Bill Maher talks cancel culture and John Lewis with authors of Harper’s open ‘letter on justice’ – USA TODAY

James Corden slammed Bill Maher for saying fat-shaming needed to "make a comeback." USA TODAY

An open letter decrying the "intolerance of opposing views"published last month in Harper's Magazine got another moment in the spotlight Friday on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher".

Two of the letter's proponents,former New York Times opinion columnistBari Weissand "Self-Portrait in Black and White" authorThomas Chatterton Williams, talked to Maher about the pitfalls of cancel culture.

Weiss told Maher thatilliberalism, defined as intolerance, is different than criticism.

"We're used to criticism. Criticism is kosher in the work that we do, criticism'sgreat," she said. "What cancel culture is about is not criticism, it is about punishment, it is about making a person radioactive, it is about taking away their job."

July'sopen letter in Harpers Magazine was spearheaded by Williams and signed by Weiss as well as other notablewriters, artists and academics such asJ.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood. The authors decriedthe weakening of public debate and warnedthat the free exchange ofinformation and ideas is in jeopardyamid a rise in what they call illiberalism.

Theletter comes amid a debate over so-called cancel cultureandprominent people coming under attackattack for sharing controversial opinionson social media.

Weiss told Maher that the Harper's letter was a "warning cry from inside the institutions." Weiss recently resigned from the Times due to"constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views," among other factors.

She recently stirred up controversy when she tweeted about the "civil war" going on inside the Times in the wake of uproar over Sen. Tom Cotton's (R-Ar.) viral "Send in the Troops" opinion piece.

More: Maher celebrates anniversary of women getting vote, calls it GOP D-Day

Weiss said cancel culture isn't "just about punishing the sinner," but also a "secondary boycott of people who would deign to speak to that person or appear ona platform with that person." She added that if conversation around disagreement becomes impossible then the only way to resolve conflict would beviolence.

The former Times staffer said that "politics has come to supplantreligion" and you see it with people on the right who look to Donald Trump as a "deity" and you see it on the left "where to be anything less than defunding the police or abolishthe police to choose the issue of the day, makes you something like a heretic." She added that this type of thinking points to the "collapse of moderates."

Maher noted that it's not just the celebrity elite who believe they will be chastised for saying something politically incorrect and that people "don't like walking around on eggshells."

"When the science has to come second to the political correctness, we're in trouble," Maher said before reading off part of Harper's letter that noted "professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes."

Williams said that cancel culture is not about bringing"elites back to Earth" but it has an "onlooker effect" that has "a chilling and stifling and narrowing influence on all of our behaviors."

He added that the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who died at 80 from cancer on July 17,also had a "point of view that was divergent from the consensus at the time that he was alive." Williams said that Lewis' stance seems "so clear to us now," but at the time Lewis was going against "consensus."

"We need to have all the points of view that we can have because we dont know what the truth is actually going to shake out to be 10, 20,50 years down the road," Williams said. "We need to challenge our consensus views, and when we think about John Lewis, we should think about that was a guy who saw something wrong and stood up and spoke up for it, and he didnt just adhere to the prevailing consensus at the time."

More: Twitter's cancel culture: A force for good or a digital witchhunt? The answer is complicated.

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