Panics and Persecutions: 20 Quillette Tales of Excommunication in the Digital Age

'Whether or not readers embrace the substance of the heresies described in the essays that follow, we hope their narratives demonstrate why we should not permit ideologues to decide which viewpoints may or may not be expressed. Whether on the hunt for Catholics, Protestants or Jews, royalists or republicans, capitalists or communists, all mobs present themselves as virtue's servants. Let us now hear from victims of that insidious conceit.' In an age when telling the wrong joke or using the wrong pronoun can cost you your career, Quillette magazine — founded in 2015 by Australian-based journalist Claire Lehmann — has provided a forum for thinkers of all political stripes to push back against the forces of intellectual conformity. Panics and Persecutions brings together a collection of especially compelling Quillette narratives, spanning subcultures from computer science to romance literature. These stories lay bare the human toll of modern ideological inquisitions, often in deeply personal terms—and demonstrate the urgency of Quillette's editorial mission to create a space where free thought lives.