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Unfortunately, this probably mirrors the thoughts of a majority of progressives decrying the cancellations of, and status attacks on, insufficiently "patriotic" people in the aftermath of 9/11. There are very, very few principled libertarians.
As far as I know one guy got fired, for saying that people working in the World Trade Center were little nazis who deserved it. And technically he didn't get fired for that, the public attention just forced the university to acknowledge that he was a plagiarist who got promoted to full professor without any qualifications.
The appeal to an imaginary era of right wing censorship is so strange, when the only example anyone can come up with is that people stopped buying Dixie Chicks albums.
To be perfectly clear, I think calling the victims of a major tragedy little Nazis who deserved it would be a firing offense for a professor today, with the possible exception of that tragedy being a GOP convention blowing up, but it seems like a lot of the woke ridiculousness was prefigured by things like freedom fries.
Yeah, I'm definitely not saying things didn't get weird after 9/11 (and in some ways both are typical of American National Hysterias) but professors weren't getting fired for refusing to swear loyalty oaths to The Homeland. The scale and level of coercion were so completely different that it's hard to see the comparison being made in good faith, until you realize some of the people doing it were 3 years old at the time and are working off a mythical version of events we actually remember.
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I mean as a principled libertarian I'm not opposed to such tactics in all cases, like Hobbes points out, the state of war is a binary switch and once one's natural rights have been intruded upon, all means to restore them are permissible. As misapplied as it can be, defending yourself is a legitimate justification for terrible things so long as they don't stray into pointless cruelty.
I think there are much worse things than "cancellation" that are entirely morally permissible to do to people who have in fact silenced others.
But here I'm merely pointing to the Nash equilibrium conservatives find themselves in. Which also explains the examples you give and the potency of Bin Laden's successful tactics to provoke retaliation. Complaining that these are unprincipled is just ignoring the nature of power, which always comes before principle in practice.
"people who have in fact silenced others..."
By this do you mean specific people or people who belong to a group you don't like? The difference is constantly being elided or not indicated.
Specific people of course, I don't believe in groups, only in associations of individuals.
Though of course if you're going to have voluntary membership of an organization whose stated purpose is solely to destroy and undermine natural rights, wear its uniforms and do its bidding, I think it's reasonable to assume you are personally guilty. Not that I'm saying it applies in this case.
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