Representatives of the progressive left in Western academia, social movements, and institutionalized politics aim to increase inclusion and democracy in various policy fields. Meanwhile, their opponents—Marxist leftists, universalist liberals, as well as conservative forces, both within and outside of academia—insist that the progressives’ anti-intellectual, quasi-religious moralizing and authoritarian tendencies threaten academic freedom, free speech, and democracy. Having been ubiquitous in public discourse for years, recently academics have started to describe these phenomena as “illiberal” too, indicating that more research is needed in this field. This chapter examines three policy fields in Germany where these debates are currently playing out: (1) the bill on gender self-identification, (2) gender-inclusive language use, and (3) the emergence of the Academic Freedom Network (Netzwerk Wissenschaftsfreiheit). The concrete political claims being made in these three fields (sex/gender, language, and scientificity/cancel culture) in Germany represent paradigmatic cases of crucial terms of liberal democracy being rewritten. This chapter explores the theoretical underpinnings of these progressive claims and asks to what extent these theories about power, reality, truth, and knowledge contribute to those political practices. It presents the research problems relating to this question using the three cases, as well as draws some preliminary observations relating to the democratic stakes of the debate. Keywords: left; anti-pluralism; gender; academic freedom; Germany