A conservative professor from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) has committed suicide after he was relentlessly hounded by the vitriolic Cancel Culture mob.
Dr Mike Adams was found dead at his home in New Hanover County last Thursday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, according to Lt Jerry Brewer, a spokesman for the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office.
“Deputies at first weren’t able to gain access to the home due to all doors being locked,” Brewer said in a press release on Monday. “Once they were able to gain access to the home deputies found the homeowner, Mike Adams, deceased in a bedroom.”
In the months leading up to his suicide, Dr Adams was the target of a massive online bullying campaign to vilify his reputation and pressure his employer to fire him for his “controversial views” expressed on his personal Twitter account.
The offending tweets included:
“This evening I ate pizza and drank beer with six guys at a six seat table top. I almost felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina. Massa Cooper let my people go!”
“Don’t shut down the universities. Shut down the non-essential majors. Like Women’s Studies.”
“A black man’s biggest obstacle to success is not white racism. It’s black culture.”
“Statistics show that 10 out of 10 aborted black babies are unarmed.”
Activists set up multiple petitions calling on UNCW to “stand against hate, discrimination, and harassment” by “relieving” Dr Adams of his duties at the university. One petition alone has garnered close to 61,000 signatures – and is still climbing, one week after his death.
Another petition, which attracted close to 30,000 signatures, vowed signatories would “withhold any financial support” to UNCW until Dr Adams is removed.
“This includes withholding alumni endowments, and any donations,” the petition stated. “Also, pledging not to apply to, or pay admission to UNCW for yourself or for a dependent.”
A protest was also held at the university in mid-June, where participants demanded the immediate removal of Dr Adams.
“Hate speech should have no place at a university that preaches diversity and inclusion,” one of the protesters told a local news outlet.
By late June, UNCW responded to the vitriolic mob’s demands by announcing that Dr Adams would retire from his position at the university on August 1.
A statement posted to the university’s Facebook page said:
“Over the past several weeks, many of you have inquired about the status of a UNCW faculty member, Dr Mike Adams, in light of the public attention generated by comments he made on his personal social media channels. We can now share the update that after a discussion with Chancellor Sartarelli, Dr Adams has decided to retire from UNCW, effective August 1, 2020.”
Thomas Moore, one of the activists who set up a leading petition against Dr Adams, celebrated the university’s decision and thanked signatories for helping to make UNCW “a better place.”
“The fight isn’t over but we won this battle!” Moore said in a follow up post.
According to those close to him, Dr Adams suffered bouts of depression about his future and worried “in moments of imbalance not only that Evangelicals with institutional power would reject him… but even that eventually he would be out on the street and homeless.”
Robert A.J. Gagnon, Professor at Houston Baptist University, said in a post on Facebook that he believes Dr Adams would not have killed himself if he had been in his right mind at the very end.
“The ultimate cause was the enormous strain that he had been under for over a decade from the Cancel Culture, especially in the final two months of his life when he was nationally vilified as a racist.”
Professor Gagnon went on to say, although Dr Adams was not in his right mind at death, this “doesn’t absolve responsibility [of] the vicious Left who brought him to that point. Nor the callous or cowardly moderate and conservative leaders who didn’t speak out in his defense for fear of ‘tainting’ themselves by association.”
Dr Adams was relentlessly branded a “racist,” “misogynist,” “transphobe”, and “homophobe” for his uncompromising opposition to abortion, feminism, LGBTQ activism, and the trans movement.
As Jennifer Morse, President of the Ruth Institute put it: “Mike was a constant irritant to the cultural ruling class… He made them look ridiculous, which joyless ideologues simply cannot abide.”
Baseless accusations of “racism” and the like have often been employed by the rabid Left as a means of dodging difficult arguments, unavoidable facts, and hard truths. By branding their opponent a “racist” they can effectively shut down an argument without actually having to meaningfully engage with that argument. It is to essentially sidestep the issue while feigning virtue.
It’s a simple tactic, really. You accuse your opponent of being guilty of something that society generally disapproves of, such as racism. If anyone asks for proof or even dares to defend your opponent you only have to accuse them of sympathising with racists. After all, only a racist would need proof that racism was racist.
And while this cheap trick has been employed ad nauseam as a substitute for well, thought-through debate, we’ve seen it evolve over the years to a far more destructive beast. It’s now Cancel Culture’s weapon of choice, and they’re wielding it as an instrument for complete intellectual genocide.
Not only is it employed preemptively, to permanently prevent unapproved opinions from ever being heard, but it’s also used in retrospect, to ensure unapproved opinions are never heard again.
In essence, Cancel Culture is unrelenting and unforgiving vengeance for wrong-think. If you voice an alternative opinion on just about any current social issue you risk being forced out of your workplace, purged from your community, expelled from your university, shunned by your friends, and in some cases, disowned by your family.
Cancel Culture is a cancer in our society. Not only does it prevent people from speaking for fear of being subjected to a mass online bullying campaign, but it can also have a devastating impact on those who are guilty of wrong-think and are now being punished by both the mob and the institutions all too ready to submit to their irrational demands.
In the case of Dr Adams, the outcome was deadly. But is it any surprise? For years suicide prevention organisations have warned of the psychological distress of being fired. Five years ago, the scientific journal, The Lancet, published a report that found the risk of suicide can increase by 30 percent after a person loses their job.
Couple this with a mass online, personally targeted, bullying campaign backed by hundreds and thousands of individuals incapable of functioning in a world where people think their own thoughts and the risk increases all the more. Statistically, the victim may have better odds surviving a round of Russian roulette.
Where will this end? How many more people need to be driven to the point of suicide before there is any meaningful push-back? At this point what good is the silent majority if it stays silent?
Silencing political opponents is the mission of the Left. And the silenced majority only shows the extent and effectiveness of their conquest. Now is the time, not only to take risks and speak the truth, but also to defend to the death all those who do.
