Recently, a number of people online have declared their unwillingness to subscribe to Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland’s blockbuster podcast The Rest is History, which is produced by Goalhanger — the company co-founded by football pundit turned Middle Eastern political commentator Gary Lineker. They have called upon the presenters to abandon Goalhanger due to its association with Lineker and set up on their own.

The issue is Lineker’s increasingly outspoken views on Israel and the situation in Gaza, and in particular a number of ill-advised retweets of anti-Israel propaganda videos that either contained antisemitic imagery or were posted by antisemites. Last week, the former Match of the Day Presenter even shared a post linking Zionism to Nazis.

One can well understand the anger felt about Lineker’s flirtation with extremely questionable “anti-Zionist” figures. One example from last year involved overt rat imagery in reference to Jews, which was certainly antisemitic. Should this mean that anything associated with Lineker can be considered irredeemably tainted?

It could be argued that Lineker’s behavior reflects naivety and ignorance more than some deep-rooted Julius Streicher-style Jew-hatred, but the real question is deeper. Should we boycott all cultural products and phenomena — or all products of any kind — that are associated with someone whose views we find deeply objectionable?

“Associated with” is a broad-brush phrase, of course. Both Sandbrook and Gary Lineker are “associated with” The Rest is History, but Lineker’s role is indirect and involves him having no input into the show’s content. Clearly, if Lineker were shaping the podcast’s handling of episodes that bear upon questions of modern Middle Eastern history in accordance with his views, then it would be a different question. Refusing to subscribe to a podcast because its content is wrong or immoral is of course perfectly reasonable.

In an instance where the views objected to have no direct bearing on the product in question, it seems much less clear-cut. The objectors in this case appear to particularly have a problem with Lineker making money out of a company, the profitability of which is heavily connected with the success of The Rest is History. But once one goes beyond a direct association in which the objectionable views are being themselves propagated, then it becomes a very slippery and all-encompassing idea of “moral taint” which is surely impossible to apply consistently.

Any product you consume, be it a podcast, TV show, or book, is the result of the cooperation, direct and indirect, of many people. If that product is seen as morally tainted to the point of unacceptability if any of those associated with it espouse dodgy or even deeply immoral views, then anyone, Left or Right, will soon find it impossible to live day-to-day. The exchange of goods and services, including “cultural” ones, in a modern economy dependent on the interconnections between huge numbers of people relies upon a certain indifference to divisive issues.

It is of course a mark of latter-day religiously-inflected political sectarianism that we now see this civilized indifference being rejected, particularly on the Left. Even harmless and popular children’s entertainment — mostly obviously Harry Potter — is now the site of the sorts of increasingly rigid and all-encompassing moral purity tests of the kind that you might have expected during the 16th century Wars of Religion. According to many deranged progressives, anyone involved with the new Harry Potter TV adaptation is tainted by JK Rowling’s views on the trans issue, even though no one applies this idea consistently. Do we expect all actors to examine the political views of the writers or creators of all TV shows or films they appear in, and boycott them if they find anything “problematic”?

If you want to endorse this logic — that of vicious sectarian religious struggle, or the unhinged political messianism of the French Revolution — then beware what you’re getting into. You’ll never be consistent, and the logic of this will introduce a sort of low-level, moralistic, quasi-totalitarianism into all our cultural and even economic life. One expects this from the far-Left — it seems very ill-advised for the saner elements of the political spectrum to embrace it.