Chess Grandmaster Kasparov on Mob Mentality and Groupthink

> who is it not OK to destroy for ideological reasons and who is fair game

IMHO, that's the problem right there. Once you get into this "you did it, so can I" game, you've set into motion the wheels of destruction. This seems best summarized by this quote:

> Destroying the mechanisms of democracy to preserve democracy won’t work

Incidentally, the history of the aptly descriptive idiom "fighting fire with fire" offers a cautionary tale of its own[0]:

> The source of this phrase was actual fire-fighting that was taken on by US settlers in the 19th century. They attempted to guard against grass or forest fires by deliberately raising small controllable fires, which they called 'back-fires', to remove any flammable material in advance of a larger fire and so deprive it of fuel. This literal 'fighting fire with fire' was often successful, although the settlers' lack of effective fire control equipment meant that their own fires occasionally got out of control and made matters worse rather than better.

[0] https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fight-fire-with-fire.htm...

If you want to hear more of his view, including some solid rebuttals, I highly recommend IntelligenceSquared, a debate series that gets published as a podcast. They cover motions from culture to science to politics across the spectrum and usually get excellent, well-informed debaters on both sides.

Their most recent one was "Cancel Culture is Toxic"[0] and Kasparov was arguing in favor of the motion.

While I ultimately disagree with the motion, I think Kasparov and Kmele Foster (mostly Kmele, really) made the stronger case. And regardless, it was a fascinating and well-argued discussion of the sort you almost never see around topics like "cancel culture." Well worth a listen.

[0] https://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/cancel-culture-tox...

They got to make their case in open court and lost. That's like saying Derek Chauvin was "cancelled."

> Schools are being pressured to remove books and cancel professors for spreading the “wrong” ideas. These sentiments are all too familiar to me, and to anyone who has survived life in a dictatorship. The only answer is more freedom, more speech, not less.

This is a good sentiment, but it's worth noting that the overwhelming majority of pressure to "cancel" books and academics is directed at the left by the right, regardless of what gets column inches and think-pieces.

Goes to critical thinking ability.