Cancel THIS is surely the book we have all been waiting for. It is hilarious – mostly – and instructive. I say ‘mostly’ because, at times, you must pinch yourself to be reminded that for over two years the citizens of the world went mad with mask mandates and one-way systems in pubs, while the ruling classes dreamed up and implemented even more mad ways to grind us down and prove to themselves that – yes – people were largely conformist. With a virtually non-existent threat to their health, the people of the world could be made to leave their jobs (some never to return to them), stay indoors, cover their faces with a useless piece of cloth, show a vaccine passport to leave and enter the country and discuss – without laughing – whether a scotch egg constituted a meal.
But not everyone, and Mike Fairclough, author of Cancel THIS was one of those who didn’t. Mike was part of the rebellion by 0.0023% of headteachers in the UK who objected to the rollout of an untested experimental genetic therapy to schoolchildren. In fact, at 0.0023%, he was the only one of 43,500 headteachers in the UK to raise any objections. He is also known for teaching schoolkids how to shoot, skin rabbits and cook over an open fire. Strangely, his CBE seems not yet to have been awarded. Of course, Fairclough is probably a far-right racist, despite being married to a South Asian lady. He plays that trump card early in the book.
The most redeeming feature of Cancel THIS is that it is short. However, its size does not mean that it is not packed with good sense and good humour. The book is described by the author as ‘part survival guide, part rebellious handbook, and a salute to the dissidents, oddballs, and anyone who’s ever been told to shut up and behave’. I am proud to be associated with his target audience and to count many dissidents and oddballs among my closest circle of friends.
In twelve concise chapters, Fairclough demolishes a series of woke myths including toxic masculinity, white privilege, climate change alarmism, trigger warnings and digital ID. Prefaced with what looks like a relevant AI generated image and caption, each chapter nails some home truths such as: ‘women love real men’; ‘gender ideology is the intellectual equivalent of licking batteries’; ‘being white doesn’t make you privileged’ and ‘people talk about Britain like it’s a malignant tumour’.
There follows a series of four or five Top Rebellion Tips which have genuine potential. They could be used by any of us to undermine the endless stream of bollocks that issues from the mouths of the perpetually offended. Thus, make ‘mate’ your pronoun, start a ‘problematic pride’ parade, eat meat and drive a car, teach your kids sarcasm (aka ‘taking the piss’) and create a ‘host a migrant’ challenge for virtue-signalling celebs.
I especially like Fairclough’s challenge to ‘turn offence into a competitive sport’ by seeing who can be most offensive in a ‘safe space’ without getting cancelled. Having worked until recently in a UK university, for the rebellious type in such corporate bodies I know there are endless opportunities.
While Fairclough manages to maintain his sense of humour throughout, when you reach chapter 12 on Questioning Medical Interventions, you realise that this is no joke. Fairclough made his views on the Covid-19 vaccine for children clear in The Daily Telegraph in 2021. That alone is remarkable, given The Daily Telegraph showed no guts whatsoever regarding the Covid-19 narrative and, especially, regarding Covid-19 vaccines. For his trouble he was the subject of a complaint to the Counter Extremism Division and reported to the anti-terror programme PREVENT. As Fairclough says, expressing concern about a potentially harmful medical intervention with no known effectiveness for a highly vulnerable group at no risk of contracting or suffering badly from Covid-19, you were categorised alongside ISIS.
Everyone who raised objections at that time about the Covid-19 vaccines and about puberty blockers has been vindicated, but they have received neither thanks nor recognition. And they went through Hell to get where they are now. This is the point in the book where I realised, humour aside, and with hindsight on the Covid-19 years especially, being right was not what mattered to our state; it was being aligned with whatever the latest propaganda was. This is a message that must not be forgotten, and it is because of this message and the fact that our government no longer – and possibly never did – work in our best interests, that books like Cancel THIS are important and necessary. Buy it, believe it and live it.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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Can’t see the point of “turning offence in to a competitive sport………..” Rebellion has to be more subtle than the examples referred to in the book…..a bit ‘playground’ from a school teacher. Not sold it to me, but it may strike a chord with lots of other readers.
Aside from that, kudos for standing up for his pupils and many pupils elsewhere. Hard to be the ‘Head above the parapet’ in this draconian era of censorship and vilification if one dares to challenge the bought and handsomely paid for narrative.
I know it’s fashionable to opine that Covid was nothing more than a harmless case of the sniffles, or even that Covid was nothing. Funny how virtually the whole world suffered from this non-illness at virtually the same time. I mean – nobody died from it, oh wait, yes they did. But let’s forget that, after all, the vaccine was the spawn of the Devil, and those who didn’t have either the vaccine or covid can now smugly claim to have been ‘right’ all along. I do find it somewhat offensive however, to put the vaccine in the same box as puberty blockers.
Very few people died only of covid – the vast majority of people who died were in their 80s (generally past the average age of death) with multiple co-morbidities. A bad cold could well have been the cherry on the top as far as dying was concerned. Vanishingly few young people, if any, died of covid (unless they, too, were already ill with terminal illnesses). It is very odd that, as you say, the whole world suffered at the same time. That is a highly unlikely scenario for a cold virus (which is what SARS-Cov-19 is – a Severe Acute Respiratory Coronavirus). Pretty much the whole world had a level of immunity to a coronavirus because they are one of the “common cold” bunch of viruses. The vaccine isn’t a vaccine – it’s a gene therapy with no long term safety data using stuff which had been killing test ferrets for years. None of what I write is invented – it’s all out there for you to read.
I never believed the covid bullshit never wore a mask and continually broke as many of the bullshit rules I regard as being on the level of the climate change crap the arseholes in government are flogging now it’s total bullshit to control the public.I would like to see Starmer strapped to the blade of one of these awful windmills they force on us.
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