Canadian Politics Today

To the bolded, I see a profound difference between accusing someone of hate speech and physically preventing them from speaking and to blur the line between the two is itself a threat to free speech.

Yes, accusing someone isn’t cancel culture...  but preventing them from speaking just because they have been accused would be.

Also you tacitly acknowledge there are circumstances in which it is acceptable to prevent someone from speaking or take away their platforms, so how do you determine when that is ok and when it is not?

It’s OK when a court has determined that they have spread hate speech.

It’s not up to a mob to determine who can or can’t speak. 

Personally, I think nearly everyone should be allowed to say pretty close to anything they wish, short of being illegal.  If it’s not illegal speech, then a mob has no valid right to prevent it.

One thing proponents of the "cancel culture" narrative tend to elide is the drastic power imbalances that actually determine who has a voice or not.

This sounds like it’s leading into a justification for a mob to prevent someone from speaking because “they hold the power”.

It's ridiculous to claim college students protesting some rich bigot's speaking engagement or the Twitter crowd roasting a sinecured moron's opinion piece in a major newspaper is a drastic threat to free speech and liberal values while ignoring-as most of these boneheads do-ongoing attacks on the free press by corporate interests or even the police.

Protesting is fine.  I never said anything about protests being part of cancel culture.  Now you’re shifting the goalposts.

This omission, more than anything else, makes it clear that this narrative is not about protecting liberal values or free speech, but insulating the privileged and powerful from consequences in a time where anyone with a smartphone can call a sitting US senator a dipshit.

This argument doesn’t make much sense...  it’s a bit convoluted and seems to be shifting the goalposts once again for what we were discussing;  defining what ‘cancel culture’ is.

My narrative is exactly about protecting the liberal value of free speech.  Short of being illegal, anyone can say anything.