What a fantastic week this has been! Rounded off, for me, by discovering that the Co-op has dropped its silly spat with the Spectator.
I love the Co-op's genuine ethics and support for low-income communities. And, while opposing The Spectator's rightwing economic views, I have recently come to love its support for women's rights and child safeguarding [waves to James Kirkup].
But they fell out earlier this month, I discovered from Mumsnet, my reliable source of feminist news.
A transactivist had complained about the Co-op advertising in The Spectator, so the Co-op's Twitter team said they would consider dropping the adverts. At which point the Spectator's boss Andrew Neil said he was banning the Co-op's ads from the magazine -- in perpetuity.
I would have cheered, if it hadn't been the dear old Co-op getting put down.
Now today I've read that the Co-op never authorised that silly tweet.
The Spectator's editor Fraser Nelson explains:
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-spectator-the-co-op-and-cancel-culture-a-cautionary-tale
The Spectator has a policy of refusing to deal with corporates who indulge in such cancel culture. It’s a firm principle of ours, but not one I expected to apply to the Co-op – which is one of the few outfits to have explicitly stated its commitment to diversity of opinion.
I emailed the Co-op to ask what on earth had happened, .... As I suspected, they had been targeted by a troll farm called Stop Funding Hate which goes after corporates who advertise in publications with which they disagree. The idea is to find 30 or 40 activists – sometimes far fewer – to target the corporation’s Twitter account and persuade the social media manager that there’s some kind of a national uproar.
If this trick works, the terrified social media team cave in to their demands and offer some kind of apology.... The theory behind Stop Funding Hate is that publications get most of their money from advertisers, not readers – so pressure exerted via advertisers can work.
The ploy backfired when supporters of women's rights and free speech rushed to take out subscriptions to The Spectator and threatened to boycott the Co-op.
But the Co-op was innocent. The tweet had been unauthorised, and breached Co-op policy. The Co-op was not withdrawing its ads from one of the few big publications that speaks up for women.
The Spectator's policy of a ‘lifetime ban’ is to make it clear to corporates that they cannot coming crawling back once the Twitterstorm is over and make a private apology to a publication it publicly condemns, Nelson writes.
But with the Co-op, we have accepted that this was genuinely a mistake. So we have made up. We have an advert from them appearing next month. And we ordered some of their own-brand champagne to the office
I'll drink to the Co-op and our friends on The Spectator. Cheers 