I may have just missed this in the comments below, but FWIW:
On top of all the other points that have been made in opposition to this stance, I would also assign very low credence to the implied claim “if we don’t [do things that oppose cancel culture], then we’ll be able to avoid getting canceled during the ‘cultural revolution’.” I would suspect that if this “cultural revolution” (which I already consider implausible) were nearly as bad as you suggest, EA as a movement would already get targeted regardless (especially if it’s the case that the whole movement will be held collectively guilty for a subset of the movement speaking out about something), and thus it would have an even smaller fractional expected value.
To clarify further, here the witch analogy that you use is potentially misleading because with witch hunts the scope is at least ostensibly limited to the instances of “witches.” This could of course be expanded to include “witch sympathizers”, but it’s at least more plausible that by avoiding getting involved one can continue their abolition work. If however the witch hunt were to grow into an entire philosophy that says “anyone not primarily concerned with finding witches and burning them will be treated as witch sympathizers,” then you face the lose-lose situation (darned if you do, darned if you don’t).
I may have just missed this in the comments below, but FWIW: On top of all the other points that have been made in opposition to this stance, I would also assign very low credence to the implied claim “if we don’t [do things that oppose cancel culture], then we’ll be able to avoid getting canceled during the ‘cultural revolution’.” I would suspect that if this “cultural revolution” (which I already consider implausible) were nearly as bad as you suggest, EA as a movement would already get targeted regardless (especially if it’s the case that the whole movement will be held collectively guilty for a subset of the movement speaking out about something), and thus it would have an even smaller fractional expected value. To clarify further, here the witch analogy that you use is potentially misleading because with witch hunts the scope is at least ostensibly limited to the instances of “witches.” This could of course be expanded to include “witch sympathizers”, but it’s at least more plausible that by avoiding getting involved one can continue their abolition work. If however the witch hunt were to grow into an entire philosophy that says “anyone not primarily concerned with finding witches and burning them will be treated as witch sympathizers,” then you face the lose-lose situation (darned if you do, darned if you don’t).