Cancel Culture Is Not New: I Experienced It Decades Ago

Cancel culture is present everywhere but perhaps nowhere as rampant as college campuses. Just ask Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, who has been censored and even physically accosted when he has turned up to speak on college campuses. What is his crime? He's trying to inform students about freedom and traditional values. In this day and age, that is considered radical on college campuses.

In 1977, I experienced my first taste of censorship and cancellation. A couple of other chiropractors and I had organized for a speaker to come and speak at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in Toronto. This American chiropractor speaker was well-known, intelligent and inspiring. Apparently, being an American was a crime.

The day before his scheduled appearance, I received a call at my office from the head of the Chiropractic Board of Ontario. He wanted to know who was this guy we were hosting? I explained who the speaker was but was told in no uncertain terms that they couldn't allow him on campus. My response was, "Don't you think the students at the college have enough intelligence to assess if the speaker made sense?" Of course, I didn't get a satisfactory response. He didn't think his precious students could tolerate a speaker he didn't sanction. The powers that be were going to stifle free speech.

So here we were with 24 hours to go, a lecture cancelled; we had to think fast. York University had a campus virtually across from where the college was. I called the university, and they had a hall available that could seat 200. We hurriedly got the word out and filled that hall with students eager to learn more about their chosen profession.

So it looks like no matter what, when, or where, if the ruling class sees that you want to stray outside the boundary with some independent thinking, that is not allowed. This is even though we're meant to have free speech, a tenet of Western society.

The Covid years brought us even worse: censorship of movement and bodily autonomy, and cancellation for committing "thought" crimes. That I couldn't imagine 46 years ago.