Getting cancelled is nasty business. Promoters of the concept may argue there’s no such thing as cancel culture — that anyone who finds themselves out of a job or publicly ostracized for falling afoul of woke demands is simply being held to account for their own actions. I am proof to the contrary.

Having learned some important personal lessons and looked into academic research on the topic, I now consider myself something of an expert on the topic. Here’s what you need to know about getting cancelled.

In 2022, after serving as a part-time commissioner for nearly three years, I was appointed chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission. My education and work experience were ideally suited to the post, including degrees in political philosophy and the intellectual history of human rights. On the eve of my appointment, however, a left-wing blogger dug up a 13-year-old article I had written for C2C Journal reviewing a book on Islam by renowned historian Efraim Karsh.

This quickly led to hysterical claims of Islamophobia on my part. Provincial NDP justice critic Ifran Sabir called me “overtly racist” and the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) soon joined the frenzy as well. Assuring me that my appointment was not in jeopardy, the Alberta government asked me to meet with the NCCM several times.

The NCCM demanded I write an apology, which I refused; the book review was nothing to apologize for, it was simply an honest account of an erudite scholar’s book. I did, however provide a public statement in which I said “I commit to continuing my personal education about Islam, and all faiths.” While I was told this would be sufficient penance, the NCCM kept up its campaign. Two months later the government fired me.

My first mistake was in misunderstanding the motivations of my accusers. According to research recently published in the academic journal Acta Psychologia, the initial participants in a cancellation are recognizable by their “political centrality identity.” These are highly-politicized individuals driven to demonstrate their ideological bona fides. They may claim their goal is merely to rectify harm suffered by an identifiable or marginalized group, but the over-riding purpose is to display their own zeal to other members of their in-group. For this reason, it is impossible to negotiate with them.

Following the first wave of “call-out” cancellers come the “pile-on” cancellers, who then form a social media vigilante mob. These later participants typically lack detailed knowledge of the issues at play but instead seek to satisfy their own sense of accomplishment by achieving a cancellation.

My next mistake was in thinking that a public statement would placate this mob. The work of Saul Kassin, an expert in false confessions at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University New York, is instructive here. It is Kassin’s insight that innocent people are often threatened or cajoled into confessing to crimes they did not commit in the belief that the truth will later set them free. This is rarely the case. Once given, a confession of any sort is almost impossible to overcome.

My mild statement committing myself to further education about all religions did nothing to soothe the political actors determined to see me ousted. Worse, it provided ammunition to organizations I thought would ultimately respect the truth of the matter.

The next lesson learned lay in what two professors at the University of Oregon have called “Institutional Betrayal.” Jennifer Freyd and Carly Smith identify the key role of third parties, such as government agencies, media, professional organizations, labour associations and universities, in perpetuating cancel culture.

Despite assuring me repeatedly that my position was safe, once the noise from the social media mob reached a certain level the Alberta government capitulated and I was shown the door. And when the Calgary Police Service referred me to the Law Society of Alberta (LSA) to potentially make complaints against some of my attackers, who were lawyers like myself, the LSA viewed my previous, and deliberately innocuous, statement as an admission of guilt, stating it demonstrated “the degree to which Mr. May himself is to blame for his predicament.” Consider it further evidence of institutional betrayal

Given the insights provided by recent academic research, my personal experience has been a textbook example of cancel culture. The cancellers acted, not out of altruistic concern, but to further their own political ends. And while they claimed an exhorted confession would put an end to the ordeal, it only sealed my fate. Then, after the cancellation was complete, I was further betrayed by institutions that were supposed to support me.  

These have been hard lessons to learn. If there is a bright spot, it lies in the rapid growth of academic and popular literature on the recognizable pattern and poisonous consequences of cancel culture. And in the belief that my own experiences may help others avoid my fate.

Collin May is a lawyer and adjunct lecturer in community health sciences at the University of Calgary. A longer version of this story first appeared at C2CJournal.ca