The British House of Fraser chain has pulled a promotional poster from its 61 department stores across the UK and Ireland after one woman complained that it was ‘racist’. Promoting this season’s fashionable colours, the poster declared: ‘Black is back, White is right.’ The woman who complained said these words reminded her of a 1960s racist poem. The store’s management pulled the ad, seeming to accept the woman’s assertion that the marketing team must not be very ‘culturally aware’.
Society has always had its fair share of self-appointed moral guardians, usually groups of individuals with that unfortunate combination of over-sensitivity and over-zealousness. Such illiberal groups, made up of hundreds or just scores of people, have been able to convince individuals, businesses and councils to back down over the merest slight or ‘risque’ advert or campaign – and thus to police public space and debate. Yet now we have moved from the tyranny of the minority to the tyranny of the individual, where one seemingly thin-skinned complainant can determine what is appropriate for the rest of us to see and hear. This is more pernicious than anything Mary Whitehouse’s army did in the past - and it is happening more and more.
Read my full article on the new tyranny of the individual at spiked - click here.
Alex Hochuli
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