Empathy is cancelled.

We should all be worried about where cancel culture is taking us.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done in your life? How would you feel if everyone in your life; your friends, your family, your colleagues knew about it? What would the repercussions be for your career and your relationships?

This is the nightmare scenario most of us think about when we think of cancel culture, but it isn’t the most worrying aspect of the movement. The destruction of individual lives is tragic and in most cases undeserved, but the real problem is the toll that this will have on our society if we allow it to grow.

Of course, you’re probably thinking that “we” aren’t allowing it to grow at all, right? You’re probably not one of the tiny minority of people who spends their days searching through the tweets and videos of prominent figures, searching for something to take offence at. You’re similarly unlikely to be part of the slightly larger minority that piles on as soon as a transgression is found. It’s understandable if you’re thinking that this has nothing to do with you. But this innocence is purely a matter of perspective.

One would imagine that Germans living through the rise of the National Socialist party felt similarly blameless. They weren’t personally guilty of persecuting the Jews. They…