Introduction
In a series of essays to be published later this year, I analyze the psychology of cancel culture from the perspective of the three parties engaged in a cancellation event. Using Professor Luke Sheahan’s treatment of cancellations as a “degradation ceremony” enacted by a “revolutionary community”, I employ his tripartite division of perpetrators, denouncers and witnesses, to examine cancellation dynamics.
From the perspective of the perpetrator/target of cancellation, I compare the statement or apology extorted from the target to the false confession in the criminal context, noting distinct similarities and motivations between the two phenomena. Looking at the denouncers/cancelers, I rely on a recent study of cancellation motivation to confirm that cancelers generally demonstrate a high political identity centrality employing cancellation events via an initial calling out of a target for the purposes of virtue signalling to an in-group. This is followed by a piling on that allows the cancelers to engage in social vigilantism aimed at “educating the ignorant other.” Finally, from the side of the witnesses, I draw on institutional betrayal theory as developed by Drs. Jennifer Freyd and Carly Smith to highlight the manner in which certain institutions perpetuate the initial harm caused to the cancellation target by enacting a further secondary harm while mimicking and validating the cancelers’ feigned harm.
In this essay, with the psychological elements of cancellation as background, I turn to the realm of social theory. My intention here is to employ a critical class analysis to better understand cancellation as an event largely operative in the meritocratic upper middle class (sometimes associated with the notion of the professional-managerial class), with all three parties – targets, cancelers and witnesses – situated within this class. As with my essays on the psychological foundations of cancellation, I will apply the analysis to my own cancellation event providing a practical example of the theory of cancellation as dominated by a specific class. I will then use the theory of artificial negativity as developed by critical theorist Paul Piccone to uncover the class motivations underlying cancelation. In doing so, I will place specific emphasis on the application of the meritocratic class’s luxury belief system (Henderson) to the reified notion of the “marginalized community” as the means by which this class enforces conformity to its own internal value system while outwardly displaying the pretense of an equity-motivated morality to external classes.
A Cancelling Class In a July 15, 2020 piece in The Week, commentator Bonnie Kristian, referring to Ross Douthat’s “10 theses about cancel culture,” argues that cancel culture is the prevue of a particular professional class. Additionally, it targets members of the same professional class, primarily with the threat of exile from their profession for failure to adhere to a set of in-group “progressive” values. Specifically, Kristian refers to this class as the professional-managerial class, using the term coined by John and Barbara Ehrenreich in 1977 to describe a phenomenon first identified by James Burnham in his 1941 book, The Managerial Revolution.
The idea of a professional managerial class (sometimes referred to by traditional Marxists as the PMC hypothesis), proposes that a class of largely non-capital-owning, university-educated managers has emerged since the mid-twentieth century. This class includes many of those we would now consider professionals: scientists, lawyers, judges, academics, artists, and journalists, as well as those in highly paid service professions, such as doctors. But it also can include more marginal professionals such as nurses, teachers or law enforcement. According to the Ehrenreichs, this class has grown from about 1% of the population in the 1930s to approximately 35% by 2006.
As a tool of analysis, it has been viewed by Marxists as a form of revisionism. It has been further developed by cultural theorist, Catherine Liu in her 2021 book, Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class. My intention in using the concept is not to judge it so much as to employ it as a useful framework in which to consider who cancels and who gets cancelled. As Kristian notes, the professional managerial class is not simply middle class nor is it upper class. Indeed, it is not clear that the concept fits easily on a more traditional ladder of lower-middle-upper class. It is more in the model of a transitional class or faction into which one can enter and leave through merit, usually on the basis of obtaining a university education and then becoming certified through a professional organization. The proliferation of professional regulators and institutions offering an endless array of professional designations is indicative of the rapid growth of this class.
However, it is the transitory nature of this class that also makes it most prone to cancellation events. As Kristian notes, celebrities and the wealthy are not often engaged as cancelers nor are they easy targets for cancellation. Their wealth and status protect them to the extent that the only public sanction that can touch them is criminal conviction. In this regard, Kristian cites J.K. Rowling as an example. Though labelled by some as transphobic for her gender-critical views, she has largely been insulated from cancellation threats by her wealth and celebrity. And in her case, it is not even clear that criminal sanctions are effective as she recently chided the Scottish police to arrest her for her views under the anti-hate legislation proposed by the Scottish government. As it turned out, even the police declined to arrest her.
Similarly, cancellations are rare among the lower and middle classes. While members of these classes might be fired for an offensive rant caught on video and posted on social media, these individuals are generally not subject to professional discipline by a regulatory body that could cost them their professional standing or license. Most are able to move on to other positions or are themselves owners of small businesses who may be impacted by an effort to boycott their business but are not subject to loss of the professional status they have studied and worked to achieve.
An additional group that is also difficult to cancel is politicians. As Evan Nierman and Mark Sachs have argued in their 2023 book, The Cancel Culture Curse, politicians are protected by a ready-made communications team that will immediately pounce on any attempts to cancel a politician, normally reformulating the attack as a partisan effort by political opponents. This usually deflects the attack, subsuming it under party discipline and loyalty. A prime example here is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who, despite admitting to having engaged in the wearing of black-face on numerous occasions, so common that he was unable to recount the exact number, was unaffected by the revelations and may have even benefitted from them during his 2021 re-election campaign.
However, not all members of the professional class are equally susceptible to cancellation. According to Kristian, and following Douthat’s theses, cancellation attacks are often more effective against those in earlier stages of their careers or those attempting to enter into the professional class. Again, this is consistent with the transitory nature of the class. Unlike other classes, the professional class is more like a club one aspires to, a reflection, especially in Anglo-American countries, of the goal of upward mobility. Achievements in sports, music, the arts and academics, followed by entry into a professional association, are how those from the traditionally lower and middle classes make their way into the professional class. Those on their way up are more likely to be cancelled than those with long and established credentials in the class.
A key aspect of the professional class that makes it amenable to cancellation events is that this class signals membership not only, or even primarily, through material expressions, but by espousing certain values. Social commentator and academic Rob Henderson has referred to these as “luxury beliefs.” Where the upper class once indicated rank through possessions, Henderson argues that our contemporary professional class displays membership through the promulgation of a series of progressive values. A controversial element in Henderson’s thesis on luxury values is that they entail social implications that impose no cost on the class proffering them but have material consequences for the middle and lower classes. As such, they can harm those within the professional class when they fail to conform their opinions to these views via cancellation, but they also have implications for those outside the class. I will return to this question below. What can be gleaned from these various theories at this stage is a plausible understanding of cancellation as a class-based event. As an example, I will turn to my own cancellation event as a manifestation of class-based shunning.
Professionally Cancelled
My experience with cancellation occurred when I was named full-time Chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission (AHRC) in May 2022, after having served almost three years as a part-time Commissioner. During my time as a Commissioner, I had written over 40 published decisions (rising to 54 by the time I was terminated as Chief in September 2022) and had conducted more than 40 mediations between disputing parties. In addition, as with all Chiefs and Commissioners, I was an active member of the Law Society of Alberta, having practiced law for 12 years. I was also the first openly gay man to hold the position of Chief.
The alleged “crime” that led to my cancellation was authoring a book review on the theme of Islamic imperialism,13 years prior in 2009. The book, written by well-known Middle East historian, Efraim Karsh and published by Yale University Press, argued that the imperial drive in Islam – manifest through the traditional caliphate and requirement for jihad – remains an important force in the contemporary Middle East, contributing to a violent strain in the political life of most Muslim-majority countries. In my review, I agreed with a number of Karsh’s positions and challenged others. In response to my termination following my cancellation, Karsh himself noted that the review was no different from any other and was part of the normal activities of scholarly life.
In terms of my own background, I am something of a cross-over between the academic and legal worlds. I obtained master’s levels degrees from Harvard and the Ecole des hautes etudes in Paris and have published a number of academic articles and reviews. While at Harvard, I studied medieval Islamic philosophy with Professor Muhsin Mahdi, at the time recognized as the world’s foremost scholar on the subject, with a special emphasis on the writings of al-Farabi.
But none of this mattered when the cancel vultures (to use Mark Nierman’s term) came for me. In general, the number of individuals coordinating the attack was small. It began the day my appointment was announced by the Alberta government in May 2022, when a professor emeritus of law at the University of Calgary questioned my qualifications to be Chief of the AHRC, as well as claiming that past appointments I had received were obvious political patronage. That the professor in question had never taught in the area of human rights law – he was a professor of energy law – did not dissuade him from launching his broadside against me.
This attack had little impact, but it was followed by a much more aggressive effort in July 2022. Having been made aware of my book review, likely by the staff of the then leader of Alberta’s Official Opposition, Rachel Notley, a blogger and would-be journalist affiliated with the Opposition, wrote a piece attacking my connections to the ruling conservative government and called out my review. Within minutes of its publication, members of the Opposition, including Irfan Sabir, himself a Muslim, took to social media demanding that I resign or be fired while labelling my writing (including what seemed other non-existent works) as Islamophobic, racist and hate speech. Mr. Sabir went so far as to connect my 2009 book review, likely read by no more than 10 people, to violent attacks on black Muslim women more than a decade later in Edmonton, Alberta, most of those attacks having been carried out by men with mental health issues. This second attack stirred up some media coverage but not enough to dethrone me from my position as Chief.
The third attack, which resulted in the Alberta government removing me as Chief came from the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) in September 2022. Having been contacted by the blogger who originally wrote the piece condemning me, the NCCM reached out to the Alberta Premier’s Office, which in turn instructed me to meet with the NCCM leadership. I met by Zoom with their CEO, Mustafa Farooq, and agreed to make a statement, though without an apology. I also agreed to meet with members of the Muslim community.
As with most cancellations, once the target is identified and forced to capitulate to the cancelers’ demands, there is little chance that they will survive. Though I was eventually instructed by an “emissary” of the Minister responsible for the AHRC not to meet with the members of the Muslim community identified by the NCCM, the NCCM determined that I had been insufficiently supine, especially as I had served Notices of Defamation on two bloggers and a journalist. They called for my termination which the Alberta government granted. And litigation ensued.
The questions my cancellation raises in light of claims that cancellation is targeted at and by the professional class are whether I fit into this category and whether my cancelers and third-party witnesses similarly belong. In my case, I could be seen as a model of a professional class member. Like a large portion of this class, I was not born into it but did work my way into the class through education, international work with entities such as the United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross, and with my eventual membership in the legal profession, including serving on numerous related boards and committees. In accordance with Kristian’s comments, I was not firmly situated in the profession but had only been called to the bar in 2010. I was making my way up through the profession but had not fully solidified my position when I was cancelled.
Similarly, my cancelers were all members of the professional meritocratic class. The professor who criticized me is an academic. The blogger who wrote his hit piece is a journalist, if only on the periphery of the profession. Rachel Notley, leader of the Alberta Opposition, and Irfan Sabir, the primary member of the Opposition leading their attack on me, are both lawyers, with the added bonus that Ms. Notley is also the daughter of a former politician. The CEO of the NCCM whom I met with is also a lawyer. That he has publicly compared homosexuality to adultery and called for the dismantling of the Canadian nation-state and its replacement by the Cordoba caliphate, did not seem to put him outside the luxury beliefs of the Canadian professional class.
As for the third-party witnesses who assisted in my cancellation, they were all members of the Alberta government, including the Minister of Justice who is also a lawyer. As such, my experience seems to confirm the thesis that cancellation is a professional class phenomenon. But my situation is a bit more complicated.
While I was banished from the polite society of the AHRC and ostracized by politicians of both the left and right, I have not been entirely cancelled due to my unique circumstances. One of these is the source of my alleged transgression. With many cancellations, the object of the cancelers’ ire is often a social media statement. In my case, I was targeted for having written a legitimate academic book review. This meant that, whatever my future as a lawyer might be, it did not sit well with most academics that I was cancelled for exercising my academic freedom. Indeed, the year after I was cancelled, and following a full review of the events by a selection committee, I was appointed Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Calgary medical school in recognition of work I had done, coincidentally enough, on harm caused by unfair processes used by professional medical regulators.
In terms of my legal career, that has foundered but is now coming back, largely because of my prior reputation. Had I been at an earlier stage of my legal career, it is quite possible that I would not be able to rehabilitate that aspect of my life.
Finally, I have been accepted into academic and scholarly circles, often in the United States, precisely because I have developed expertise in cancellation, along with an understanding of how religious groups, claiming the status of the marginalized, are able to pursue cancellation. My experience, while suggesting cancellation is a class expression also confirms that, having achieved a certain level of competence in the class, one can recover some of the lost reputation and not be fully banished from the class.