The offendotrons claim another victim
Self-appointed censors are stifling free expression with their confected outrage
TV chef Jamie Oliver is the latest personality to fall victim to the offendotrons. His transgression? He wrote a 400-page novel for children, a chapter of which allegedly ‘stereotyped’ Indigenous Australians. Specifically, the chapter included a subplot in which a child from a fictitious Outback community – ‘Borolama’ – is living in foster care, only to be abducted by a woman with sinister intentions. The carers didn’t spot the woman’s heinous plans because they were preoccupied with her pledge of financial aid for their community projects. Or something like that.
Oliver’s accusers have condemned the storyline as ‘damaging’ and ‘disrespectful’, suggesting it was offensively redolent of the genuinely appalling scandal last century of thousands of Indigenous Australian children being cruelly wrenched from their biological parents by state and federal governments and placed in the care of white families. These youngsters became known as the ‘Stolen Generations’.
Now, forgive me, but shouldn’t we be grown up enough to not get too outraged about subplots of children’s stories – a fantasy adventure, in this case – which were plainly never intended to offend? Storytelling is storytelling. Sometimes communities, and individuals within them, are portrayed in a good light; sometimes a bad one. Sometimes they aren’t intended to be portrayed at all, but someone somewhere will identify what they think is a resemblance to a real person, community, place or event and demand that the artist responsible, and everyone else involved with the project, apologise and make amends. That’s if they are lucky enough not to be cancelled completely.
For many social activists and radicals, who increasingly seem to believe there should be a single orthodox view on contentious issues, the claiming of offence has become routine – a way of demonising their political opponents while winning kudos among their peers by showing how attuned they are to hyper-progressive ideology. Quite often they will not be offended personally but will be taking what you might call ‘vicarious offence’ on behalf of those whom they think might – or ought to – be offended.
One of the most egregious examples I have seen of this baneful phenomenon was the case of Danny Baker, the TV and radio personality, who, after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced the birth of their first child, tweeted a vintage photograph of some High Society couple standing outside a building with a chimpanzee between them. Alongside the photo, Baker had added the caption: ‘Royal baby leaves hospital’.
The sky fell in on him. He stood accused of posting a racist tweet (the duchess has African-American heritage, lest we forget). The BBC, his then employer, immediately fired him, and it was reported that the Metropolitan Police was investigating the matter.
Baker’s intention was obviously to lampoon privilege. Nobody seriously believed that he was a racist –any more than anyone believes Jamie Oliver was demonstrating bigotry towards Indigenous Australians. But that isn’t enough these days. Even the perception that a comment or deed has the mere capacity to be construed by some as ‘offensive’ is all it takes to create a storm.
The self-appointed censors are even willing to confect sufficient outrage to the point of distorting or denying reality. For example, in 2022, the Ministry of Justice released a prison job advert showing a black inmate and a white officer. Nothing controversial about that, you might think - after all, there are many black people in jail, and most officers are white. And, in this case, the inmate and officer were real people, not actors.
But, after receiving complaints, the Advertising Standards Authority investigated and decided to ban the advert on the grounds that it perpetuated a ‘negative racial stereotype’ and showed an ‘imbalanced power dynamic’. That the ministry had published plenty of other publicity material showed white inmates and black officers appeared not to be relevant.
There must surely come a point when the rest of us are no longer willing to put up with this hyper-sensitive nonsense. As Salman Rushdie (and he should know) once said, ‘Nobody has the right to not be offended.’ Yet many seem to think they not only possess that right, but may exercise it whenever they wish to the purpose of suppressing views or attitudes they dislike.
Needless to say, Jamie Oliver has donned sackcloth and ashes and prostrated himself before his accusers. His publisher has also apologised and withdrawn the book from sale.
The intolerant mob has got its way once more.
I was in Wolverhampton on Saturday, watching my team, Wolves, play against Southampton. Upon realising that I wasn’t wearing a poppy, I tried to buy one. In Marks and Spencer, an assistant told me that that ‘We used to sell them, but we don’t anymore.’ Not a seller was to be found in the streets between the shops and the football stadium. And nothing at the stadium – outside or inside – either.
I would estimate that around just 20% of people were wearing one. I’ve never been a member of the ‘poppy police’, but on the day before Remembrance Sunday, this seemed remarkable. Perhaps things are changing even faster than we realise.
So the first private school – Carrdus school in Oxfordshire – has closed down as a result of the government’s VAT raid, and a Freedom of Information request by the Daily Telegraph reveals that thousands of private school pupils have applied to join state schools. I have argued previously that this was a bad policy and one based on a caricature of private schools (around 90,000 families on below-average incomes educate their children privately).
The spectacle of children being forced to clear their desks and lockers and move schools, leaving behind treasured friendships and memories, is a desperately sad one – and one that should make even the most strident egalitarian stop and think.
Will Trump’s victory lead to a pushback against cultural progressivism across the West? Don’t bet on it. I suspect many will now seek to define themselves even more sharply against Trumpism – and, by extension, to become yet more woke – so as to demonstrate what morally virtuous human beings they are.
The extent to which people are willing to oppose everything Trump says and does will be seen, by some, as a test of their moral rectitude. I’m no fan of Trump, but I am certain he is right to take on the militants – often with no mandate at all – who are frantically trying to overturn age-old social and cultural norms.
A reminder that you can follow me on X/Twitter: @PaulEmbery
Words fail me. There is nothing I can add to the book saga other than a quote: “Where today you burn books, eventually there you will burn people”. I think that was Brecht but I may be misinformed.
As for poppies, it’s the same around here. I am a proud ex-Reservist and always wear a poppy. It was almost impossible to find one this year, and the ones I found were awful paper things. My wife gets mighty annoyed at people who don’t wear them, but as I pointed out, it could simply be there are none on sale where they live and shop.
The RBL needs to get its finger out and make sure all the usual venues get a supply next year.
The woke ideology is a form of what I have come to call 'cognitive anti-therapy'. In other words, it is a highly flawed way of thinking that cultivates increasingly unhealthy mental states in its believers. (This is in contrast to 'cognitive therapy', which is learning the art of skilled, realistic thinking to enhance one's mental health.) If one is a woke believer then literally anything someone in a 'bad' group says or does can be misinterpreted as harmful to those in the 'good' groups. It is paranoia on steroids. But it also inculcates an authoritarian mindset that involves bullying others. I suspect that it also attracts people with serious personality disorders who use it for their own ends. It is very much time to fight back against it. The problem is that it is a cult which has invaded so many Western institutions, rendering them dysfunctional. Perhaps the main offendotrons need to be placed in zoos, or maybe secure hospitals such as Broadmoor. The rest need help with de-programming from their cult beliefs.