Cancel culture is real but it’s not the ‘woke mob’ you should worry about | Arwa Mahdawi

Books deemed anti-church or containing LGBTQ issues are being banned across the US at a terrifying rate by the conservative right

Hello, my name is Arwa Mahdawi and I would like to cancel myself, please. I have a book to sell, you see, and it would seem that the easiest way to drum up a lot of free publicity these days is to declare yourself the latest victim of cancel culture. Suddenly everyone is inviting you on the telly to wax on about how you've been cruelly silenced by the woke mob. Nobody can say anything any more!" the usual pundits lament in their 972nd piece on whether cancel culture has gone too far. Free speech is dead! It's just like Nineteen Eighty-Four!"

I don't know if Big Brother is going to let me share this, but I have something terribly shocking to tell you about cancel culture. Here we go: you should definitely be worried, but it's not the woke mob you need to be worried about. A depressing amount of energy is being expended on arguing whether calling someone out for using language a lot of people perceive as bigoted is cancel culture". But, while endless arguments rage about the intolerant left, free speech is under a terrifying assault from the right.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist