It's not the "truth" and the "facts" that people are afraid to discuss. It's their opinions about truth and facts.
When you see phrases like "wrong/right side of history" and you see things happening like mass cancellation of brands or people for their opinions, you are seeing it. When a police officer is immediately fired and then charged with murder for performing his job the way he was trained to do it, you are seeing people fear the mob more than they care about the truth.
JK Rowling and Terry Crews are two famous people that come to mind who recently stated unpopular opinions and were attacked by mobs of people. There was no desire on the part of the mob to look for logical reasons for someone to have a
valid opinion that differs from the mainstream.
Maybe we should find a more accurate alternative for “attacked by mobs of people” to avoid equating flamewars with, I don’t know, the Tulsa Massacre. We still need to have the capacity to describe the relative horror of that.
I'm sorry, am I supposed to emphathize with a multimillionaire best-seller author who, instead of enjoying her wealth in some yacht somewhere (or whatever it is rich people do), decided to spend her free time riling up some trans people on twitter?
It's fair to claim Rowling's opinions are bad and it's also fair to say she was dumb to express them. But it seems like a non sequitur to point those things out when someone produces her as an example of someone being attacked for expressing their controversial opinions.
If you want an example of a current person with a true belief that is not accepted by their society that seems by definition hard to produce. Especially to an anonymous member of the society.
When you see phrases like "wrong/right side of history" and you see things happening like mass cancellation of brands or people for their opinions, you are seeing it. When a police officer is immediately fired and then charged with murder for performing his job the way he was trained to do it, you are seeing people fear the mob more than they care about the truth.
JK Rowling and Terry Crews are two famous people that come to mind who recently stated unpopular opinions and were attacked by mobs of people. There was no desire on the part of the mob to look for logical reasons for someone to have a valid opinion that differs from the mainstream.