[adolph]

With the highly publicized Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, and following the suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt that same year, McCarthy's support and popularity faded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

According to the theory, when articulating preferences individuals frequently tailor their choices to what appears socially acceptable. In other words, they convey preferences that differ from what they genuinely want. Kuran calls the resulting misrepresentation "preference falsification".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification

Now this is a system where if one of us decides for whatever reason that we’re going to call a spade a spade and say this system doesn’t work, I don’t like it, I go out in the street and I start demonstrating — a lot of other people are going to follow. So what’s happened is ultimately, when some demonstrations began, and it happened to be the demonstration started in East East Germany, these demonstrations started growing every week, more and more people found in themselves the courage to say what they believed and to come out against the regime.

https://moses.land/eric-weinstein-and-timur-kuran-on-the-por...

[jimbob45]

I certainly agree that a high- profile suicide or equally heinous act would accelerate cancel culture into its demise but surely waiting for catastrophic disaster like that is not a realistic strategy.

[adolph]

The moment comes from a mortal sacrifice more often is desirable for certain. Examples of the top of my head are Thích Quảng Đức [0], and Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi [1].

0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi

2.