BLACKLISTED For Having An Opinion! | Dr. Jon Mills
23 July 2026
With Jon Mills
Global
Dr. Jon Mills, a Canadian philosopher-psychoanalyst, was labelled a racist and white supremacist and expelled from a psychoanalytic organisation after questioning social justice ideology. His case exemplifies the mechanisms of ideological enforcement in professional bodies — a pattern European inquiries, including the UK's Cass Review, identified as suppressing legitimate clinical and academic dissent in fields touching on gender medicine.
Dr. Jon Mills is a Canadian philosopher, psychoanalyst and prolific author whose work sits at the intersection of philosophy and depth psychology. He came to wider public attention after becoming the target of a coordinated campaign that labelled him a racist and white supremacist — accusations he contests — resulting in his expulsion from a psychoanalytic organisation. The experience prompted him to edit the volume Woke: A Critique of Social Justice Ideology, in which contributors examine the ideological currents now reshaping professional and academic institutions. The episode traces how psychoanalysis, a discipline already attuned to questions of power and subjectivity, became particularly susceptible to the demands of social justice activism. Mills argues that this shift is not merely a change in political atmosphere but a transformation of epistemic standards: empirical claims about systemic racism are treated in some professional contexts as settled doctrine rather than contested social science. When practitioners question the evidence base for such claims, they risk the kind of reputational and professional sanction Mills himself experienced. This dynamic has direct resonance for the European debate over gender medicine. The Cass Review, commissioned by NHS England and published in 2024, documented a clinical culture in which staff felt unable to raise concerns about the evidence base for paediatric gender transition without fear of being labelled transphobic. That finding — a climate of self-censorship enforced through social rather than formal mechanisms — mirrors precisely what Mills describes in psychoanalytic circles: the conversion of an ideological position into a professional loyalty test that training bodies can and do enforce. Mills also addresses the distinction between critical theory as an intellectual tradition and activism as a practice. Critical theory, in its academic form, is a mode of interrogation; it asks questions about power, knowledge and institutions. Activism demands adherence to predetermined conclusions. When the two are conflated, institutions designed for open inquiry — universities, professional associations, training programmes — begin to function as enforcers of orthodoxy. Several European professional psychology bodies have faced internal criticism along these lines, as members have questioned whether evidence or ideology has driven guidance on gender-affirming care for minors. The question of whether this ideological moment is receding is one Mills addresses directly. There are signals across Europe that the tide is turning: national health authorities in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the UK have restricted paediatric hormonal interventions citing insufficient evidence, employment tribunals have upheld legal protections for gender-critical beliefs, and court decisions in multiple jurisdictions have constrained gender-affirmation policies in schools and public institutions. Whether professional psychoanalytic and psychological bodies will follow in correcting course is less certain — but the kind of open critique Mills has risked his career to make is a necessary precondition for that process.
