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Kat Rosenfield is the author of the novel “You Must Remember This” and a columnist at Unherd.

In times of global turmoil, nothing fuels the online discourse like a hunt for hypocrites.

“We’re watching the most overt wave of McCarthyism in a generation, and overwhelmingly the ‘free speech’ crowd is silent,” <a href="https://twitter.com/DavidKlion/status/1717924047462261085" target=_blank>reads a post</a> from one X user. <a href="https://twitter.com/heavyredaction/status/1716583885558157522" target=_blank>From another</a>: “If even one of the 150 signers of the 2020 Harper’s letter on ‘cancel culture’ has a comment about Michael Eisen’s dismissal from the EICship of eLife, I will eat my hat.”

Eisen, for those not in the know, was dismissed from his editorial position at the publication eLife after reposting an article from the Onion titled “<a href="https://www.theonion.com/dying-gazans-criticized-for-not-using-last-words-to-con-1850925657" target="_blank">Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas</a>” and adding, “The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together.” As these posters have noted, he is part of a trend: A controversial open letter, published by student groups at Harvard and declaring Israel “entirely responsible” for the Oct. 7 massacre of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians, has sparked a campaign to identify and rescind job offers from various students involved. In Hollywood, pro-Palestinian members of the Writers Guild said they fear speaking out, lest they be “doxed or blacklisted” for being antisemitic.

For the same reason that I signed <a href="https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/" target=_blank>the Harper’s letter</a> in defense of free speech 3½ years ago, along with a group of 150 other writers, artists and other public intellectuals, I also condemn virtually all of this. (I don’t expect anyone to actually eat a hat about it; a simple “my bad” would do.)

Like many creative professionals, I believe unequivocally in the First Amendment — and not just the letter of the law, which prohibits the government from interfering with speech. I believe in the spirit of it, which can and should animate a culture in which freedom of expression is valued, encouraged and defended by every citizen who enjoys its protections.

The list of things I don’t think people should be fired for is virtually endless. That includes political speech of the type described above, but it also includes provocative food opinions, using your thumb and forefinger to make the “okay” sign, retweeting an off-color joke, getting into an altercation with a stranger at the dog park, and various and sundry interpersonal conflicts that fall under the general category of “being a jerk.” And yet, for all these things and more, many people have suffered serious professional consequences in recent years, often at the behest of the same people now lamenting that they can’t post Hamas paraglider memes or tear down posters of kidnapped Israeli children without someone reporting them to human resources.

Don’t worry: I don’t think the paraglider meme-posters should be fired, either. This is for principled reasons but also practical ones. The idea that having distasteful opinions should render a person de facto unemployable has always struck me as profoundly self-defeating: Even the real jerks among us have families to feed. Unless you want your taxes going to a welfare fund for the canceled (I certainly don’t!), we’ll need to agree that contributing to society is something every capable person must be allowed to do, as opposed to some sort of prize to be reserved exclusively for those who hold the right set of beliefs.

In fact, this appears to be a good moment to collectively rediscover the value of worrying less about what other people say or think — and also, while we’re at it, to agree on some reasonable boundaries with respect to the place of political speech in professional settings. A company can and should have some standards for what kind of speech employees can engage in when they re at work or using a company-issued megaphone. And for people whose jobs involve a certain level of power and influence — doctors, police officers, teachers — it seems fair that the conditions of employment might require maintaining a certain level of decorum when you’re outside the office but in view of the public.

But these rules should be content-neutral and formally inscribed where people can see and understand them — and with the aforementioned rare exceptions, they should end at the office door. How people use their voices in the context of their private lives, whether it’s posting in support of a political cause or writing Bigfoot fan fiction, is not the place of an employer to judge.

Most important, though, it’s not our place — mine, or yours — to punish speech that offends us by trying to get the speaker fired.

I think this was an easier concept to grasp back in the analog world, when political bloviating was mainly the province of actual politicians, op-ed columnists and talking heads on cable TV. Even amid the with-or-against-us fervor that gripped the nation post-9/11, when commentators such as Bill Maher or artists such as the Chicks suffered professional consequences for speaking out against the war in Iraq, no ordinary person had to fear losing their job for voicing an unpopular opinion. Social media had not yet given us the means of broadcasting our every thought into the ether, nor had slogans like “Silence is violence” created a pressure-cooker environment in which every person, no matter how far removed from the levers of power, feels compelled to post on current events, lest they end up on the wrong side of history. The notion that everything is political, and hence that a person who speaks bad thoughts is causing harm in some grand cosmic sense of the word and needs to be silenced, is an understandable byproduct of the current culture.

The truth is, people have always held an incredible variety of stupid opinions. They’ve always been foolish, or biased, or bigoted, or believers in wild conspiracy theories. But they have also always been perfectly capable, and deserving, of remaining employed and contributing productively to society irrespective of the views they hold. Social media has not changed any of this; it’s only made it easier to know who thinks what. Can that be upsetting? Of course, but the onus is on all of us to deal with those feelings like adults. The list of appropriate responses to offensive speech is virtually limitless; you can argue, or look away, or just silently revise your opinion of the speaker for future reference. (I will not, personally, be inviting the posters of those Hamas paraglider memes to my birthday party.)

But the idea that speech should have consequences, and that losing your livelihood is an appropriate price to pay for using your voice? It’s grotesque, and as we are beginning to see, unsustainable. This snitching, surveilling, offense-seeking culture of intolerance is anathema to a functional society; it will tear us apart if we let it.

Kat Rosenfield

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You shouldn’t be fired for being a jerk. That’s free speech.

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