Last month I wrote a piece for The Line on the difference between ‘cancel culture’ and ‘excommunication culture’.

Part of my motivation for writing the article was to highlight that the excesses of excommunication culture couldn’t last. Unwarranted debasements of one’s peers can only go on for so long. At some point, people get fed up and stop playing along with the purity arms race that drives excommunication culture.

I’d argue that we’re reaching that critical juncture with the excesses of excommunication culture, the inflection point where the average person says enough is enough. We’re headed toward a more stable environment where greater care will be taken to differentiate between those who deserve to be punished and excluded, and those who’ve made a forgiveable mistake or who were simply the victim of a hyped up narrative of wrongdoing.

Why do I think we’re at this critical juncture?

First, there’s the wider culture. Check out the new Netflix show, The Chair. It’s in part about a prof who gets excommunicated for making a bad joke in class. Those who drive the excommunication effort in the show, undergraduate students and administrators focused on institutional reputation, don’t come across very well. The undergrads are portrayed as one-dimensional, incapable of understanding nuance and context, and of one mind. I’ve never come across a student body that looks like that and I suspect that a growing number of students are getting tired of being seen as a bunch of ideological lemmings. Administrators, on the other hand, do tend to be squarely focused on reputation. But they’re also incredibly sensitive to changes in public perceptions and mood. As universities increasingly become objects of derision and mockery for allowing excessive excommunications, administrators will shift to defending the importance of free expression and a liberal education. The Chair suggests we’re headed there in the way it portrays the sheer cravenness of the dean.

Second, there’s the growing professional class pushback. Today’s Anne Applebaum column in The Atlantic can be read as a cry that all is already lost, that excommunication culture is taking over and that it can’t be stopped. I’d argue that the column shows the opposite. Once columns like this start getting published more and more, which they have and will, it means the pivot has already happened. When mainstream outlets and the professional class start panicking about something (especially something they fuelled), it’s on the way out already.

Am I saying that there won’t be anymore unjustified excommunications? Nope. The pivot only means the slope is now headed downward, not that the trend will cease altogether. Indeed, those who rely on excessive excommunication to get their way or jockey for ingroup status will probably get more zealous as they see their power and influence diminishing. Twitter mobs will still gather and make demands, but institutions will eventually figure out that they aren’t a proxy for what most people think.

Importantly, though, those who have done actual harm will still be punished and shunned, and legitimately so; for all their excesses, progressive excommunications were initially motivated by a need for much needed change, as Applebaum notes. The aim will now be to restore proportionality and due process to the righting of wrongs. As those who actually care about progress and social justice already know, moreover, movements that instill fear and alienation among those they’re trying to persuade ultimately undermine themselves. While the past few years of amped up excommunications surely made many feel that they were taking down those who deserved it, the adrenaline rush is ending and the time to build lasting coalitions has returned.