Some years ago, an organisation called HHUGS was set up. It stood for “Helping Households Under Great Stress” — in particular the households of men being detained in Guantanamo Bay. But had the organisation called itself “Friends of Gitmo Detainees” or “Helping Households whose relatives happen to have been caught up in an all-male wedding party, with no bride, and an awful lot of Kalashnikovs”, then public sympathy may not have been so available. So the founders went with HHUGS, which sounds like a lovely thing, with a little stammer at the start for added emotion.
A similar trick was pulled off five years ago with the launch of Stop Funding Hate. It seems such a reasonable demand, doesn’t it? Who wants to fund hate? Everyone is against “hate”, aren’t they? But of course, the detail lies in exactly how you define it.
In the case of Stop Funding Hate the answer is straightforward. For this group, “hate” is the existence of any media or publication which leans — or can be accused of leaning — anywhere to the right of the political centre. Since its founding the group has targeted a range of conservative-leaning papers and magazines. Its modus operandi is always the same: it identifies a conservative outlet full of “hate”, and then lobbies its advertisers to pull their cash — thus eliminating one of the major revenue streams of the free press.
There are, of course, a number of things wrong with this; the most obvious being its mistaken presumption that to advertise in a magazine or newspaper is to endorse everything contained within its pages. If this is a category error, then it is one that Stop Funding Hate has been very happy to revel in — for the simple reason that it allows them to pursue their deeply political, targeted agenda. It is also, incidentally, a game that anyone with sufficient time and venom can play.
One could, for instance, set up a group called “Stop Funding Bigotry”, and target any company which advertises in a range of Left-wing papers. We could then pretend that all Left-wing papers are a source of bigotry and that advertising in them constitutes an endorsement of it. As I say, you could do that. But it would be a fairly maniacal way to behave, and inimical to the idea of tolerance or respect for a differing range of views that must exist in a free society.
But even by its own maniacal standards, Stop Funding Hate this week managed to excel itself. In the month running up to the launch of GB News, the group announced that it was planning to target every company that advertised on the channel. Indeed, Stop Funding Hate boasted in advance that it had engaged a crack team of researchers to find out who was advertising with GB News — presumably by tuning in and making a note of each advert during the commercial break.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeAnother excellent article by Douglas Murray in which he touches on a subject I think is not adequately covered on Unherd and elsewhere: how do we fight back against censorship of the type promoted by Stop Funding Hate?
Mr. Murray acknowledges one way is to fight them with their own tactics, but he doesn’t quite advocate that approach because he seems to view it as promulgating the same type of craziness as Stop Funding Hate. I see his point, but I also think we now have no choice but to fight fire with fire. Let’s not be squeamish about aggressively holding to account groups such as Stop Funding Hate.
There is also the legal option. Why don’t targeted businesses sue groups such as Stop Funding Hate for defamation or intentional interference with business relationships, among other legal options? The process of legal discovery would doubtless dredge up some extremely interesting, and damaging, emails from Stop Funding Hate’s server.
I hope Unherd devotes more space to articles describing how individuals and organizations can fight back against cancellation aka censorship.
If harm is being done to a business by the organisers of the ‘Stop Funding Hate’ cabal, then pursuing them legally is an obvious course of action.
Yes, but very expensive and time-consuming!!!!
I suspect that the people who are involved in Stop Funding Hate are actually sitting behind computers and, themselves, funding hate. Their hate is a Guardian-type hate, graduates who have ended in boring jobs with 2.4 kids and feel that the world has let them down.
If you go back about 25 years when the newspapers were talking about yobbos and thugs spoiling football matches with their violence, the police infiltrated the groups involved and found that the violence was orchestrated by middle-class Guardian types who were doing it to get back at the world.
I seem to remember the police infiltrated one gang of middle class people, who could have been left or right leaning. Generalisations about Guardian readers or any newspaper is just more lack of respect, for views other than our own which is the fundamental problem.
Yes, and to rub salt into the gaping wound, they woke up one morning to find a bunch of people less likely to be graduates had removed them from the EU.
We should play by “go woke go broke”. Any comapny what makes kneejerk stunts like that just stop buying their products. In the end it is the money for them…. they couldn’t care less about the other part…. as the ‘Wokies’ are a real small minority they can’t rely on their spending power alone… just an idea….
I am still boycotting Gillette
sadly my wife won’t kiss me with a beard so I have had to reach for my Gillette razor 🙁
Buy a packet of Bic. Cheap as chips, even if you don’t get seven blades and a gravity-free suspension system that makes you a better pole-vaulting astronaut.
Oh, hang on, that’s the old ‘toxic’ market, isn’t it?
So am I. I thought I was alone.
No, me too, and several people I know. Gillette’s market share dropped by an estimated 15% after the ad.
Sadly they own a significant share of Wilkinson Sword
Try Harrys or similar independent (& very good!) razors
Isn’t Schick still around?
Nope, but I stopped buying razors altogether a few years back.
I’ve just looked that up. Their razors are very good….
Coca Cola, Gillette and others are discovering this…
Good. Money can move mountains, as they say, and legal action combined with economic hits may be just the thing to turn this (censor)ship around…
Don’t forget Nike
I also boycott any company who forces its employees to take part in so-called diversity training, which is basically taking the knee for our white sins. One of the many is Coca Cola. Spec Savers and IKEA is momentarily also on my black list. Unless companies get hit in their pocket books nothing will change. They are supposed to provide us with products and not become political
Maybe we could put together a list which we could update weekly
Do it. Call it the list of companies that hate white people.
We cancelled an order for 6 chairs from IKEA. I quite accept that in a free society that has a multitude of choices, those brands that wish to appeal only to one group of society should be able to do so. Equally, as I am someone they do not want business from, happy to oblige and trade with someone else.
In a similar vein: a while back I noticed a group on my FB feed called “Women Against Hate” (a friend had commented so that’s why I saw it). “Oh, okay”, I thought. “I’ll check that out, seeing as I am a) a woman and b) I consider myself to be against hate. It might be interesting”.
It certainly was. These “women against hate” (or at least the commenting members) seemed like quite normal individuals as long as the posts were about “approved” issues such as diversity. Then along came a post about Boris Johnson’s new health regime to lose weight after his corona illness. I have never seen such hatred being spewed in such a concentrated or creative form. There were words on there I’ve never seen before, c—womble being the least of it.
Revel in the irony at your leisure.
Yes I saw that group and a woman dared to say that she thought trans women were not women and she got piled on and attacked – how dare she in this group against hate they said whilst abusing and shouting …
Obviously they’re not women. They’re typically either simply transvestites or they are surgically and / or hormonally mutilated men, and in either case clearly mentally ill to some degree.
No serious person can imagine that all it takes to be a woman is to be hacked about by surgeons. It’s a deeply sexist and contemptuous view of women.
Promulgated by men, no doubt……..
Absolutely it’s so sickening
They’re a pleasant lot, arent’ they? I toyed with the idea of suggesting they might actually want to find a different, more appropriately-named group (“Women who love to hurl abuse”, perhaps?) but thought better of it.
Social media is a cespit. I finally quit 4 years ago and never missed a thing about it. My turning point was the referendum result which I cheered on FB… the avalanche of spite that was directed to me was shocking… from friends (real friends in life) as well… that for me was the end of it.
Reminds me why I binned my FB account. You may enjoy this though. When the death of Margaret Thatcher was announced, one of my pals posted a request asking all who had quoted Martin Luther King when Bin Laden was assassinated to show the same level of respect and tolerance. Responses proved helpful in deciding which friends and acquaintances were to be dropped.
I recall a group of “progressives,” including women, regaling the crowd outside St. Paul’s at Thatcher’s funeral with “Ding, dong the witch is dead…” Clearly leftist demands for gender balance in politics are exclusive of women with the ‘wrong’ views.
. For folks who spend time scouring feeds and articles to find tidbits to cancel others with, they sure leave an embarrassing record of their travesties, don’t they???
As DM points out, the Left are very good at “nominative misdirection.”
Hope Not Hate – sounds cuddly but is an organisation of haters.
Antifa – who would not want to support an anti fascist organisation? Except that Antifa talk, dress and act like fascists themselves.
Black Lives Matter – we all know that black lives matter, but BLM couldn’t give a stuff about black lives. Their agenda is to tear down the systems of western liberal democracy.
Et cetera ad nauseam.
Thanks for introducing me to a term for an interesting concept.
I was trying to think of a term for it and a friend happened to mention the concept of “nominative determinism” whereby (it is said) your surname dictates your fate: a felon called Crook, a gardener called Flowers, a policeman called McNab etc.
The names of these leftist activist organisations are deliberately designed to misdirect gullible people (eg corporate CEOs, BBC reporters) as to their nefarious aims.
Hence, nominative misdirection.
I like that too; sounds like the first Freakonomics book (an excellent read). Not only your surname: one example two sons called Loser and Winner (guess who failed)
I wonder if their creators have actually read 1984, or if they just stumbled upon the “nominative misdirections” because they share the same fundamental mindset as Big Brother.
Simple heuristic – invert whatever title a left wing ground has given itself, and you’ll find the truth.
Hope Not Hate -> Hate Not Hope
Antifa -> Profa
Black Lives Matter -> Black Lives Don’t Matter
All these are more accurate descriptions of what these groups really believe in.
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea being three if a kind. (I think the Korea bit might be true though, so not a four )
Don’t forget Unite Against Fascism.
I’m doing my bit for GBNews. I don’t watch breakfast TV so instead I have GBNews on on mute in the other room to keep the ratings up.
I have watched quite a bit and it is good to see Andrew Neil back in action with his forensic questioning of Rishi Sunak.
Quite so. I watched this also. How is Neil grilling a Conservative politician, the second most powerful man in government, for a full half hour, a sign of right wing ‘hate’?
Even by looney left standards, it takes some degree of postmodern thought to get to that. Still, I’m sure Foucault might have got there.
There is no “thought” in woke!
I watched that interview, but Neil let him off lightly for obvious reasons. GB is not the only news channel and if he gives politicians a hard time they will not appear and will continue to be worshipped by BBC and Channel 4.
GB News is a breath of fresh air, but will it survive? Neil is always worth watching but the rest was just a group discussing my own views. I want news that challenges everybody to justify their view and that is what is missing.
I agree. And I think the all-day breakfast TV format with (usually) older chap and younger glamour-puss sidekick is as hackneyed and dull as the mainstream channels. Less is more. Let’s just have six hours of good solid content from 6 to midnight, when more people are watching.
Thank-you Douglas Murray for your measured and reasonable thinking as always. I have been concerned about these kind of ‘campaigns’ for a while, ‘Hope not Hate’ being another one. I happened across a FB thread yesterday on my timeline where a curious question was posed. “Is anybody going to actually be watching GB News?” There followed what can only be described as a string of very strong and adamant answers. “No” “Never going to give the time of day to that bunch of ‘evil racists.” “Gammon TV.” “It’s a joke, funded by rich white Conservative businessmen who are feeling threatened. Boohoo. At least they’ll lose their money.” “No.” “No.” “At least I won’t have to watch those right-wing d**ks on the BBC anymore.” “I am not going to prop up those bigoted fascists spreading propaganda.” “The only advertising they’ll get will be from Gregg’s and Wetherspoons.” Then the most generous “Let’s lock them in their crappy studio, turn the power off and not let them carry on spreading their hate filled lies.” Apparently this was a popular viewpoint. “Yeah, let them die slowly.”
Then underneath that, with no awareness of the irony, “You can lobby their advertisers, and join the ‘don’t fund hate’ campaign.”
I ventured to ask if anyone had actually watched it at all. Only one person for 5 mins then “had to turn it off.” The rest hadn’t. I didn’t know many of the people on this thread but I did know a few, and they generally seem like quite friendly, intelligent and reasonable, harmless folk in real life. I then offered a description of what I had seen; the diverse range of opinions, the refreshing fact it was not London centric and gave a voice to those people who are never listened to or represented in the media. I gave the fairly innocuous example of an interesting intelligent discussion on the pros and cons of delaying freedom day that was looking at the much bigger picture. This was responded to with lots of angry emoji’s. No words. Then someone said “I wondered when the anti-vaccine COVID deniers and QAnon would manage to get themselves into mainstream media in the UK. Open your eyes!!!”
Were the people commenting on the FB thread very young?
I am sad to say that the ones I knew were in their 50’s, as was the person who posed the question. I just checked in again to see how it was going. Someone has written “a very thought provoking response” under my comment. However a few more angry emojis have appeared.
My condolences. This sort of thing is a big part of the reason why I quit Facebook several years ago – the unedifying spectacle of people I had always liked demeaning themselves.
That’s the trouble with FB; allowing you to see inside the heads of people you know means you are often surprised at what’s in there.
After all, it is those in their 50’s who educated the woke warrior class now in charge of the Ministry of Truth.
Thank you, that was enlightening. I fail to see what has happened to our society: we have “lost the plot”. It seems that we can no longer have a rational discussion!
Thank you again for a sobering and illuminating post.
The Brexit referendum was a real eye opening red-pill moment for me. I voted Remain, somewhat reluctantly, but the narratives around it and the establishment’s utter derangement and contempt for Leave voters and democracy itself was so beyond the pale everything changed, as if the scales suddenly fell from my eyes. Brexit, Trump, Covid, China, the Great Reset, Woke lunacy, fake news, unelected technocrats cancelling an elected president, XR, BLM, CRT, Islam getting a free pass to impose its blasphemy laws, trans activists attempting to rewrite what a woman is, censorship, and worse, self-censorship out of fear, the rewriting of history, the dismantling of our language, our rights, our values, our freedoms. I can’t help but feel it’s all connected – which seems crazy. But is it crazy? It’s as if we are living in an Orwellian dystopia where we use terns like hate crime and thought crime, where the 2 minutes hate is real – but the people doing it think they’re the good guys, up is down and oppression is freedom and diversity is a strength not an atomisation. The world has gone NUTS and I don’t know how it happened. Is this what it means to now be part of the older generation who just ‘doesn’t understand’ or who ‘can’t accept progress’??? If so, I sincerely apologise to the ones it happened to before because it utterly SUCKS.
No it’s not crazy. It’s exactly what is happening. The young are sleep walking into it. Seeing as the poison starts in the schoolroom they can hardly help it.
Actually, you understand things clearly and I think you are accurately thinking that this hodgepodge of nutty ideas is NOT progress. Welcome to the club! It’s a shock at first…
Readers of Unherd should make a point of watching Andrew Doyle’s contributions.
One of the smartest (anti-woke) free speech advocates in the country.
He is brilliant, and is doing his best to enlighten the dark recesses of this wildly mistaken and dangerous “cultural revolution”
Hoping DM does an article on YouTube censoring the Dark Horse in the US, and the platforms (like Odysee & LBRY) that offer apparently safe haven for those who have been ostracized and demonetized by the machine…
Stop Funding Hate is at least quite transparent. A representative has even appeared on Newsnight (another debate). It’s BoycottGBNews.org, set up by a company called Ripples, which concerns me more: it has a single director, who happens to not be British, trying to dictate the terms of freedom of speech. The funding behind the organisation is opaque. Either it’s one person leading a campaign that’s having material influence on public debate in this country or it’s a shadowy collective using a seemingly innocent vehicle to propagate its worldview. Either way, what does this say about democracy (and corporates) in the UK?
Thank you for this analysis of what does, or might, lie behind Stop Funding Hate. I too had noticed the presence of Ripples; and I too had wondered, but wasn’t able to go as far as you have in understanding it. As you say, it all adds up to some very questionable practices and ethics. Thanks again!
My pleasure, although it’s all on the Companies House register, which anyone can access for free online.
I had read of this campaign and of IKEA’s capitulation. I wrote to the company to query this decision. I also quoted Edmund Burke’s famous warning about mistaking a few noisy crickets for the whole life of the field.
I received this reply:
Many thanks for your recent email in relation to IKEA and GB News.
Following a number of complaints received on Tuesday, we took a decision to suspend advertising on the newly launched GB News channel. While we had not actively sought to appear on the channel, the decision to suspend our advertising was taken at great speed.
As a newly launched channel, we recognise that it is simply too soon for us to make an informed assessment about whether advertising on GB News would be in line with our advertising policy and brand guidelines, which we apply to all media. We want to make it clear that it was never IKEA’s intention to polarise our customers and others in this debate, and a decision on our future approach to this and other media will be taken in due course.
I hope that helps to address your concerns.
With many thanks and best wishes,
Peter Jelkeby
Country Retail Manager and Chief Sustainability Officer
IKEA UK and Ireland
So I replied, asking how many was, “a number”? My reason for asking I gave as it being a useful guide to how many friends I needed to recruit to outnumber them and so reverse the decision.
I have yet to hear the answer.
Well done you.
Good article by the ever reliable Mr Murray. I should like to see some good old fashioned investigate journalism into who organises and runs these on line pressure groups. Nothing is more informative than exposure. Mr Andrew Neil, gave a brilliantly defiant summary on GBnews last night, ably supported by Andrew Doyle. The time to kill SFH is now, once established, authoritarians are
costly to remove.
I have been wondering for quite some time ,why companies allow themselves to be so easily bullied. It may be just a lack of time to properly engage and it is easier in the short term to cave in. Whatever the reason, there appears to be a lack of leadership or backbone at the helm of some seemingly powerful corporations. The bigger question may be, ‘How did these supposed leaders get to the top?’
The CEOs and boards of these corporations have been captured by ‘progressives’ in their own HR departments and are frightened of having the ‘phobic’ bone pointed at them.
Sadly at the moment it’s more likely to be hard-nosed Marketing departments that insist on these types of response.
Making these companies look foolish is the best way to stop this cr*p.
Douglas Murray is on the money as ever with this article.
The irony of IKEA being one of the companies to boycott a news channel after their founder’s close ties to the Nazis and in particular the Hitler youth.
Groups like Stop Funding Hate are seeping into society in a frightening way. Cancel culture is becoming the norm to people that I considered until recently to be rational and well thought through. It’s a slippery path we are on.
The Ikea case reminds me of those stories where celebs sue for libel. A piece of tittle tattle in a tabloid which no one paid attention to, is suddenly blown out of proportion so that everyone knows about it.
If Ikea hadn’t fallen for the GBN boycott, and the surrounding publicity, who’ve have known – or perhaps even cared? – about their court case in France?
How many people are regular subscribers to UnHerd? Or alternative sites of free thought? The answer is to counter SFH by an alternative – FF (Fund Freedom) – which lobbies the advertisers who chickened out of GB News and says, “We’re not going to buy anything from you”. Everyone could write letters to the newspapers to show that FF was a serious organisation. There would even be the opportunity of clubbing together to buy advertising space in the newspapers and magazines.
I feel that this is not going to happen because UnHerd contributors would not want the hassle, the hassle which is coveted by SFH members. I feel that this is a battle: British Under 40s vs British Over 40s. Youth always wins because it has the required energy.
(Note that my definition of ‘youth’ is under-40 in this case because the damage is not done by young people but by middle-aged people who pretend to be young.)
A few years ago I was so offended by Gillette’s advertising that I stopped buying anything they make – shaving gel, etc. I don’t need sermons on masculinity from a bathroom toiletries company, especially not ones in which a black man prevents his white friend from harassing women. I don’t miss their stuff at all. Nivea are part of the woke capitulation too; I didn’t switch to them and I’m now glad.
I’d welcome a resource that allowed me to identify firms that I should avoid: donors to hate groups, users of child labour, etc.
I remember that. I was slightly annoyed that I didn’t already buy Gillette products so that I could stop buying them
I share your disappointment in not being able to cancel over-priced toiletries that I didn’t purchase. Since lockdown, however, I have simply given up shaving and getting my hair cut. Granted, I now resemble Lindsey Buckingham, pre-Fleetwood Mac, but he never did too badly for himself, did he? And not a woke razor in sight!
I did the same with Gillette products, as did others I know. I’ve never been able to find a report quantifying the impact on sales, but I believe it was significant. I’m happy with the other brands, so would have no reason to switch back. A customer for life lost for life based on one awful campaign.
Same with my husband. Never again will Gillette products make it into our house.
I prefer the acronym FFS (fund free speech) whose second meaning seems quite apt.
I like the 2nd meaning, but worried that “fund free speech” could be seen as debatable.
How about calling it “SMB” standing for “Stop Murdering Babies”, but stick with the original intent.
There’s no evidence that IKEA etc would lose sales by being targeted by SFH. Companies just take fright at the threat of “negative publicity”.
The unprincipled worms who run these campaigns (“Sleeping Giants” is another such attack group, whose founders soon fell out and one started another innocuous sounding group, “Check My Ads”) get the rush of unaccountable power that they wouldn’t otherwise achieve in their lives without being admitted to SAGE.
Even worse are their campaigns run against smaller businesses who don’t have the time or the clout to fight back.
I want GB News to succeed as I think the last 15 months has brought into sharp focus that we need an alternative to the MSM. However, it has not made a great start: technical glitches, some poor presenters and an overall sense of amateurism. I hope these are teething troubles – we actually NEED it to succeed and if you don’t like its premise or its (perceived) bias, then surely it is needed to give more balance.
There are occasions when I disagree with Douglas Murray, however not on this article which is well thought out and clearly identifies the issues. Like many of the commentators below I stopped reading social media because even as a liberal at heart I realised how intolerant I had become of opinions other than my own, even moderate ones. I have watched GB News and it’s ok it has put Andrew Neill back in front of us which is good for freedom of speech.
To the far left anything that is not far left is to be a purveyor of hate. They are the 2 minutes of hate mob in Orwell’s 1984, they just think they aren’t.
This lightly brushes up against but ultimately misses the target. SFH is a mouse organisation scaring away corporate lions. The cowardice of the corporates is the centre of the bullseye in this issue – a growth obsessed appeasement malady that lets the diseased mouse roar.
If you look, there are lots and lots of small but very active and vocal activistic groups against ‘Hate’ with Hate in their name. It seems that many are censorial, intolerant, loud mouthed and often driven by bigotry – particularly against those who have a different viewpoint. Ironic really.
However, I still don’t get why finding out what right-wing news sources are saying is such a terrible thing? It is a broad swathe of the population. Are they so weak-minded that just visiting will suddenly turn them into indoctinated zombies? Wise people read broadly, they don’t shut themselves away intellectually speaking. A feature of cultish brainwashing is only limiting themselves to approved texts and narratives to keep themselves ‘pure’.
It makes more sense if you think of leftism & wokeness as religion. The fundamental precepts of leftism are faith based; not based on evidence or reason. Asking leftists to allow heretical ideas to be discussed would be similar to having Richard Dawkins give the Sunday sermon.
It needs to be a religion or cult to infiltrate every nook around the world. Rationale won’t cut it. The powers behind? Can’t say for sure but thinking along the lines of Great Reset, Bill Gates, WEF, BLM (as a subsidiary). Were you even ever to ascribe to its utopian agenda, the means of procurement should send you running for your life.
Thank you! This is the first exposition I’ve seen in a long time that clearly spells out the word games played by the Left. The Alice in Wonderland world where ‘tolerance’ means intolerance, ‘diversity’ is uniformity, ‘racism’ means colorblindness, ‘love’ is white-hot hate, &c.
And it’s amazing how effective it is.
I cannot abide Andrew Neil, but I’m forced to admit he’s on the right side of this. I really hope this is the start of a serious, prolonged and committed fightback against the wokerati.
Take a look at these guys https://www.consciousadnetwork.com/. Stop Funding Hate is a founding member of this setup. Their site says: “A framework is needed to support the media moving away from being aligned with hate speech and extremist content. This will ensure brand safety, and will attract millennials as both new customers and employees in the future . Only a minority (48%) of millennials currently believe businesses behave ethically and that business leaders are committed to helping improve society (47%). It will also play a part in ensuring future growth, as brands with meaningful purpose and principles ‘…command a price that is 14% higher, and their growth in value share is, on average, 6% higher than brands that are low on meaning, difference, and salience.’” Too bizarre for detailed comment – but ‘brand safety’ is clearly a euphemism for “we will cancel the brand if you don’t support us.”
Who is behind this organisation? Who funds it?
Maybe it doesn’t need funding. Imagine thousands of out-of-work graduates sitting behind a computer!! In fact, you fund it.
You can find some info on a free search at Companies House – and even Wikipedia. The directors all appear to be activist types whose history shows board positions at NGOs etc, nothing useful or productive.
E.g, from WiIki
Thank you Douglas for dissecting yet again the malicious ways of the “progressives” and the woke viruses they happily spread in our society. This is their moment, and they enjoy the sheer naked power afforded them by their current hold over the elites of the media, politics and corporations. Astonishingly, they seem to have a total absence of irony, as they seem unaware of their own contradictions.
the use of the banner Stop Funding Hate is clearly misleading in this instance and should be illegal if it isn’t already. it is a libel by inference. charities and organisations should be open to heavy fines and damages if they mis-use terms like “hate” which can inflict great damage on people. most of their supporters are probably happy for the term “hate” to extend to this kind of situation but the public at large and the Ikeas of this world clearly don’t understand what they mean. all in all it is a difficult area and the lawmakers should take a much closer look at this
The problem is that our lefty friends believe that lefty political “activism” will save the world, and every educated youth longs to quit their job and get into “activism.”
We, on the other hand, believe that politics is a necessary evil needed to deal with the very few things that require the application of force rather than cooperation.
No the claim that Hate not Hope is pro segregation / Jim Crow and has a narrow Wahabist interpretation of womens’ rights would not be fanciful, it would be true. Of them and anyone else who uses racial and gender slurs as part of their social media content.
I agree that doing what the “woke progressives” do is not the way. However, the question remains: what methods/tools/means do we have to effectively fight, not just resist, the butchering by the so called “woke progressives” of humanistic values, civil vocabulary, and culture.
Just tuned into GBN again for first time in a couple of days and it is still pretty damned shambolic. There should be urgent meetings looking to iron these things out.
Well that is a view that you are perfectly entitled to. Mine however differs as watching a channel in my country that whist acknowledging the “bad”, shamelessly promotes “good news stories” all around the Kingdom (and I mean all around) is so refreshing certainly after the last few decades of being “told what is acceptable to say, read and hear” by predominantly the State Broadcaster and I say this as one who lived 10 years in China, somewhat ironically.
The enthusiasm of people, businesses both small and large within the hugely diverse(in the proper meaning) parts of this country is for me exhilarating and only matched by the as yet unpolished technical glitches and young and brilliant (in my view) presenters.
I fear the only problem GBN is having is the fad nowadays of expecting everything to be “pitch perfect” from the off and more worryingly the expectation (after years of conditioning) that if they don’t support All my biases no good can come from them.
I could give you a list of the stories that have so enthralled me, but haven’t the time or inclination, suffice to say the following Skeggy, Newcastle, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland Windsor, Dover, Newcastle and Birmingham, to name but a few..
“While others say don’t hate nothing at all except hatred” – Bob Dylan: It’s alright ma (I’m only bleeding). Great article from someone I don’t always agree with.
I’m baffled by the modern world. Fortunately I’m over 60 with a decent pension to look forward to, so I don’t need to let it worry me. Here’s my two ha’penny worth: these phemomena always have their roots in Twitter and/or Brexit.
The Stop-Funding-Hate group as well as ANTIFA remind me of ‘Opposite Day’ at summer camp. Always a hoot, but totally ludicrous & imaginary, a Folly-for-the-Day.
dl
Nice one Douglas!