Commentary When many years ago I read Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” I was at first not impressed. How could anyone not see that a naked man had no clothes on? But the story was often then interpreted as being about appearance and reality, and nobody needed to look beyond appearances to see that the Emperor was naked. What Andersen’s story is really about is something quite different. Long before the term was invented, he understood the cancel culture. The crux of the story is that two scoundrels manage to make everyone believe that if they can’t see the Emperor’s clothes they must be either unfit for their job, or unusually stupid. The point is that if you can make people sufficiently panicked about losing their reputations and livelihoods, you can make them say and believe anything, no matter how idiotic. They’ll say what they are told …