Cancel culture has all the trappings of an infantilized puritanical rage.

It labels contrarians: think scarlet letters, branding and then white fragility.

Unlike Cancel Culture, at least the Puritans, although they banished most sinners in perpetuity, believed in 'limited atonement to God', often through shaming and corporeal punishment.

Cancel culture decries all thoughts outside a common and ever-narrowing orthodoxy. One only need read 'The Good Book' and not the open letter to Harper's .

It advocates a level of blatant paternalism -- the Puritans believed it imperative to blindly trust in the sanctity of the sermons of 'The Elect'.

In Cancel Culture, it appears that the average reader can't be trusted to judge for themselves the value, or not, in the writings of the non-convicted, like Gian Ghomeshi.

It wants to censor the writings, let alone the signatures, of those who have risked their lives telling truth to power -- hello Salman Rushdie -- or who encouraged their readers to believe in the alchemic potential in each child's life -- hello J.K Rowlings

It is a 'movement' which condemns any editors of the New York Times or New York Times Book Review, or any publication or media presentation, who may just believe that their audience are adults and not 'feeling entitled if not ill-educated, myopic and over-sensitive children'.

If not for the bottom line commercial risk, most companies would not engage in such self-centred virtue signalling and instead tell such 21st century Puritans that they will not respond to ill-considered threats by offering the offended for public humiliation, loss of career or life-long branding.