You're right in that there are multiple things that people mean when they say cancelling. Specifically, in the NYT article, the phrase "based on an opinion or an action" really struck me as capturing a common issue I have with use of the term, which is to lump together public shaming/pressure to fire/boycott based on e.g. sexual assault, with that based on an opinion. As you say, Weinstein was cancelled.
Of course, because I have one opinion, I read the original sentence saying that cancelling is often used to refer to simply facing consequences and immediately agree, because those examples are at the forefront of my mind. True, I can think of examples of canceling I thought were unjustified, like the case of Justine Sacco. But I know that someone else will read that sentence and have it immediately conjure up a glut of examples of canceling they consider to be outrageous, and they will take exception to the implication of the sentence if not the literal meaning.
I think that it can be legitimate to read an entire article and draw conclusions about the underlying message, motivation and mindset of the author. Individual sentences don't emerge immaculately from the void.
Which is what I find so disturbing about the Spectator article. Completely pervaded by a flagrant attempt to twist every possible detail to fit his narrative.
- It states "fake evidence was manufactured" but doesn't actually cite any fake evidence.
- It eventually states, in as obscurantist a manner as possible, that Lindsay doesn't believe that trans women should be called women. The author then writes "said her condemnations of violence were not the reason for her ostracism. What then? Perhaps she had committed a micro-aggression", when he had, as I’ve just described, previously given a clear reason for the criticism.
- He concedes that "Although the intolerant right dominates politics in Westminster, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and New Delhi, and although the far right is a dangerous source of terrorism, the far left remains world beaters in the deployment of McCarthyism". This really captures the incredible asymmetry. Conservatives may hold all of the levers of power, dominate government, institutions, and the plutocratic class, but the vociferous criticism of a tiny number of fringe activists is treated as a social problem on a par with the discrimination faced by e.g. trans people, i.e. as if it were some serious social ill.
- The most sinister part of it is when he writes “The police warned her and staff at the library their physical safety may be in danger. Detectives had heard that an antifa group might target them.” This is a terrifying demonstration of what is so dangerous about this sort of rhetoric. Look up how much violence has been committed by people professing to be a part of antifa. It is vanishingly rare. Now compare it to violence committed against trans people. Compare it to violence committed by far-right groups. And now consider that the police, a vast arm of the state itself completely riddled with adherents of the far right, actually accords credence to these nebulous claims. It’s this sort of manufactured fear of persecution that leads to the pre-emptive violence and state brutality which have been so rampant this year.