Drowning in the Shallows: A Sentence That Sank a Career

How One Quip About Hamas Pulled Me Under the Tides of Cancel Culture

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The water, which began innocently enough at the ankle, has now tickled its way up to the chin. I’m now at that peculiar depth where, if you were 20 feet off a beach, you could stand and breathe—just so long as you don’t flinch, sneeze, or allow a passing dinghy to create a ripple. Drop your chin and you taste salt, panic, and the brine of cancel culture.

All this—for one sentence. One! And for this singular thought-crime, I’ve been labelled a racist, an Islamophobe, a violent threat, a threat to children - the type of accusation that flirts with calling someone a paedophile but without ever consumating the relationship.

HR is hiring an inquisitor, an external investigator whom they choose, pay, and who will never receive any business from them again if she doesn’t say what they want.

External investigators are well aware that their sole purpose is to provide a report that completely reiterates management’s preconceived judgment.

Management can then claim, “No, we hired someone non-partisan; look, they used the words ‘non-partisan’ in the introduction of their report.”

That seals it. I thought assertion and evidence were different elements—silly me.

But just to ensure that I am not able to broadcast any defence, other than the one the external investigator will pretend to provide but not do so, I am suspended from a professorship, no contact allowed with anyone who has any association, past, present or future, with the university—banished from campus.

All for insulting Hamas. Yep.

But I still think Hamas are Nazis. I think my opinion should be assessed by its legitimacy, and that my free speech does not get nullified even if the offended hold a high rank in the university and no matter if persons whose entire psyche is one burning dumpster fire of Jew hatred scream and yell at all the university executives.

Sorry, Hamas, Nazis, Muslim Brotherhood, history, Grand Mufti, El-Banna.

I’m not sure whether to write a reasoned defence or draw a chalk outline of my career and wait for the coroner.

I had this quaint belief—don’t laugh—that accusations were to be judged by their evidence, not by pigmentation charts or the vibrato and volume of one’s indignation.

But alas, it is 2024. A post-national, post-modern, post-reason epoch, where Michel Foucault is canonised and every feeling is a constitutional amendment.

Alas, I remain tragically ensnared in the quaint belief that reading books and knowledge counts for something. Textbooks should be bought. That students should even read them.

I am not a cultural fit for this generation. I have become the fax machine in an age of TikTok.

Who knew that if you didn’t mention race, religion, or ethnicity, you could still be a racist or phobe-adjacent variant? If someone’s fists are clenched, their voice trembles, and their vocabulary is limited to monosyllabic slogans, it’s your fault for not providing directions to an adult daycare. I must do better.

These accusation-words—racist, Islamophobe, bigot—are not arguments. They are conversation napalm, detonated to ensure no further dialogue can occur. They serve as judge, jury, and executioner in one lexical bundle. They are the fart bombs of the intellectual arena: expelled when debate becomes inconvenient.

Those who toss them are not thinkers but intellectual flatulists.

We now live in the golden age of misinformation and disinformation, to the extent that we may be less informed than those who relied on a mimeographed school bulletin. Our tribalism is now algorithmically optimised.

A pop-up warning on every phone might read: “Social media wants your attention to make money.” But like cancer warnings on cigarettes, this might only embolden the already hopelessly addicted.

But as I complain about the poor quality of intellectual discussions, I’d like to present my categories of those who respond to institutional censors.

The Even Stephens

They remind me of my grandpa when he had pushed past 85 and was starting to sour on humanity. He tended to resort to “lock them up” as a universal solution for both shoplifters and killers.

It was a straightforward and quick solution. Have every one shut up and punish every one equally for speech.

The ‘Even-Stephens’ reap all the benefits from appearing somewhat informed.

The no-comment Puritan.

This one differs from the one willing to say, “I don’t know enough to comment.” They are perpetually reluctant to comment because they think self-censorship is a virtue.

Big-mouth tyrants love them.

The trip wire word bomber.

They are the ones who lack the critical thinking ability or self-awareness to peel back the layers of motive and intent in human activity. Their brains are just tripwires connected to their ears or eyes; as soon as an idea or position hits their outer cognition perimeter, their alarms start going off, and they start name-calling, word bomb tossing, etc.

Big-mouthed tyrants hire them.

The Dodo.

The listener, the reader, the one who says they don’t have enough information yet to form a strong opinion. They are rare.

The Ostrich.

They bury themselves in social media and Netflix, confusing themselves by separating themselves from the world; they have pretensions of monastic purity but dedicate their entire lives to a pain-free existence of pursuing entertainment and killing time. Having conviction on any social issue strikes them as strange and unnecessary.

HR departments love them if they don’t do it on company time.

The Whataboutism Parrot

These folks are cousins of the Even Stephens. Their response always draws moral equivalency without any discussion of morality. They are more interested in intellectual preening than learning or discussing; they pride themselves on finding tiny, contrary examples and then walking away, as if it were a moment of dramatic impact. But the trailing applause is only in their heads.

Conclusion

This is why I am starting to prefer the company of dogs. Here are mine. I love them.

Toby is the one on the left.

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