ANDREW CARSWELL: Cancel culture has metastasized from the left to the right

Do yourself a favour and Google “things conservatives have cancelled”.

It’s a decent giggle.

You can’t drink BudLight, you can’t subscribe to Disney, you can’t buy Kellogg’s, you can’t shop at Woolworths, you can’t fly Qantas, and don’t you dare think about switching on the Olympics.

Those things are banned; ruled off limits after the fine line between progressive values and woke-ism was crossed.

Even Mr Potato Head is a no-go zone after makers Hasbro rebadged him as just Potato Head, complete with male and female accessories. Insert your own eyes, ears and pronouns. And best to boycott cartoon Scooby-Doo after Velma batted her eyelids at another woman.

Taylor Swift doesn’t escape retribution. After daring to attend a charity comedy event raising money for children in Gaza, US conservatives called for a boycott of her tour. The success of which can also be ascertained on Google, by typing in “highest grossing tour ever”.

The political right has spent a decade railing against cancel culture, disparaging its assault on free speech and traditional values, fighting against the forceful removal of its people from the public square.

Now it seems to be their weapon of choice.

And it’s a cancer on their cause. A complete capitulation from the once cherished contest of ideas.

It seems the intense need to be offended and thus seek retribution has metastasized from the left to the right.

Bans, boycotts and banishments are now the tools of trade of the very people that were once targeted by them. The right now owns rage, and thus rage owns them.

The only comfort is that this rage creep has fully formed in the United States but is only a mere fledgling in Australia. There is time.

On US soil, this insatiable appetite for right-wing commentators and social media influencers to ban and boycott has moved into full assassination mode, ironically heightened by an assassination attempt on a US presidential candidate. It’s not enough to boycott brands anymore.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s near miss, people said some silly things. Some perhaps as harmless quips said without understanding the gravity of their words. Some no doubt out of deep-seated ideological hatred; from out of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Twitter was awash with photos of individuals who posted those silly thoughts online that advocated for an alternate path for the bullet that grazed Trump’s ear, right alongside details about their personal lives, occupations and the tags of their employers.

The intent was clear. Get them sacked. Ruin their lives.

There is something deeply perverse about online vigilante groups trawling through the social media accounts of complete strangers, in different states, across different people groups, desperately searching for loose content or poor actions that would warrant their exposure, public evisceration and their sacking.

Not diminishing the stupidity of the comments that brought them to the attention of the mob, but the right-wing rampage of revenge was reminiscent of scenes from Salem. Dumb statements shouldn’t lead to retribution. Ridicule, sure.

Silly, ill-informed views should be met with counterpoints, not counterpunches. Criticism, not reprisals.

You either believe in free speech, or you don’t. It’s not a part-time hobby.

There have been glimpses here.

The debate over the Indigenous Voice saw an increase in the calling for boycotts and bans, of both companies and characters. Fuelled by both sides.

As did the heinous October 7 terror attacks on innocent Israelis.

There was a lot of attention on Palestinian sympathisers calling for a boycott on Israeli-aligned businesses. But not much on the Zionist mums on WhatsApp gathering and sharing intel from social media of examples of anti-Semitisim to expose those individuals, write letters to their employers and hound them from their jobs.

Former ABC commentator and free speech advocate Josh Szeps nailed it with this course of action.

“Yes there should be consequences for being anti-Semitic. Yes there should be consequences for being Islamophobic. Those consequences should be that everyone around you thinks you’re a f...wit and says so and argues with you and tries to prove why you’re wrong.”

Not ending their ability to earn an income.

Even when delivered in benign circumstances, such as the Coalition’s call to boycott Woolworths, the consequences can be stark. It resulted in staff being verbally abused or chastised in their workplace. Not the intention of hasty pronouncement, but the result nonetheless.

At the weekend, the boycott calls went Olympic.

You can make an easy case as to why the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony Last Supper mock-up was irreverent, provocative, and grotesque.

How it stained the opening ceremony of the greatest sporting show on earth. How it mocked Christianity in front of billions of viewers.

Open and shut case. The jury has already reached its verdict.

It was offensive.

But did it require an immediate response of revenge rather than appropriate condemnation and ridicule?

Would switching off the TV and depriving hard-working athletes of your deserving attention truly satisfy your lust for retribution against a handful of unknowns who chose stupidity over sense? That will teach those wrongdoers. A blank screen.

Did the “offensive” really need to morph into “being offended”, thus repaying sin with sin?

The guy in the middle of the original painting may have a surprising view.

Andrew Carswell is a former strategist for the Morrison government