Resignation Letter

Respectfully, I think you're missing the point. She works at a journalistic outlet that claims to be neutral and factual. When her peers demean her openly within the company for "writing about the Jews" (because she supports Israel), that shows that NYT is no longer operating like a legitimate news house. After all, their employees feel a freedom and psychological safety in openly harassing peers for their ideas and political views. The comments here are not asking to insulate Bari Weiss's ideas from intellectual critique or from public criticism. They are against biases in journalism, the censorship of ideas, and ideological bullying/discrimination in the workplace.

> Fourth, when I hear people complain about "going against the progressive party line" or whatever, I generally hear people wanting to be some flavor of racist, sexist, transphobic, or just asshole-ish without consequence.

The problem is that words like "transphobic" have a wide range of meanings, and are purposely vague to dismiss anyone who doesn't pass an arbitrary purity test. There are very few people who wish violence (physical harm) against trans people. But there are lots of people, who very reasonably, think trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports and that trans women are not women. The attempts to censor or deplatform THOSE discussions are exactly the type of hate speech mission creep that characterizes "cancel culture".

I acknowledge in another comment below that there are people who call themselves "conservatives" whose behaviour and/or beliefs do not align with the general understanding of conservative political ideology.

Neither of these facts about the world changes the difference(s) in the nature of progressive and conservative political ideologies. Among those differences is the general trend for progressivism to be inclusive and tolerant of difference, and for conservatism to be exclusionary and less tolerant of difference. And who knows, conservatives might be right - perhaps stable societies do need a conservative stance (unclear). That doesn't mean that the two philosophies are the same, which in turns makes the behavior of people who attach themselves to those philosophies likely to skew in different directions.

"Free speech" is about the government suppressing your speech. If private individuals find your speech odious, they are perfectly within their rights to shun and ignore you.

> In your mind, are your political cohorts always going to wield the power to cancel or can you imagine a world in which the far right wing holds that power and persecutes you and yours for your views based on the same arguments you make above?

I'm already standing in a culture that "cancels" me.

For example, a bunch of people hooked up to a well-funded political propaganda apparatus believe that a global pandemic is "a liberal hoax" against the backdrop of 140,000 dead and a global economy in shambles.

A pandemic isn't up for debate--it's a fact.

So, these people get exactly what they want at my expense and I'm just supposed to take it in the name of "free speech"?

What is MY recourse? Where is MY justice?

Yeah, I'm not happy about "cancel culture", but right now it's the only damn thing sticking up for me that is actually effective.

Feel free to suggest what I should be doing instead.

It's possible that Greenwald is... I think the technical term is "full of shit". In seriousness, how is anyone supposed to take this seriously? If you ignore all of the transparent ad hominem, the only bit of substance in the article is that Weiss accused her professors of racism--there's nothing to support the idea that she was trying to ruin their careers (in 2004, allegations of 'racism' didn't ruin careers--indeed, some proponents of cancellation even argue that these allegations don't ruin careers in 2020).

Anyway, even if Weiss's accusations of racism were intended to harm the careers of her professors, it was nearly 2 decades ago and she was fresh out of high school. When Nikole Hannah-Jones was her age, she was writing that whites were "the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world" and that "the descendants of these savage people … continue to be bloodsuckers in our communities". Ibram X. Kendi was writing that whites are literal aliens. Thankfully, these titans of race (and much beloved by cancellation advocates) have somewhat moderated their views before assuming command of their prominent, powerful platforms. Sarah Jeong was named Forbes "30 under 30" and hired onto the NYT only a few short years (if that) after writing some of the most overtly racist stuff I've seen in my life (worse even than Hannah-Jones' collegiate ramblings) and virtually the whole media industry went to bat for her. Let's put this criticism of Weiss' college remarks into perspective.