What does “cancel culture” really mean, and how big a problem is it? Nick Gillespie, editor at large at Reason, has given these questions more thought than most. Nick is one of the leading lights of libertarian public intellectual life, and just wrote an essay, “Self-Cancellation, Deplatforming, and Censorship” that we dig into here. Nick is worried about the shift towards censorship in politics, in our organizations, including corporations, and in our own lives. We differ on whether the problem is more personal or political, but in the end we do agree that a healthy liberal culture is one that welcomes a robust exchange of diverse views. Along the way, we get into Nick’s particular beef with Facebook, some similarities in our backgrounds as journalists, and how his view of the world has some Marxist traces. 

Nick Gillespie

Nick is an editor at large at Reason, the libertarian magazine and host of The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie. “Nick Gillespie is to libertarianism what Lou Reed is to rock ‘n’ roll, the quintessence of its outlaw spirit,” wrote Robert Draper in The New York Times Magazine.

A two-time finalist for digital National Magazine Awards, Nick is co-author, with Matt Welch, of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong With America (2012).

More Gillespie 

• “Self-Cancellation, Deplatforming, and Censorship” (Sep 2021)

Also mentioned

• My Guardian essay, “Capitalism used to promise a better future. Can it still do that?”

The Dialogues Team 

Creator: Richard Reeves

Research: Ashleigh Maciolek

Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas

Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves

Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)