> That's not how heresy works. People don't point fingers at you and hiss "heretic!"
I mean...yes that's exactly what they did. Excommunication, run out of town, branded, marked, labeled in public, put in stocks, jailed, killed, yelled at, or just straight ostracized. These are all tactics that have been used in the past to label and punish heretical beliefs. They could absolutely still be used and, if you look at "cancel culture" in the right/wrong light, that's exactly what's still happening.
My point is not that people don't ostracize heretics, it's that "heretics" aren't a real category that people identify explicitly. Heresy is not a thing, people don't think "you were a heretic" as the reason they're ostracizing you (look, maybe 12th century peasants did, that's beside my point, we're talking about modern politics). People who want to ban these things don't think of this as "banning heresy", they think of it as "banning a bunch of terrible things to benefit society". If you're just going to dismiss these people's perspective as banning "heresy", you're just talking past them. You're not earnestly engaging them in argument.
I mean...yes that's exactly what they did. Excommunication, run out of town, branded, marked, labeled in public, put in stocks, jailed, killed, yelled at, or just straight ostracized. These are all tactics that have been used in the past to label and punish heretical beliefs. They could absolutely still be used and, if you look at "cancel culture" in the right/wrong light, that's exactly what's still happening.