When cancel culture goes this far, our democracy is in peril

In the social media age, satire is highly risky because it can be so easily misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented.

In the early days of social media in 2013, US public relations executive Justine Sacco posted an edgy joke on Twitter, satirising US insularity and racism. She then got on a long-haul flight, turned off her phone and forgot about it. While she was in the air, her joke went viral because no one understood that she intended to make fun of racism; instead she was condemned as “racist” who reeked of “white privilege”.

Composite image by Aresna Villanueva.Credit:

Her employer was mobbed online by angry and threatening key punchers, one of whom posted: “We are about to watch this @JustineSacco bitch get fired. IN REAL TIME”.

Sacco apologised profusely, saying she thought “there was no way that anyone could think” her joke was meant to be taken literally. She was duly fired and shamed around the world.

Since Sacco, there have been numerous other victims of cancel culture. Before the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel, cancel culture was condemned and deplored by many conservative politicians and commentators. On the other hand, many progressives said it didn’t really exist and that it is merely a method by which the powerful were made “accountable” for their bad behaviour. The Israel-Hamas conflict has essentially seen the two camps reverse position.

Jewish Council of Australia executive officer Sarah Schwartz.

As I write, another outrage pile-on is in full swing. The target this time is Sarah Schwartz, human rights lawyer, academic, anti-racism campaigner and executive officer of the Jewish Council of Australia. Schwartz’s sin was to use satire in “The Great Race Debate” at a Queensland University of Technology symposium, Unifying Anti-Racism Research and Action.

In the course of her presentation, Schwartz likened Peter Dutton to Donald Trump, criticising their avowed hostility to many minority groups while they opportunistically support Israel and its supporters, no matter what. One of the slides that she used – depicting a character called “Dutton’s Jew” – pilloried the opposition leader for treating the Jewish community as monolithic, and as defenders of “Western civilisation” from other racial minorities.

A political opponent of Schwartz was in the audience. The slide was photographed and delivered to The Australian. Devoid of context, the slide can be interpreted as deploying a racist stereotype. With context, it is clear that it is criticising Dutton’s stereotyping of the Jewish community.

You can guess which version now features in a virulent and hateful cancellation campaign. When the Murdoch media combines with far-right social media accounts and pro-Israel lobby groups, the ensuing pile-on is particularly vicious.

Like other targets of such disingenuous campaigns, including Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Schwartz has faced a barrage of threats, abuse and defamatory attacks. The campaign against her is strategic and co-ordinated. Under the radar, right-wing lobby groups are relentlessly pressuring her employer to sack her in an attempt to destroy her professional life. They are also targeting the ABC, seeking to pressure it to blackball Schwartz from appearing on its programs.

They are only too aware that the ABC has wilted under such pressure before, including in the case of Abdel-Magied and, more recently, as alleged by Antoinette Lattouf, whom I am representing in her unlawful termination case against the public broadcaster.

And there is the case of cricket writer and commentator Peter Lalor, dumped this week by another broadcaster, SEN, after he reposted items on X about Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the released Israeli hostages. Lalor “strongly objected” to accusations by complainants that he was antisemitic.

The campaign against Schwartz is deeply hypocritical and calculated. The rage is artificial and confected. No one involved seriously considers Schwartz to be a rabid antisemite. Satirising racism is not racist. But in the eyes of the relentless pro-Israel lobby, Schwartz is guilty of far worse sins: she is a highly articulate Jewish Australian who criticises Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians.

And in so doing, she humanises Palestinians. In the eyes of the insular pro-Israel lobby, these sins are unforgivable, warranting severe punishment including effective expulsion from the Jewish community. Such a fate was experienced by author Antony Loewenstein and his family when he published his book, My Israel Question, in 2006.

The threat of being disowned by family and shunned by the small Jewish community in Australia acts as a powerful deterrent to many Jews who wish to speak out and criticise Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and the Gaza war. The same pro-Israel organisations that have targeted Jewish Australians like Loewenstein and Schwartz do not mete out the same treatment to prominent Australian neo-Nazis.

The attempt to cancel Sarah Schwartz transcends any one individual. It is a fundamental threat to free speech and liberal democracy. Social cohesion is impossible in a liberal democracy unless we embrace the right to disagree with one another.

Josh Bornstein is an advisory board member of the Jewish Council of Australia, a lawyer and the author of Working for the Brand: how corporations are destroying free speech.