191 – Canceling Caylan with Caylan Ford

In 2019 Caylan Ford resigned her political candidacy in Canada after controversy over allegations of her echoing white nationalist rhetoric.  In spite of her resignation—and continual insistence she held no such views—the mobs of cancel culture demanded “justice”.  She was blacklisted from employers, unable to continue work with organizations that seek to liberate people living under the yoke of totalitarianism, ostracized by friends and colleagues, attacked and trolled online, and shunned by her community.

 

Caylan joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to share her firsthand experience with cancel culture, including her insights on how to keep one’s soul intact even as you are grievously wronged and competing notions of “justice”.  Be forewarned, this conversation gets DEEP!

 

About Caylan Ford

From caylanford.com

I am a documentary filmmaker, writer, researcher, charter school founder, and a former political candidate. I’m interested in the problem of political and philosophical evil, and most of my work is animated by a desire to help people recover their roots in reality and their orientation toward the divine.

 

I was born in Calgary, Canada, and earned a Bachelor’s degree (Hons.) in Chinese history at the University of Calgary. From there I obtained a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and worked on and off as a senior policy advisor for Canada’s foreign ministry for about ten years. Between the birth of my two children I earned another Master’s in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford. If ever I can afford a life of leisure, I hope to return and do a real degree studying comparative eschatology.

 

A very large part of my life has been spent working, volunteering and consulting in the international human rights field, including by increasing access to anti-surveillance and censorship tools in Iran, China, Myanmar, and elsewhere; working with civil rights lawyers representing political dissidents; supporting refugee and asylum claimants; and conducting and publishing original research on the repression of religious minorities in China (I’ve also published on this topic for more popular audiences). It’s a country that I love, but only in the abstract; I was blacklisted at 16 and cannot obtain a visa. I’ve also written and co-produced two feature documentary films on the themes of religious and political persecution, censorship, forced labour, scapegoating, and mass persuasion under totalitarian regimes.

 

A few of these topics recur in my most recent documentary, which focuses on my experience of ‘cancel culture’ following a catastrophic bid for political office in 2019 (read my contemporaneous account of events here). Relatedly, I’m the plaintiff in an ongoing $7 million defamation claim against several Canadian media and political institutions, and my case has so far resulted in the recognition of a new tort of civil harassment in Alberta. You can read about or support my litigation efforts by clicking here.

 

In 2022 I founded Canada’s first tuition-free classical charter school network, Alberta Classical Academy. Having drawn more capable people to the project than myself, we now have three campuses, including one in Edmonton. This is a short video introduction to our work and how we aim to promote knowledge of things that are true, good, and enduring.

 

Sometimes I also write and speak about arts and culture, biopolitics, education, family and childcare policy, post-liberalism, and whatever else seems interesting. But mostly I prefer to spend time reading or meditating in silent contemplation of the Dao.