The defining hallmark of cancel culture—the thing that marked it off as a new phenomenon, and which made it so oppressive—was that it targeted speech WITHIN the Overton Window, often with the explicit goal of shifting it.
If it's "cancel culture" to fire someone for supporting political violence, then political violence is already inside the Overton Window.
People lost their jobs in 2020 for:
- Reading an MLK letter out loud
- Showing a Shakespeare film from 1965
- Snapping fingers (interpreted as 👌)
- Sharing data that riots were unpopular
- Teaching the proper pronunciation of Chinese
- Donating $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse