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Introduction

Western societies are in the midst of a growing conflict between what I call cultural socialism and cultural liberalism. The two sides in this culture war partly overlap with this countrys partisan political divide, but the conflict divides Democrats while largely uniting Republicans and independents. For some Democrats, a commitment to cultural socialism overrides their historical defense of free speech; among most Republicans, a perceived denigration of white Americans and the nations past underlies their support for a new politics of civil rights in schools and workplaces.

In a debate dominated by anecdotes and headlines, it is vital to systematically gather and analyze survey data on public experiences and attitudes toward culture-war issues. While this has been done for universities, this study is the first comprehensive analysis of the wider American experience with, and opinion of, cancel culture, political correctness, and Critical Race Theory (or CRT).

Cultural liberalism is the belief that individuals and groups should have the freedom to express themselves, should not be compelled to endorse beliefs that they oppose, and should be treated equally by the law and social norms. Cultural socialism is the idea that public policy should be used to redistribute wealth, power, and self-esteem from privileged to underprivileged groups in societynotably, historically disadvantaged racial and sexual minorities and women. The term socialism is used here in the European sense of egalitarianism, rather than the Marxist commitment to state ownership of the means of production. Socialism as egalitarianism allows for gradations, from partial redistribution to complete redistribution via affirmative action quotas that mirror a groups share of the population.

Cultural socialism holds that the quest for equal outcomes among identity groups justifies restrictions on the freedom and equal treatment of members of what are called advantaged groups. Interpreting writers such as Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida, strong cultural socialists believe that narratives, phrases, and even words reproduce intergroup power disparities. In recent years, a psychotherapeutic layer has been added to the cultural socialist worldview, claiming that some conventional sayings and words such as anyone can make it in America harm the mental health and safety of subaltern groups.

To cultural liberalism and socialism, we might add cultural conservatism, which has played an important part in the past in restricting the freedoms of groups such as gays or socialists in the name of community values such as religion or patriotism. While cultural conservatism is still a factor today in some environments, as with a mooted Tennessee law against student athletes taking the knee, or broad definitions of anti-Semitism (which could restrict criticism of Israel) imposed on university professors, threats to free speech from the right occur with considerably less frequency than threats from the left. [1]

Some people occupy a middle ground in the growing culture warthey may sympathize with a measure of cultural egalitarianism but shrink from endorsing quotas for all desirable positions in society. And few cultural liberals would argue that we should always express our true feelings to someone we have just met whose religion we disapprove of; or that we should not make at least some allowance for someone who has directly experienced a traumatic event when choosing which topics to joke about. Many cultural liberals would also agree that greater equality among groups in society is a worthy goal, even if they oppose speech restrictions and quotas.

Cultural socialism and liberalism reinforced each other during the civil rights era, when both fought against the illiberalism of cultural conservativesa struggle that persisted on some issues, such as gay rights, into the 2010s. Nevertheless, tension arose as well, leading some cultural liberals to criticize the Berkeley Free Speech Movement for shifting from cultural liberalism to socialism after the mid-1960s. [2] Illiberalism among progressives, which first appeared among student movements on university campuses in that period, has now spread beyond the university to elite institutions, from major newspapers to publishers to large corporations, including tech firms.

While anecdotal evidence of the excesses of illiberalism, such as cancel culture, is abundant, we lack a solid foundation of survey data on which to build our understanding of the extent of this phenomenon, especially off-campus. Is the conflict between cultural liberals and cultural socialists merely an obsession of political junkies, metropolitan elites, and a very online Twitterati? Where do people stand on the divide between cultural socialism and liberalism? How pervasive are peoples experiences of progressive illiberalism? Do most people feel that cultural socialism is a malign force but are too afraid to speak out against it?

This report uses a new survey (on the Qualtrics platform), along with several existing ones, to explore this terrain (see Sidebar: Surveys Used or Cited in This Report). A few major themes rise from the data. First, while a majority of Americans oppose progressive illiberalism, a significant minorityabout a thirdsupport it. This group backs decisions to fire employees for legal speech, for example. The upshot is that cultural conflict is not primarily about people being scared to speak out, though that also comes through as an important motivation: it is a genuine battle for hearts and minds.

Sidebar: Surveys Used or Cited in This Report

Second, younger people are substantially more likely to support progressive illiberalism than older Americans, even when controlling for their political ideology. This suggests that the problem is likely to grow, not subside, as todays college graduates enter large organizations.

Third, unsurprisingly, the strongest support for progressive illiberalism comes from the far-left fifth of Americas political spectrum. Generally speaking, cultural socialism splits the left and unites the right and most moderates. In political terms, this means that Republicans, such as Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, have an incentive to highlight culture-war issues. Democrats have an incentive to distance themselves, as Barack Obama has done, from cancel culture, as well as from unpopular practices associated with Critical Race Theory.

Fourth, culture-war issues now rank above the midpoint on Republican voters priority lists, above religion and family values. For all voters, these issues are now more important than the environment. Republicans are more united in opposition to progressive illiberalism than Democrats are in support, with independents more opposed than supportive. This suggests that culture-war issues are likely to benefit the political right more than the political left in the foreseeable future.

Fifth, those who have taken diversity training are significantly more worried about losing their jobs for present or past speech than those who have not done so, even when controlling for their politics and demographics. Alongside evidence that diversity training has a negative effect on intergroup relations at work and no impact on discrimination, this apparent heightening of threat perceptions suggests that current forms of diversity training should be curtailed or replaced with programs that do not carry such negative effects.

Finally, Democratic and Republican voters tend to sort into neighborhoods, social groups, and workplaces that reflect their values. This helps insulate conservatives from progressive illiberalism and political discrimination, forces that would restrict their freedom by forcing them to self-censor. Conservatives (including conservative Democrats) living and working in left-wing environments bear the brunt of progressive illiberalism. Democrats in Republican workplaces also report less freedom to express their views but not nearly as much as Republicans in Democratic-dominated organizations.

Public Opinion of Cancel Culture: How Do People Balance Cultural Socialism and Cultural Liberalism?

Attitudes toward speech restrictions in the name of protecting the vulnerable are complex but follow a fairly clear pattern. Essentially, most people agree that political correctness has gone too far and oppose cancel culture, but when it comes to the trade-off between protecting free speech and protecting the vulnerable from emotional or potential downstream material harm, opinion divides along partisan and age lines.

When people are asked about cancel culture, public opinion is generally opposed. A national poll conducted for Parents Defending Education in April 2021 shows that while 29% of people have not heard of cancel culture, among those who have, 62% have an unfavorable view while 9% have a positive view. Among Republicans, 79% have an unfavorable view, 5% are positive, and 16% are unsure or havent heard of it. For independents, these figures are 56% unfavorable, 8% favorable, and 36% unsure/unaware; and for Democrats, 38% are unfavorable, 18% favorable, and 44% unsure/unaware. [3] A Harvard/Harris poll in February 2021 asked people if there was a growing cancel culture that is a threat to our freedom: 64% agreed, including 80% of Republicans and 48% of Democrats. [4]

Yet things are not so clear-cut because people tend to endorse values that are in tension with each other. Philip Tetlock writes that people have different deep-seated value dispositions that take the form of a ranking. An individuals policy choices tend to be resolved in favor of the option that accords with their value hierarchyeven if individuals rank two commitments, such as free speech and minority protection, relatively high. [5] This means that it is vital to map peoples trade-offs between values and not merely the values themselves. The influential Hidden Tribes report (by the More in Common organization) in 2018, for example, showed that 82% of Americans agree that hate speech is a problem in America today, but 80% also believe that political correctness has gone too far. [6] What is less clear is how people trade off these competing prioritiesegalitarian versus liberalagainst each other.

This study focuses on differences in how adherents of the two main political parties resolve such dilemmas.

In my new survey (Qualtrics 2021), which oversamples the college-educated, 74% of the respondents overall agreed that political correctness (PC) had gone too far, with 14% opposed. This largely comports with existing research. As Figure 1 shows, there is an important 2040-point difference between self-identified strong Democrats and others on a five-point partisanship scale (weak Democrats, neither Democrat nor Republican, weak Republicans, strong Republicans) on this question, which echoes the Hidden Tribes finding that there is a consensus in American society that PC has gone too far, with only a small group (8% of the population) of progressive activists tending to disagree. [7]

Figure 1

Political Correctness (PC) Has Gone Too Far: By Party

There is also an age gradient on this question, with those under 25 about 20 points less likely than older respondents to agree that PC has gone too far (Figure 2). When controlling for party identification, race, gender, and education, however, age has only a modest effect that is barely significant statistically, with respondents aged 1825 about a half scale point less likely than the reference group, aged 3650, to agree that PC has gone too far on a seven-point scale (strongly disagree, disagree, somewhat disagree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat agree, agree, strongly agree). By contrast, strong Democrats are almost 1.5 scale points less likely to agree, controlling for age, race, gender, and education. Women are significantly less anti-PC, at about a third of a scale point less likely to agree. Race also has an effect but a more modest one than gender does.

Figure 2

PC Has Gone Too Far: By Age

However, when asked as a trade-off between cultural socialism and liberalismThinking about political correctness, are you generally in favor of it (it protects against discrimination), or against it (it stifles freedom of speech)?opinion is considerably warmer toward PC, with 37% in favor and 41% opposed. This 4137 split is much closer than the 7414 split that I get when the question simply asks whether PC has gone too far. In fact, a majority of Democrats now favor PC (Figure 3). Even a fifth of independents and Republicans and nearly three in 10 of those who say PC has gone too far lean in favor of PC on this question.

Figure 3

Favor PC (It Protects Against Discrimination), or Against PC (It Stifles Freedom of Speech): By Party

Age is a more modest predictor of PC attitudes, but half the respondents under 35 are pro-PC on this question, with only about three in 10 opposed (Figure 4). The 3650 age group is evenly split, while the over-50s break nearly five to three against. Controlling for race, gender, and education, age again makes only a modest difference. This time, it is the over-50s who stick out, as being about a quarter scale point less pro-PC than the 3650 group, which is statistically significant at the modest p<0.05 level. Women are over a third of a scale point more pro-PC than men. Nonwhites do not differ from whites on this measure, reflecting other survey data that show that a slight majority of African-Americans see PC as demeaning to blacks rather than necessary to protect them, and do not differ from whites on this question. [8]

Figure 4

Favor PC (It Protects Against Discrimination), or Against PC (It Stifles Freedom of Speech): By Age

Another question in Qualtrics 2021 probed peoples trade-off between competing values: When it comes to the tension between free speech and hate speech, where do you stand? The options were:

The survey data (Figure 5) show that a majority of all political stripes came down in favor of giving priority to free speech (64%) over protecting against hate speech (36%). There was less of a political gradient in the answers than in previous questions, with under 20 points separating strong Democrats from strong Republicans.

Figure 5

Prioritize Free Speech or Protect Against Hate Speech: By Party

There is a similarly modest divide on age. Individuals 25 and under split fairly evenly between the two options, while those over 51 give priority to free speech over protection against hate speech by more than two to one (Figure 6). In a statistical model, the under-35s are significantly but modestly less in favor of free speech than the 3650 age group. Women are modestly less pro free speech than men, but there are, once again, no significant racial differences.

Figure 6

Prioritize Free Speech or Protect Against Hate Speech: By Age Source: Qualtrics

Another variant of this question asks: How should we view a person accused of hate speech by a member of a historically disadvantaged minority group? The two options are Benefit of the doubt: the accused should be believed to be innocent until proven guilty or Zero tolerance: the accuser should be believed until the accused proves themselves innocent. The response: 74% chose the former option and 26% the latter. Respondents aged 25 and under broke 6535 while the over-50s divided 7723. Strong Democrats favored due process by a 6337 margin; Republicans favored due process 8119. Democrats under age 35 backed due process by a slim 5545 margin, illustrating the combined effects of age and party identity on progressive illiberalism.

The widest gap was between the strongest pro-PC respondents (restricts free speech vs. protects against discrimination), at 5644, and the strongest anti-PC ones, at 8515. Despite some variation, there is a solid majority for due process in hate-speech incidents rather than believe the accuser logic.

The results of the Qualtrics 2021 and other surveys show that most Americans think that both political correctness and hate speech are problems, and most oppose cancel culture. But when asked to make trade-offs, strong Democrats lean more in favor of PC than others, giving greater priority to protection from hate speech and minority harm, while Republicans are more strongly anti-PC and profree speech. Support of free speech is overall a higher priority for Republicans than Democrats, even though it matters to all. The youngest age group is considerably more pro-PC and less profree speech than older age groups, even if party identification is a stronger correlate of attitudes than age.

Notwithstanding answers to abstract questions about free speech, peoples views about concrete cases where competing values come into conflict are arguably more important. How do people think about actual situations and episodes in which individuals have been fired for their views? While many people dont understand what the term cancel culture means, they do have views about cases that concretize the more abstract tensions between free speech and the purported harm of that speech. [9] To get at these trade-offs, Qualtrics 2021 posed a wide range of questions pertaining to actual cases of cancellation, or hypothetical scenarios involving firing and no-platforming colleagues with contentious views.

This section focuses on support for two key pillars of cultural socialism: punishment and discrimination. Punishment, or hard authoritarianism, directly penalizes or censors legal speech, often through firing or no-platforming. Political discrimination, or soft authoritarianism, involves subtler social and career penalties, including discrimination in hiring and promotion, as well as social exclusion.

I begin with support for hard authoritarianism. Figure 7 compiles results in Qualtrics 2021 across 20 questions about support for cancel culture across three distinct clusters, with each shapesquare, circle, or triangledenoting the view of individuals from each of a five-point partisanship scale.

The first cluster involves peoples views of whether individuals in real, specific cases should have been fired from their jobs. The second cluster focuses on whether people support firing or prosecuting hypothetical individuals for political donations or contentious speech. The third cluster asks whether social media platforms or utilities should ban debate on contentious subjects like the trans issue or be permitted to remove individuals whose tweets or posts are controversial but otherwise legal.

Results for each cluster are sorted from the question where there is the greatest average opposition to canceling to that with the weakest opposition to dismissing or banning dissenters. The results are somewhat affected by the wording of each question, but most of the difference in opinion is based on the substance of the question asked. Replies for independents are a reasonable guide as to where the average of the sample lies.

Cluster one begins with the firing of Emmanuel Cafferty, a Hispanic San Diego Gas & Electric worker fired for inadvertently making an OK sign while cracking his knuckles after a photograph by an activist ended up on Twitter (the OK hand sign is a common gesture of all is well in the U.S. and with similar connotations in other countries and cultures, but it acquired an association with some white power groups a few years ago). Of independents, 94% said that he should not have been fired. The most contentious case appears to be that of Steven Salaita, a University of Illinois professor who wrote numerous tweets against Israel, including: At this point, if [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised? This time, 44% of respondents (47% of independents) opposed firing him.

In cluster two, 94% of independents would not fire a group of white male employees who refused to take diversity training, but just 51% of them would oppose prosecuting someone who used a racial slur against a black person in a meeting. (Uttering a racial slur is not a prosecutable offense, but the question can serve as a test of peoples opinions.) The rightmost question in this cluster has a three-part wording so is not as easily comparable, but just 40% oppose the firing of a colleague who did research showing that diversity tends to lower social solidarity.

In cluster three, 75%77% of independents opposed the idea of banning people with far-left or anti-immigration views from Twitter and Facebook to reduce support for defunding the police or restricting immigration. But fewer independents61%would ban a firm from firing someone for racist but legal speech.

Figure 7

Opposition to Cancel Culture: By Party

The first point to note is that there is only one question (about Salaita) where there is majority support for cancelingyet even here, it is borderline, with 44% of the sample (47% of independents) opposing dismissal. In two other instanceswhether to prosecute for racial slurs uttered against whites (52%) and blacks (51%), the balance of opinion is evenly divided. However, on most questions, the share who oppose dismissals and bans is around 70%, with a majority of weak Democrats opposed. This pattern of public opinion represents a potential electoral opportunity for Republicans and a liability for Democrats.

The second point is that an individuals position on a five-point partisanship scale correlates with his view on whether someone should be canceled. Strong Democrats are substantially more likely to endorse dismissal, compared with weak Democrats, independents, and Republicans. Of strong Democrats, 66% oppose the firing of Emmanuel Cafferty for being photographed inadvertently making the OK sign, compared with 94% of independents. Of strong Democrats, 36% would prevent a firm from firing someone for legal but racist speech, compared with 61% of independents. On most questions, strong Democrats are about 20 points more in favor of cancellation than independents.

Weak Democrats are slightly more favorable, and Republicans slightly less favorable, toward canceling than independents, but the effects are much smaller. Again, majority sentiment is against cancellation, and if the Democrats come to be seen as the party that supports cancel culture, they will be on the wrong side of public opinion. This political implication would seem to be that Democrats are advised to convey, as Barack Obama did, that they do not approve of cancel culture. [10]

Age is the next most important factor governing support for cancellation (Figure 8). On average, people 1825 are 20 points more likely to back a firing or no-platforming campaign than the over-50s. About 40% of the youngest respondents oppose the firing of Mozilla CEO Brandon Eich for supporting Californias antigay marriage Proposition 8 in 2008; or Professor Charles Negy, who tweeted that various forms of affirmative action amounted to black privilege and should not be shielded from criticism; or Professor Philip Adamo, who read a passage from black writer James Baldwin that used the N-word. The only cases where the young are as tolerant as their elders tend to be those involving curbs on left-wing speech, such as the Salaita case, banning a far leftist from social media, or being allowed to debate whether all whites are racist.

Figure 8

Opposition to Cancel Culture: By Age

To what extent do the age effects merely reflect the fact that younger people tend to vote Democratic more than older people? To find out, I developed a cancel-culture index by combining opinions on six cancellation incidentsBrandon Eich, Charles Negy, Philip Adamo, James Damore, Gina Carano, and Steven Salaitathrough factor analysis. [11]

I then ran a statistical model on this cancellation index, asking which characteristics best correlate with it, controlling for confounding effects. The results (Figure 9) sort the factors that most closely correlate with a person supporting cancellation, by their importance. They show that being a strong Democrat is by far the strongest predictor of supporting the firing of these individuals. However, younger people are significantly more likely than older people to support dismissal, even when you take into account their more Democratic Party leanings. This indicates that we are likely to see more support for cancel culture as millennials become a larger share of the workforce.

In addition, those who have attended diversity training are significantly more likely to favor a firing campaign. Its impossible to definitively parse whether this is because diversity training sensitizes people to the feelings of protected groups and thereby increases support for dismissal because it is framed as protecting themor whether those who are already on board with this agenda are more likely to have volunteered to attend diversity training. Yet an important piece of evidence indicates that diversity training has an independent effectits impact on increasing support for dismissal campaigns affects people regardless of where they lie on the political spectrum. Strong Republicans who attended diversity training, for example, are significantly more pro-cancel than strong Republicans who have not.

Jews and Muslims, two small religious minorities, are more pro-cancel than those of another or no faith. The remaining correlates have small effects: weak Democrats are somewhat more procancel than average, while weak Republicans and married people are somewhat more anti-cancel.

Whites are slightly more likely to oppose cancel culture than minorities when you account for the characteristics listed above, but the effect is not statistically significant. Women and men also dont differ in their views.

Figure 9

Predictors of Pro-Cancel Sentiment

To visualize the impact of partisanship and age, Figure 10 plots the predicted support for Mozilla CEO Brandon Eich being forced to step down in 2014 for having supported the 2008 antigay marriage Proposition 8 in California. For example, a strong Democrat aged 1835 has a 0.7 chance of agreeing that Eich should have been forced out. This falls to 0.43 for a strong Democrat over age 51. The gap between young and old seems to matter most among independents and is least pronounced among strong Republicans.

Thus, there is just a six-point gap between young strong Republicans (0.24 chance of being pro-cancel) and strong Republicans over 51, among whom there is just a 0.18 probability of backing Eichs ouster. Young weak Republicans are, however, about 20 points more in favor of canceling Eich than weak Republicans over 51. A key point is that young people who are in the political center have a 50% chance of backing the firing of Eich, compared with centrist voters over 35 who have less than a 20% chance of doing so.

In short, millennials and Gen-Z are more likely to endorse progressive authoritarianism than Gen-Xers or baby boomers. But this is more a straight-line story about age than one of sharply defined generations reflecting different formative events or the use of social media. That is, age has a linear and gradual effect, with younger people more pro-cancel than older people across the age range.

Figure 10

Brandon Eich Should Have Been Forced Out: By Age

If threats of discipline, including being fired or no-platformed, represent direct censorship and hard authoritarianism, political discrimination involves what I term soft authoritarianism. [12] In many ways, peoples fear of being discriminated against in hiring, promotion, or even social interaction may be more important than their fear of being terminated or no-platformed. Bothfears chill speech, reducing expressive freedom. Later in the report, I will discuss which of these two fears is more pervasive; for now, the focus is on support for discriminatory behavior, rather than perceptions of the victims of discrimination.

American politics has become increasingly polarized since the 1980s, so much so that party identification is now a major factor in dating. For example, only 6% of the 93% of Ivy League female students who dont support Trump would have no problem dating a Trump supporter. Forty percent of Americans wouldnt want their child to marry someone who identifies with the opposing political party. In simulations, political prejudice is pervasive and openly expressed in a way that racial prejudice is not. [13]

Studies asking academics whether they would discriminate against hires, papers, grants, or promotion applications from the opposing party found that 15%50% would so discriminate. [14] Among American social sciences and humanities academics, my report for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI 2021)which analyzed several surveys, mainly those that I conductedfound that 25% openly admitted that they would discriminate against a Trump supporter, with 33% saying that they didnt know. [15] In a revealed-preference test, the actual share willing to discriminate was 40%. For the Qualtrics 2021 survey, I removed the didnt know option, changing the question to a two-category yes/no question and found that 35% of Biden supporters in the sample openly said that they would discriminate against a Trump supporter for a job. Using the same revealed-preference test showed that 49% of Biden voters would discriminate against a Trump supporter. Even if we allow for measurement noise due to the fact that only 450 Biden supporters were polled, this suggests that these nonacademics resemble their academic counterparts in their willingness to discriminate against Trump voters for a job. Yet political discrimination from the left is not primarily about Trump: it applies also to conservatism and national populism more generally. The right also discriminates against the left. A series of studies in the U.S. and Europe from 2012 onward asking academics whether they would discriminate against hires, papers, grants, or promotion applications from individuals of the opposing party or ideology found that 15%50% would do so. [16] In Britain, for instance, I found that one in three academics would not hire a Brexit supporter.

Figure 11 presents the full list of Qualtrics 2021 questions tapping into peoples willingness to discriminate against individuals from the other party. Broadly speaking, Trump and Biden supporters both display similar and substantial levels of bias, though Biden voters are more consistent in their views than Trump voters. Sixty percent of Biden voters are either uncomfortable (20%) or unsure (40%) about having lunch with a Trump supporter, and 67% would be uncomfortable or unsure about sitting down to lunch with a woman who opposes the idea of granting trans women access to womens shelters. For comparison, my CSPI 2021 report found that 60% of Clinton-voting academics would be uncomfortable (26%) or unsure (34%) about sitting down with a Trump supporter, a similar result.

A total of 51% of Biden voters would prefer hiring a Sanders supporter over a Trump supporter when the two have the same merit, rather than remaining neutral between the two. A total of 45% of Trump voters would favor the Trump supporter for the job in the same question. For comparison, 50% of Clinton-voting academics in CSPI 2021 also chose the Sanders supporter over the Trump supporter or being neutral, indicating that a similar level of soft political discrimination exists among Democrats inside and outside academia.

There is some political skew when it comes to whether people think that firms should have the right to politically discriminate. In Qualtrics 2021, 64% of Trump voters think that companies should be able to discriminate against an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) supporter for a job, but just 31% of them think that firms should be able to do the same against a Trump supporter. Democrats are more consistent, with 46% believing that a firm should be able to discriminate against an AOC supporter for a job and 49% saying that a firm should be able to do so against a Trump supporter. This could partially reflect the fact that AOC is on the left wing of the Democratic Party and thus less appealing to the modal Democrat in my sample, whereas Trump has been the Republican presidential candidate on two occasions.

Finally, 27% of both Trump and Biden supporters would support firing a business executive who donated to the Biden campaign. For an executive donating to Trumps campaign, a similar share of Biden supporters would support firing, but the number dips to 13% among Trump voters. The Cato Institutes July 2020 survey asked the same question and found that 28% of Trump voters would support firing an executive who donated to Bidens campaign while 39% of Clinton voters would fire an executive who donated to Trumps campaign. [17] Here the timing of the Cato survey, close to an upcoming election, may have led to the 11-point higher share of Democrats endorsing firing. Using a similar statistical model across both surveys (based on age, race, gender, education, and party identity), the one consistent finding is that there is a bigger partisan gap over whether to fire the Trump donor than there is over whether to fire the Biden donor.

Figure 11

Political Discrimination: By Political Party

Younger respondents are significantly more politically biased, even controlling for party identification, race, and gender. Some 55% of Biden voters 25 and under would not hire a Trump supporter for a job, dropping to 39% for the 2649 group and 29% for those over 50. Only 23% of young Biden supporters said that they would be comfortable having lunch with a Trump supporter, compared with 42% of Biden voters over 25. In general, age had about a quarter to a third as much statistical power as party identification for discrimination questions. This is somewhat below its power to predict support for cancellation, where age was about half as important as partisanship.

Firing for speech or being discriminated against is not the only expression of illiberalism. A sliding scale runs from termination through suspension to loss of privileges to social pressure. The authoritarian face of inclusion initiatives like diversity training or mandatory requirements to diversify university reading lists is punishment: those who choose not to comply face coercive sticks and disincentives. To what extent are supporters of inclusion initiatives willing to accept the restrictions on peoples freedoms required to achieve their progressive aims?

In CSPI 2021, [18] I discovered that more than 40% supported mandatory race and gender quotas on reading lists (such as 30% of the readings authored by women, 20% by authors of color) while barely 30% opposed them. However, about half of American academics do not wish to see any sanctions applied to non-compliers30% endorse some form of punishment or loss of opportunity, with another 19% preferring social pressure only (Figure 12). Clearly, most academics recoil from the illiberal implications of the curriculum decolonization policies that many of them support.

Nonacademics surveyed in Qualtrics 2021 are more authoritarian than academics, though the questions differ: refusing to diversify a curriculum in the academic case, refusing to take diversity training in the nonacademic case. Though the questions are not identical, 32% of nonacademics would suspend or fire a group of several white male employees who refused to take diversity training, with a further 18% saying that they should lose opportunities at work. Among left-wing nonacademics, nearly half endorse firing (13%) or suspension (35%), with a further 22% saying that they should lose opportunities at work. Younger respondents were not harsher when ideology and party identification were taken into account. These results indicate that even where people do not support firing, there is a substantial reservoir of support among progressives for forms of coercion to conform to cultural socialist values that violate individuals freedom of conscience.

Figure 12

Preferred Punishment for Diversity Noncompliance: U.S. Academics and Nonacademics

Many questions take a binary approach to cancellation, but it is vital to explore the nuanced middle ground, where people are attracted to progressive ends but repulsed by authoritarian means. A further question on a hypothetical cancel campaign (similar to the one that costsoftware engineer James Damore his job at Google) [19] explored this subtle structure of opinion and compared it with similar studies (Figure 13). The question: If someone in your workplace did research showing that greater ethnic diversity leads to increased societal tension and poorer social outcomes, would you support or oppose efforts by staff to let the person know to find work elsewhere? Overall, only 19% of people supported the campaign to oust the individual, rising to 28% among left-wing respondents but also including 12% of Trump voters.

The rest is here:
The Politics of the Culture Wars in Contemporary America