Source: Quillette
by Cathy Young
“During the free-speech skirmishes of the last decade, the battle lines were often drawn in a way that placed heterodox liberals and centrists on the same side as conservatives in opposing censorious progressivism. But those lines have been redrawn in recent months, after the Trump administration began aggressively targeting disfavoured expression, from overly negative museum exhibits on slavery to uncouth reactions to the murder of Charlie Kirk. Much of a triumphalist Right has now enthusiastically embraced the ‘cancel culture’ it once condemned, embracing many of the same justifications once employed by the Left (censorship, we are told, is merely ‘accountability’). The heterodox community, defined by dissent from the progressive consensus on identity and social justice, has split into those whose defence of free speech extends to the Trump administration’s abuses and those who still prefer to fight various iterations of ‘wokeness.'” (12/01/25)
https://quillette.com/2025/12/01/the-new-speech-wars-global-free-speech-summit-trump-rufo/