Thrown Under the Bus
– cancel culture and what we can do about it
On 20 April 2024, at the New Culture Forum’s State of Emergency Conference, Dr Philip Kiszely made this powerful and moving speech about the personal fallout of ‘WrongThink’
Philip is an academic with over 20 years’ experience of teaching in higher education. In his speech, titled ‘Thrown Under the Bus: the Cancel Culture Crisis and How to Stop it’ Philip told two stories. The first was about young academic who tragically took his life following a twitter spat that led to an investigation by his university. The other was Philip’s personal story of initial despair following his own ‘cancellation’ late last year and how he is now fighting back.
Save Mental Health is very grateful to Philip for agreeing to let us publish his speech on our website and circulate it to our supporters.
If you want to find out more about the New Culture Forum (NCF) here is a link to their website. You can also find out about the fast-growing network of ‘NCF locals’ groups across the UK in this video.
Introduction
I’m going to start with a story (one of two – I’ll come to the other later on).
This little tale is about a British academic called Pete Newbon. Pete’s specialism was Victorian literature – but he was also a campaigner against anti-Semitism. Understandable enough. There’s an awful lot of Jew-hate out there, and Pete was Jewish. In May 2021, he found himself in a social media spat with another Jew, poet, broadcaster and political activist Michael Rosen.
Now, you might remember the case. Newbon referenced Rosen’s work ironically to make a point about Jeremy Corbyn and the anti-Semitic radical left. In response, Rosen – a big fan of St Jeremy – actually accused Newbon of anti-Semitism.
Then all hell broke loose. And Newbon received a torrent of online abuse from the usual ‘#bekind’ Corbinysta suspects. But it didn’t stop there. Because 4,000 of them complained to his employer, the University of Northumbria.
Northumbria’s subsequent investigation was, according to The Spectator, ‘a tale worthy of Kafka’. And it resulted in a final written warning.
Amidst various types of further fallout, Pete Newbon decided that he’d had enough.
On January 15 2022, he committed suicide.
He was 38 years old.
And with that, Ladies and Gentlemen, I welcome you to Cancellation Britain!
It’s a dangerous place: Ask Graham Linehan – he lost everything because he spoke out against the madness of gender.
Ask a certain ex-teacher at Batley Grammar School – well, you couldn’t actually, even if you wanted to. Why? Because he’s still in hiding, frightened for his life. The education authorities, he says, threw him under the bus.
That, for me, sums up cancel culture. Bullying. Cowardice. People left vulnerable. Thrown under the bus.
The Khan Review – published a couple of weeks ago – draws attention to the cancel culture problem.
I’m quoting: ‘There is a growing and dangerous climate of harassment and censorship which is undermining not only people’s ability to live their lives and speak freely, but also censoring institutions and the wider society.’
The review was commissioned by the current Conservative administration – and is only a decade behind the rest of us with all this stuff. So they’re doing pretty well really, all things considered.
No. I’m not being completely fair there – it was commissioned in 2021. And it is an important document.
So is the Cass Review, published just last week. In it, consultant paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass identifies a culture of fear in the NHS.
Her findings are shocking. Put bluntly, cancel culture prevented professionals from voicing concerns at medical intervention in the name of genderism. Vulnerable children, therefore, were left at the mercy of ideologues and fanatics.
It’s a characteristic of our times:
· People stand by as safeguarding flies out the window.
· Society nods along as youngsters are told they are born in the wrong body. Born in the wrong body. Have you ever heard anything so daft?
But this is what happens when behaviour is governed by fear.
· People are coerced into doing things they don’t want to do.
· They say things they know to be false.
· And parents? Well, they find themselves rationalising abomination.
It’s the same with other culture war issues, by the way:
· Society cheers along ‘Net Zero’, knowing full well it will make us poorer and curtail our freedoms.
· Politicians talk of Islamophobia when the nation’s Jews, fearful for their property and children, are looking to emigrate at the first possible opportunity.
· And let’s not forget the move to introduce autogynephillic men into women’s toilets, sports and prisons.
All in the name of inclusion.
All in the name of kindness.
It’s an obscene reversal of values.
It’s our world turned upside down.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen a sharp increase in political ‘activism’. And that activism has become increasingly belligerent in nature. So much so, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s out of control. If you sense fear – there’s that word again – in the way the Saturday hate marches are policed, then I’d say it’s a safe bet you’re on to something.
There are many reasons why the fabric of our society is in tatters;
Why the common bond of citizenship is broken;
Why hatred for Britain (and the West more generally) parades itself naked on our streets.
· Mass immigration in the millions is a reason
· Our useless government is a reason
· The hostile civil service is a reason – and they’re all connected
But I’m going to focus on another reason – similarly connected and part of the same picture – because I think it’s of monumental significance. And it provides a nice segue into the second story of cancellation I’m going to tell you.
That reason is the obsession with activism in our universities. Activism is now the cornerstone of the curriculum – in arts, humanities and social sciences. It is an end in itself. It’s thee end – in every sense of the word. And it is a major driver of cancel culture.
Just visualise, if you will, the typical activist youngster. Let’s call them Jonty or Jemima Ponsonby-Smyth. They are of course non-binary, committed socialists, and avid Green campaigners. Straight back from a gap year (funded by mummy and daddy), in which they have flown all around the world, they’re now ready for the university ‘experience’.
It’s terribly exciting! Because they can read for – wait for it! – degrees in activism. What a lovely way to put the cherry on the luxury belief cake.
One Masters level course – I won’t mention the institution – has words like Peace, Resilience and Social Justice in the title. I would wager it promotes none of those things.
What do you need to get on it? A 2:2 undergraduate degree and just 4 GCSEs at Grade C. Easy! That’s the future sorted for our Ponsonby-Smyth offspring.
But it isn’t just the degrees themselves, however substandard they might be. After all, it would be your choice to sign up for such a course. No, it’s the individual study modules within degrees – and pretty much all degrees. They’re the problem. Because as a student (and there are lots and lots of incredible students out there) you’ll be compelled to engage with the ‘social justice’ misnomer, no matter what you study.
Really, you’ve no idea how pervasive this stuff is. Here are just a few of the countless examples:
1. Open University module: Social justice, equity and equality: inclusive practice for all
2. Kings College London: Social Justice and Policy Analysis
3. University of Sussex: Social Justice, Leadership & Organising
4. Birkbeck: Social Justice
5. York: Social Justice & Education
6. Dundee: Action for Social Justice
7. West Scotland: Social Activism and Social Justice
And so on and so on. You throw keywords like ‘gender’, ‘identity’ and ‘race’ into the mix and you’re faced with education Armageddon. There no end to it – it’s everywhere.
Imagine trying to stand up against some of this stuff. You can’t. There is no balance. No ear for an alternative narrative. Staff or student, you just get cancelled.
Which brings me to my second story – and it’s about me.
I’m going to tell you what it’s like to be targeted by activists and hauled over the coals as a result. I can’t give you details of professional context just yet, because I’m still under investigation at work.
But I can tell you how it feels. I can communicate something of that 21st Century peculiarly phenomenon – the personal fallout of ‘WrongThink’.
It is not all doom and gloom, by the way. When you’re looking down the gun barrel of professional and financial disaster, you grab the laughs where you find them. And you find them in some bloody funny places...!
Cancellation can happen to the best of us. Recently, Dan Wootton was investigated by two British police forces – in response to complaints about him. That he was completely exonerated is of course wonderful news, but it will be a while before the wounds start to heal. None of that matters to his social media tormentors. As far as they’re concerned, he’s guilty as sin. His crime? Association with GB News.
I’m guilty of the same. I’m also affiliated with an education institution. Once the trolls clocked that little connection, it was only a matter of time before they landed me in the cancellation mincer.
Which is precisely where I found myself one Tuesday last December. The day had started badly, with searing pain from an abscess on my gum. By mid-afternoon dental problems were the least of my worries. All of a sudden I was fighting for my professional life – and weighing vague alternatives to the future that had just been flushed down the toilet. It was traumatic, sure…
…but it was also liberating. This is what I mean by ‘not all doom and gloom’. And this is where my story differs from Dan’s. He was robbed of a career that he loved; I looked like saying goodbye to a sector that had become alien to me. So when I received the formal email – “we need to talk about your media and social media commentary” – I felt a bewildering combination of fear and relief.
Yes, I was worried about my mortgage; yes, I was concerned about feeding myself (not to mention Bobby, my portly feline companion). But I’m old enough to spot an opportunity when I see one – even when it’s cloaked in disaster. I was excited by the turn of events. Genuinely excited.
Why, then, did I keep fantasising about throwing myself from the top of the highest car park in Leeds?
Mental health website Very Well Mind says cancellation ‘can feel as if everyone is giving up on you before you've even had the chance to apologise (let alone change your behaviour)’.
I wasn’t apologising to anyone. And I certainly wasn’t going to change my behaviour. As far as I was concerned, I had done nothing wrong.
But the car park was never far from my thoughts. Odd.
Or so it seemed at the time.
The run-up to Christmas was a something of fraught affair, with me shouting and bawling one minute, quietly weeping the next. Up and down, round and round. Mentally and physically exhausting – for me and everyone in my orbit.
That said, I never lost sight of the absurdity of the situation. What really brought it home was a student evaluation exercise on one of my modules, taught the previous semester.
I was sat at home when the results of the evaluation pinged in my email. 48 students enrolled on the module, 44 took the survey. Overall Satisfaction came in at 98%. One comment read: “The atmosphere was welcoming and inclusive”.
Should I have been angry at the unfairness of it all? I couldn’t say. I just had a bloody good laugh.
The festive season came and went and still I carried my favourite car park around in my head. One day in early January I decided to pay it a visit. I pressed my trousers, polished my Chelsea boots, and took my time choosing a shirt and tie. I sprayed some Aqua di Parma, my best aftershave, and jumped in a cab.
There was never any question of my doing anything drastic, incidentally. I wasn’t exactly an oasis of calm, but neither was I at the end of my tether either. I just wanted to know.
As I looked out on the Leeds skyline I puzzled over the two competing scenarios in my mind. In one, I plunged to my death and embraced the gift of oblivion. In the other I bounced on the ground, cartoon-style, and strutted away rubbing my rump.
Then I solved the mystery. None of this was literal; it was instead symbolic. I was working through the fear of leaping into the unknown. Coming to terms with starting afresh. Once that penny dropped I breathed a sigh of relief.
All very obvious, I know, but sometimes circumstances make it difficult for you to know yourself.
Ok. Enough with the dollar-book Freud.
There’s good news – we’re going to win!
Not tomorrow, not next week, but we are going to win. People are waking up to the consequences of keeping quiet while bullies and bigmouths call the shots.
But waking up isn’t enough. They need to do something about it.
We need to do something about it. When activism becomes pathological – as it always does when, say, women and Jews are targets – we need to make a stand. We need to make a stand for children. If we don’t, nobody else will. The institutions will just look on. Stupidly. They’ll rewrite history when they see the tables turning – as they are doing now with gender.
And the institutions will continue to play the part of Coward in the cancellation drama.
So, we’ve got to make noise and get organised. We’ve got to sign petitions and vote for the smaller parties. We’ve got to worry at the biggest challenges of our time – mass immigration and genderism.
We know all that.
But what if you find yourself cancelled as a result of that action?
At work;
By an organisation to which you’re affiliated, or on the board of;
By a charity you’re involved with;
By a school at which you’re a governor;
By anyone who closes down your right to express yourself.
This is what you do:
1. Come to terms:
· Take a deep breath.
· Get in touch with the Free Speech Union.
· Find out who’s attacking you.
· Find out where your employer stands.
· Tell friends and family.
2. Start your fightback:
· Think about your employer. Go through emails, look over minutes. Find any irregularities you can. And I mean of any – consider your whole time there. Anything can be ammunition.
· Keep a diary of day-to-day events.
· Keep an eye on the broader context – it might help. Genderism is imploding, remember – if they’re out to get you for that, the chances are you can get them.
Tactics:
1. Question everything.
2. Give them plenty of work – bombard them with requests for clarification and information.
3. Pounce on any and all slip-ups.
4. Be prepared for a long haul, ACAS, and all the rest of it. Be prepared to go to press.
5. Never, ever apologise!
Finally, make sure you belong to an organised and sympathetic community. In other words, Join NCF Locals! Don’t face the juggernaut alone. It could be fatal.
I’ll make you a promise here and now: if your employer sacks you, or disciplines you – ‘throws you under the bus’ – for expressing perfectly legitimate opinions, I’ll write a letter of protest. We should all write letters of protest. Again and again. Take that main cancellation tactic – and turn it on its head.
If you’re cancelled I’ll be there for you – I’ll listen to you. Because you’ve been there for me – in Manchester and Nottingham and Leeds. Thank you NCF Locals.
Thanks everybody.
It’s good to be back.
It’s good to see you again!