Thread by @NAChristakis

"After Daniel Elder, a prizewinning composer posted a statement on Instagram condemning arson in Nashville, where BLM protesters had set the courthouse on fire after the killing of Floyd, he discovered that his publisher would not print his music and choirs would not sing it."

"The writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recently described how two younger writers she had befriended attacked her on social media, partly, she wrote, because they are 'seeking attention and publicity to benefit themselves.'"

"Once it becomes clear that attention and praise can be garnered from organizing an attack on someone’s reputation, plenty of people discover that they have an interest in doing so."

"The censoriousness, the shunning, the ritualized apologies, the public sacrifices—these are rather typical behaviors in illiberal societies... This is a story of moral panic, of cultural institutions policing or purifying themselves in the face of disapproving crowds."

"'I think people’s tolerance for discomfort—people’s tolerance for dissonance, for not hearing exactly what they want to hear—has now gone to zero, one person said. 'Discomfort used to be a term of praise about pedagogy—I mean, the greatest discomforter of all was Socrates.'"

"Anyone who accidentally creates discomfort—whether through their teaching methods, their editorial standards, their opinions, or their personality—may suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of not just a student or a colleague but an entire bureaucracy."

Here is a terrific new essay by @anneapplebaum in @TheAtlantic on the strain of illiberalism, redolent with historical precedent, alas, now troubling our society. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…