I am completely sympathetic to your position ("Problematic"? Ugh!), but I don't see things from that position quite as you do. It may be that the period during which Hachette planned to publish Allen's book was a period when the opportunity for sales trumped the resistance to complicity. I think Hachette should first have formed an opinion as to whether it was paying a pedophile to defend himself. A publisher is allowed to do that, and "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is not necessarily the appropriate standard. It's not like he lacks the resources to self-publish.

Employees have every right to protest their employers' actions and to threaten job actions, with such consequences as the law allows. Every employee of a publisher is complicit in the publisher's decisions. Mostly, employees can say "Opinions vary, and the boss knows more about this stuff than I do." But there are times when the issue is more personal and the feelings, (yes, feelings) of those who will someday have to put on their resumes that they worked for the company that published a certain book do matter.

There is certainly a slippery slope there, and the woke silliness you cite about "older white men" is worthy of dismissal. Cancel culture is bad precisely because it overreaches. This case, however, doesn't strike me as over-reach.