Freedom to Offend

Freedom to Offend

Share this post

Freedom to Offend
Freedom to Offend
Everyone says apologize, it's $2,000,000

Everyone says apologize, it's $2,000,000

It depends on the translation of the word "apology." But the answer was no. They will fire me tomorrow. An updated older essay.

Freedom To Offend's avatar
Freedom To Offend
Jul 04, 2025
∙ Paid
24

Share this post

Freedom to Offend
Freedom to Offend
Everyone says apologize, it's $2,000,000
3
19
Share

Note July 4, 2025: I wrote this about a year ago. I have yet to apologise; they tell me I will be fired tomorrow, by sending an email, like a tacky breakup.

Better than a Snapchat message or ‘snap’, I suppose a snap would never reach me, since I don't have the app. I will likely get the termination email tomorrow. No severance as it stands, fired with cause. I hurt a Muslim’s feelings by calling Hamas Nazis.

They are. It’s called history. I showed no remorse because I don’t show remorse when I have not done anything wrong.

Half price on annual subscriptions

For over seven months, I’ve been suspended from the vocation formerly known as “university professor.” No lectures, no hallway chats with Elizabeth the cleaning lady, no writing textbooks that students actually read, no helping fledgling entrepreneurs dream up the next Uber for houseplants. Gone. Banished.

I’ve been exiled from campus, from students, staff, and faculty—past, present, and, presumably, future. My crime? Calling Hamas Nazis. At a university that’s now so post-reason it’s looped into parody—where once-earnest sympathy for the oppressed has metastasized into outright fetishization of fascist theocrats. Apparently, stating the obvious is now a firing offense.

One public safety bureaucrat—from a neighbouring college where I don’t even teach—saw fit to warn me that a WhatsApp message to anyone on their sacred payroll could be treated as “criminal harassment.” Yes, a text. As if I were stalking interns with a chainsaw. To heighten the absurdity, she made a habit of copying not one, but two local police divisions on every email—presumably to ensure maximum theatre. You’d think I’d been caught skinning kittens while distributing MAGA hats and homebrew abortion kits. This is not policy. It’s bureaucratic pantomime masquerading as law.

It is one thing to be suspended. It is quite another to have your employer, on the very day of your suspension, actively conscript staff and faculty into spreading monstrous fictions about you. The most grotesque? That I had assaulted a student in class and been led away in handcuffs — pure theatre, fabricated and deployed with intent. Then, my accuser — an Islamist faculty member with a flair for libel — decided to up the ante by branding me a paedophile.

Management’s response? Full-throated silence. Not only did they fail to condemn it — they stood behind him. This is, after all, Canada: where slander is forgiven if done by the appropriately “oppressed.” He even bragged to students that he’d have me fired and enlisted an online hate mob of 300,000 to join the lynching. The administration? Nodded, smiled, and passed him the megaphone.

It is now effectively criminal to tell a liar to stop lying—especially if the liar’s feelings might suffer a papercut. Feelings, after all, have become sovereign.

Unless, of course, you’re Jewish, or worse, a friend of Jews. In that case, brace for silence or sanction. You may be punched in the face, but the university will discipline you for daring to obstruct the sacred arc of someone else’s fist. As for the right to defame you freely—one can only assume it was quietly scribbled into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms while the grown-ups were on a bathroom break.

Half price on annual subscriptions

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Freedom to Offend to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Paul Finlayson
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share