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The problem is that things that seem morally obvious now weren't always so. In the antebellum United States, there were millions of people who thought slavery was totally acceptable, and many others who thought it was in fact a positive good. I think we'd all agree that someone advocating for a return to chattel slavery (at least assuming they had a real chance of success) would justify the use of "cancel culture" tactics today (if anything could), but this simply wasn't a morally obvious truth in the 1850s. You could make a similar argument about Jim Crow, which wasn't all that long ago. Activists would simply argue that their cause is today's slavery/Jim Crow/Holocaust/etc., and I think to justify why their use of "cancel culture" tactics is wrong you have to engage in the merits of their arguments to some degree
You think wrong. I would disagree, and on the strongest possible terms. Not unless that advocating took the form of, say, literal kidnapping and enslaving of people or even calling for specific sorts of actions by his followers to do the like. If someone were to write essays, make YouTube videos, give speeches, run for office on a platform, etc. where they explicitly called for the repeal of the 13th Amendment and legislating the chattel slavery of certain types of people, I would support their right to do so without impediment or difficulty in their livelihood and such. Now, the "assuming they had a real chance of success" is a very difficult theoretical to imagine, as such a world would look vastly different from the current one, but if we're in an environment where someone like me would find chattel slavery to be as obviously morally wrong as the real me does now, it would have to be one where that person also has a very real chance of failure due to the incredibly strong political will to prevent return chattel slavery. And I would direct any and all energy that might have been used in "canceling" this person towards amplifying the voices of the political figures who would defeat this guy and his ilk in the polls, as well as other influential people who could sway opinion in the masses. Perhaps I wouldn't have the energy left over after that to fight against whatever people might be trying to "cancel" this guy, but I would certainly want such "cancel culture" attempts to not exist.
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