators who were there to back them up. 

NH: In your book, you and Greg focus on a what you call destructive methods of argumentation that have taken root in society and inhibit our ability to talk to one another. What are these destructive methods?

RS: We define cancel culture as a way of winning arguments without actually winning arguments. It's a way to shut down your opponent without ever engaging with the idea at hand, or ever having to open your mind or play devil's advocate. Some of the most obvious tactics that I see on the left are often ad hominem tactics, simply pointing out someone’s immutable characteristics. You know, “That's a cis white male take,” but you don't actually talk about what the take is. It's just a matter of attacking someone based on their identity. Or there’s offence archeology—dredging up an old tweet from forever ago to discredit the person while not engaging in the idea that they're talking about at all. And then on the flip side, the right certainly has its own versions. They're far less identity-based, but they do it. You know, “if someone is a liberal, he’s not worth listening to.” Or if someone is a journalist or is touting expertise, you can shut your ears off. In certain areas of the right, if someone is critical of Trump in any way, shape, or form, they must not have anything worthwhile to say. So, while you might disagree with people on any of these bases, or you might think that their identity is relevant to their viewpoint, you're not actually talking about their views. That's why we're in this polarization spiral; we're talking past each other and just attacking each other, rather than the other person’s ideas.

NH: There's a lot of data in this book. I think you identified almost 1000 cases of someone trying to get a professor fired or punished just between the years of 2014 to 2022. And about 6 in 10 resulted in some kind of censure. That's really what's unique about this book. It's not merely opinion writing. You’re presenting case studies, showing how this looks in the real world.

RS: I'm enormously grateful to have been able to partner with Greg, who's the President and CEO of The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. They have a treasure trove of data on campus culture, including polling data. And they have caseloads where they are defending the free speech rights of students and professors alike. That statistic that you cite—actually, now it's over 1000 that they’ve tallied.

NH: Do you think people are aware of how numerous and widespread these cases are?

RS: We all look back at the Red Scare as a blight on our record as a nation, attacking people based on their viewpoints, and often sweeping people up that weren't even guilty of what they were being accused of.  Roughly 100 to 150 professors were fired as a result of the Red Scare. In roughly the same decade-long period of the cancel culture counterpart, that number is 200—almost double the number of people who were fired during the Red Scare. This is historically unprecedented. Historians will be looking back someday, recognizing that firing 200 professors, many of whom were actually tenured, is shocking. 91% of professors say that they self-censor, which is shocking to me. 16% had been disciplined or threatened with discipline for their speech, and 7% say that they've been investigated for their speech. So, it's a chilling environment and one that has now rippled beyond academia. 

NH: There's another phrase that stood out to me in your book: “rhetorical fortress.” Can you explain what you mean by that?

RS: Rhetorical fortresses are Greg's metaphorical invention, describing those unhelpful ways of argumentation that we’ve been discussing. We have one on the right and one on the left, and it's a way to box yourself in with wall after wall, insulating yourself. Are you a conservative? Are you a male? The left wing’s rhetorical fortress tends to be more elaborate, centered on identity, and refined on campus. The rhetorical fortress on the right tends to be simpler. Are they a journalist? Are they critical of Trump? Are they a liberal? Greg and I both admit in our process of writing this book, that we've recognized it ourselves as well—that knee-jerk reaction to someone coming from the left, when I just closed my ears in the past. It’s something that we all do to a certain degree, and we need to step away from that as much as possible. 

NH: In the conclusion you write that free speech culture is the antidote to cancel culture. What have you seen that gives you hope that we can overcome some of these rhetorical fortresses that we've built around ourselves? 

RS: One thing that does give me hope is that, consistently, a majority of Americans say that they are concerned about cancel culture. They think it's a problem that political correctness has gone too far. While it's definitely young people who tend to be at the helm of these cancel culture campaigns, the problem is they've not been given or taught a restorative framework to fight back against something they disagree with. Only 22% of 8th graders are proficient in basic civics. A lot of older Americans kind of assumed free speech was baked into the fabric of society, but we've moved so far away from things that once seemed obvious. Ideas as simple as—this is a free country, live and let live, or the idea that you can separate an idea from a person— these are so alien to young people. Young people say they're self-censoring. Young people say they don't like cancel culture, and they're so desperate for a restorative view and path forward. But we failed to educate them about the fundamental tenets of a free speech society.