Whenever someone prominent, such as Bill Maher, denounces cancel culture, two things inevitably happen: (1.) online mobs declare that cancel culture doesn’t exist; and (2.) they demand that the person saying that it does be canceled.

This laughable lack of self-awareness is to be expected of self-righteous young radicals who’ve had their empty minds poisoned by their leftist teachers. But when the “Burn him at the stake for heresy!!” mentality is exhibited by people who are supposed to be mature adults of advanced education and superior intellect, that’s when you know we have a real problem.

Here are just a couple recent examples of respected scholars and scientists who have seen speeches canceled or been suspended or fired because they riled up the mindless mob by expressing some completely rational viewpoint.

https://redstate.com/alexparker/2021/10/07/mit-boots-science-professor-following-his-triggering-take-on-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-n453007

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/10/05/madness-ucla-suspends-professor-for-refusing-to-assign-grades-based-on-skin-color-n1521910

In that second story out of UCLA, a highly-regarded professor of 40 years’ standing was suspended and has endured vilification and even profane, anti-Semitic death threats. All for refusing a "woke" student’s demand that he give black students extra points on the final just because all the racism makes them too traumatized to be able to study and score as high as students of other races.

In a sane world, anyone would instantly recognize who’s the real racist in that story, and it’s not the professor, who insists on grading everyone by the same standard. George W. Bush had a term for that kind of condescending attitude: “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It’s no longer soft, but is now enforced with an iron fist. And it’s called “progressivism” or “anti-racism,” but it’s still just old fashioned racism under new names.