Jordan Peterson recently sounded an alarm during his three hour interview with Joe Rogan. A longtime target set to be cancelled, Peterson is now being threatened by the Ontario College of Psychologists with the loss of his clinical license to practice psychology.

In Canada, and other countries, the licensed professional classes are now under attack from newly streamlined form of cancel culture. 

Cancel culture has been a soft, ugly manifestation of authoritarian censorship over the recent years. It has grown to a sort of cottage industry in an attempt to steer culture and ensure the furthering of preferred agendas and narratives.  

Cancel culture is a catch-all term to describe the multitude of methods employed to stifle debate and critical thinking happening outside approved talking points. Debanking, public pressure campaigns, pressuring sponsors to drop talent and cancel contracts and plain old ridicule have been regular place. In addition, a dizzying array of Big Tech censorship methods have been utilized over the years, from warning labels, shadowbanning, deboosting, and outright individual account deplatforming to stop certain unsanctioned conversation, ideas and questions.  

The Covid-era saw a precision streamlining of Big Tech censorship with nearly every government agency pulling the corporate strings of social media giants like Facebook and Twitter to achieve its ends. Quarterbacked by the Department of Homeland Security, Britain’s 77th Brigade’s Psychological Operations division, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House itself at ‘the highest levels,’ the world was greeted to a new technological era of overt speech control giving way to subtle mind control as facts and valid science was memory holed on an industrial level. 

The medical cancel culture has existed for years, and possibly decades, before the world ever heard the word ‘Covid.’ In years past, chemical corporations and pharmaceutical companies used early methods to ridicule those who provided science of their product’s harms. Words like anti-opioid, anti-fluoriders, and yes, anti-vaxxer, were unfairly and often successfully used in an attempt to neutralize individuals and their concerns.

A rare look inside Merck corporate culture thanks to discovery documents in a Vioxx lawsuit showed internal Merck emails from 1999 of company execs complaining about doctors who disliked and spoke out against using Vioxx. One email said: We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live … reported CBS at the time. 

Science and medicine pioneered the cancel culture of its professionals using the pressure points of their license, positions in academia and/or ability to acquire research funding and grants.

Yet over the past year, some form of critical mass appeared weakening the societal grip once enjoyed by the cancel culture and those wielding it. One-by-one, those that were censored for putting forth correct information during the Covid response were vindicated as conspiracy theory gave way to reality again and again. From dismal efficacy and mounting safety issues, the Covid vaccine has been shown to deserve the fact-based warnings of those dismissed and mobbed by cancel culture’s medical arm from early on in the pandemic. Same goes for the damages of lockdowns, ineffectiveness and dangers of masking and value of natural immunity – the voices of those presenting the facts and science of such early warnings were targeted and censored.

Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover also freed conversation and restraints surrounding open debate on the platform creating a desperately needed outlier to the once class-wide narrative control enjoyed by Big Tech giants. Facebook and YouTube appear to slowly, begrudgingly following suit by relaxing some of their speech control and allowing some previously censored individuals back on their platforms.       

As its popularity stalls and the battle to censor the digital town square being lost, censorship culture is shifting its strategy to focus squarely at licensed professionals to create a chilling effect among the intellectual class. Peterson is currently the highest profile individual facing down the weight of this new attack. For every one speaking up like Peterson, there are undoubtedly countless others being steamrolled, professionally bullied and ground down by the licensing cancel culture. 

It was only a few weeks ago that UK cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra appeared on the BBC to issue a warning about myocarditis and excess deaths due to the mRNA Covid shots. The interview, viewed 22.8 million times on Twitter at the time of this writing, was the source of a complaint letter to the UK’s General Medical Council (GMC). In a rare win for open debate and scientific discourse, the GMC appears to have declined disciplinary action against Dr. Malhotra:

We recognise that Dr Malhotra has views on the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines that are at odds with the national and international scientific and medical communities. We also recognise that his words are strong and there is a question around the accuracy of his statements. There is currently no evidence that Dr. Malhotra has engaged in the type of Covid conspiracy related conduct that has to date justified regulatory action.

The current window in time to draw attention to this institutional level censorship operation is rare and brief. It is critical that those brave enough to speak up and fight this level of attack be supported and championed not for their individual thought and ideas, but as symbols of our generation’s fight against the timeless manifestation of humanity’s lower drivers who seek to subjugate the free human spirit and its unbound expression