‘Cancel culture’ is a handy hypothesis on the right. Appropriated and weaponised to accuse progressives of ‘cancelling’ free speech, it simultaneously distracts the punters, generates traction for right-wing politicians and pundits and tries to shut down (‘cancel’, if you will) an important tactic on the left.

Here’s how it works: “forget about the botched rollout of COVID-19 vaccines or the rampant misogyny and sexual misconduct behind the walls of Parliament House, here’s Andrew Bolt, railing against ‘princess of woke’ Meghan Markle for wanting to ‘drown out’ voices of intolerance”. Forget, also, the fact that right wingers have been ‘cancelling’ Adam Goodes and French cuisine (remember “freedom fries”?) for years.

Aggrieved ethnic and indigenous communities, or preachy, ‘cancel culture’ elites are like catnip on the right. If ever a ‘woke’ caricature was too good to be true for conservative talking heads, it was Alexis Chaise, the leftist PhD who last week deemed ‘fairy bread’ an offensive term and launched an online petition for a name change.

Dr Chaise ticked all the boxes: a ‘woke’ academic (was she a feminist lesbian?) seeking to ‘cancel’ something most of us have fond childhood memories of, all in the name of dastardly political correctness. Sure enough, the usual suspects couldn’t resist:

In fact, Dr Chaise was too good to be true; a fictional character conjured up by The Chaser’s satirists as bait for News Corp outlets and radio shock jocks. Despite a trail of tell-tale breadcrumbs that should have been spotted by even mildly inquisitive hacks, “Dr Chaise” duped a host of news websites on Friday, from News.com.au (see above) to the Lad Bible.

Unfortunately for The Chaser, the penny dropped at News Corp later that day. Website coverage was scrubbed, and the Sky News prime time talking heads were left – at uncomfortably short notice – looking for some other left-wing strawman to wag a finger at.

Those clever folks at The Chaser had a partial win, showing up those who fell for their ruse as cynical and lazy (who doesn’t check a source?) and earning themselves a hearty weekend of chortling at the big boys’ expense. But right-wing commentators are no joke, and their message is a menace to civil society; many argue laughing at them isn’t nearly enough.

Dangerous, US-style far-right propaganda has hijacked the Australian conservative movement over the past few years, and there are two ways to respond to it.

The first and most common response is to move along with it, acknowledging that things have changed while trying to grapple with it.

Broadly speaking, that’s what The Chaser did: “It’s a fact of life, but let’s expose their agenda for our limited audience and maybe have a laugh in the process. In so doing, we might inform a few more people and move the debate, incrementally, our way”.

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Accepting a new (albeit objectionable) reality as a ‘fact of life’ while reserving the right to challenge its merits sounds fine and good in a free society where all viewpoints are allowed, but the “marketplace of ideas” is far from a level playing field.

The right marginalises its opponents by being the loudest voice in the room: a propaganda machine so ubiquitous that almost everyone else gets drowned out. That’s anything but free and democratic.

No matter how much those with regressive, prejudiced or simply dishonest views are challenged, it is pointless if they have a platform that dwarfs everyone else’s. Their point of view, aided and abetted by the massive media infrastructure of News Corp and fellow travellers, will dominate debate by sheer weight of numbers.

The other response to the newly-radicalised right is to resist the movement altogether, to refuse to engage with its ideas, and to reject any arguments for doing so. Such a response can be found in Kevin Rudd’s call to boycott News Corp’s lucrative real estate website, or David Milner’s guerilla-style campaign to stop reading the Herald Sun or watching Sky News.

The right has a term for this response: cancel culture.

It has spent years framing the legitimate, democratic right to boycott in a negative light, an attack on free speech. It spends far more resources on this than it has on rebutting the arguments of those who accept the US hijacking of Australia’s right-wing discourse as a “fact of life” while opposing it philosophically.

It’s almost like the right sees those who resist it altogether, refuse to engage with its beyond-the pale-ideas and reject any arguments to do so as the greater threat. They’re right, of course.

Right-wing talking heads validate their followers’ jaundiced world view: no amount of logic from the “fact-of-life” crowd will dissuade their audience. To merely debate them is to play by their rules; hitting them where it hurts (in the wallet) is what gets to them.

As it stands, the newly-radicalised right is well-placed to harass the left into refraining from another democratic freedom, the right to boycott. Kevin Rudd and a few others aside, they are doing so pretty effectively.

The bullying of people against exercising a basic right is unacceptable in a democratic society. The far right has been banned in European and North American democracies, in part for this very reason; why can’t Australians at least ‘cancel’ their brethren here?

The “fact-of-life” crowd believe they can defeat the right, but they don’t have the information infrastructure to get there. There is no middle ground with bigots; why not thumb our noses at their bullying and assert our right to ‘cancel’ them?