https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-woke-witch-hunt-has-taken-over-the-arts/

If artists do not apologise, they get the JK Rowling treatment: people who ought to be their friends turn on them for fear of being denounced themselves. After Rowling took up the gender critical cause, every star in the Harry Potter movies came under pressure to disassociate themselves from her. I have no doubt that many were genuine in their condemnations. But no one should pretend the spectacle did not have a McCarthyite element. Like authoritarian governments, authoritarian movements want to isolate their targets by tearing the natural bonds of affection and provoking friends into denouncing each other.

The most compelling parallel with dictatorship, however, is in the tentative nature of protests against such censorship. Artists do it obliquely in a code that only the initiated understand. The National Theatre, for example, dare not take on woke culture directly. But it has revived The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s 1953 reaction to McCarthyism, just when we need it the most.