The Cambridge Union debating society was founded in 1815 to protect free speech.
It’s hosted famous speakers from Winston Churchill to the Dalai Lama.
A recent topic was: ‘This House Believes There is No Such Thing as Good Taste’.
Art historian, Andrew Graham-Dixon, put the opposing view, that bad taste was linked to bad morality.
He parodied Adolf Hitler’s nazi speeches: “Zis modern art zat vos promoted by ze Jews… it vos cubist, inspired by ze art of ze negro. Ve must expunge it from Deutschland. Ve are pure, Aryan people. Our genetics is pure, our taste must be pure.”
Obviously meant as a piss-take, making the point that nazis hated modern art, hated anything that was new and different.
But the next day some students complained that imitating Hitler was offensive.
At which point Cambridge Union President, Keir Bradwell, decided that no one must be offended.
He released a statement: “We will create a blacklist of speakers never to be invited back to the Cambridge Union, and we will share that blacklist with other unions. Andrew Graham-Dixon’s name will be on that blacklist.”
Blacklisting was a serious threat to Andrew Graham-Dixon’s livelihood, so he issued an immediate apology:
“I apologise sincerely to anyone who found my debating tactics and use of Hitler’s own language distressing; on reflection I can see that some of the words I used, even in quotation, are inherently offensive.”
So far, so normal: someone make a joke – someone gets offended – threatened cancellation – grovelling apology.
Because that’s how you shut people up: you threaten them with cancellation.
But then an unusual thing happened, instead of taking the cancellation seriously, someone decided to ridicule it.
John Cleese was due to speak at the Cambridge Union, but instead he sent the following tweet to his 5.6 million followers:
“I was looking forward to talking to students at the Cambridge Union this Friday, but I hear that someone has been blacklisted for doing an impersonation of Hitler.
I regret that I did the same on a Monty Python show, so I am blacklisting myself before someone else does.”
By cancelling himself, John Cleese completely turned the tables.
Louis de Bernieres, the author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, immediately demanded to be put on the blacklist as well. Being put on the blacklist suddenly became a badge of honour, it meant you believed in free speech, which meant lots of young comedians demanded to be put on the blacklist too. Even writers like Ian McEwan and Tom Stoppard expressed their support.
Suddenly the situation was reversed and Keir Bradwell, who had pompously issued the threat of a blacklist, became the focus of guests refusing to speak.
He had forgotten that Cambridge Union was a 211-year-old free speech debating society.
He instantly backed down and tried to limit the damage he’d done:
“The Cambridge Union does not have a blacklist, I mis-spoke and should not have used that term. Further guests may say what they wish, and absolutely never need to fear that anything they say will put them on a list of any sort. There is no policy to ban anyone for what they say – it’s a free speech institution. If there is a dichotomy between free speech and offense, I will defend free speech. I don’t want to create an impression that the Union is against free speech.”
That U-turn demonstrates that just because someone objects to something we’ve done, or made, or written, it doesn’t automatically mean they’re right.
It doesn’t even mean they’ve given it much thought, usually they’re just jumping on the safe-opinion bandwagon.
We must remember that negativity is a reaction against anything new and different.
So we shouldn’t have a knee-jerk reaction to their knee-jerk reaction.
If we don’t put our head above the parapet we won’t get shot at, but staying safe and out-of-sight is the opposite of what advertising is supposed to be about.
If our job is just to avoid controversy and simply make sure we never offend a single person anywhere ever, we might as well just let AI write everything.