Sphinx

So, ‘cancel culture’ has been monetised: just pay Toby Young’s new Free Speech Union a load of money, and then tweet about eugenics, the glories of the British Empire and the size of women’s breasts to your heart’s content, safe in the knowledge that you will not have to stand alone in the face of a howling Twitter mob demanding to know whether this is entirely appropriate.

I’m not totally convinced by some aspects of the business model here – surely the sort of person who knows in advance they’re going to be wilfully offensive, so would pay for the assurance that Spiked! will write an outraged column about people objecting to this, will already be part of this crowd? And are they actually going to ignore a good controversy and opportunity to denounce excessively woke students, just because the target hasn’t coughed up their protection money?

But it also raises the question of whether there are any further business opportunities in this area… Academics! Are you worried that your research is too obscure, nuanced or sensible to attract the sort of attention and media gigs you nevertheless feel you deserve? But you’re still unwilling to strip out the ambiguity and pull out a dog whistle? We’re here to solve your problem: for a very reasonable fee we will weaponise your findings and make them the new front in the culture wars. You retain deniability and the possibility of claiming to have been misinterpreted, if you decide not to commit fully to our truth-telling mission – and if you do, Toby Young has an offer you may not be wise to refuse…

Addendum: did briefly think about also offering the opportunity to be convincingly denounced to the Turning Point UK Inquisition, but unaccountably people seem to be taking them even less seriously than the Free Speech Avengers.