Please ban this column now, I need the publicity

The banning of an obscure documentary about the men’s rights movement has turned it into a publicity juggernaut in what can only be described as self-immolation of the Left.

A petition to stop The Red Pill — a feminist documentary that interviews men’s rights advocates — from being filmed at a certain cinema has actually given the film free publicity. (Pic: The Red Pill)

Across the world there are countless conservatives who would love nothing more than to kill off the Left.

Unfortunately the Left now seems set upon doing the job itself.

For self-immolation is surely the only explanation for the banning of an obscure documentary about the men’s rights movement that has turned it into a publicity juggernaut.

The film, called The Red Pill, is apparently the story of a feminist interviewing men’s rights advocates and finding — shock, horror — that she agrees with some of what they say.

I say “apparently” because I haven’t seen it, would never have wanted to see it and would never even have heard of it had a small bunch of people not tried to ban it and the movie house not folded like crepe paper.

Now it has been all over the news like a cheap gender-neutral suit.

If I were the producer I’d be sending the Palace Kino Cinema a crate of vegan Moet. Not since the Russians infiltrated ASIO has a host done so much for an enemy agent.

Personally, I’m not really into the whole men’s rights thing. Most “advocates” strike me as a little bit sad and a little bit obsessive. A few are just plain creepy.

Still, from what I gleaned in the trailer — which of course I also never would have seen had the film not been banned — they didn’t seem like towering tyrants of patriarchal oppression.

Maybe that’s what upset the censors so much.

Still, what would I know? I can’t see the whole movie for myself, at least not at the bustling marketplace of ideas that is the Palace Kino.

And of course censorship has worked so well in the past.

In 1960 the British authorities tried to ban Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It went on to sell three million copies.

In the 1500s, the Catholic Church tried to ban an English translation of the Bible. It went on to sell five billion copies.

For not only does such mindless reactivism give reams of free publicity to the very thing the censors are trying to censor, it confirms the world view of the people they’re trying to argue against.

In this case you have a bunch of blokes claiming that feminism is trying to silence them and so to counter this a bunch of feminists decide to silence them.

It’s a political strategy so dumb it could only come from the mind of bong-addled student socialists. And I should know — I was one.

Of course in my day, the adults just ignored us until we grew up. Now thanks to the internet, all you need is a petition shorter than Corey Worthington’s guest list and the grown-ups shit their trousers before you even hit send.

And you don’t even get a party to go to.

For a real party watch Joe on Studio 10 from 8.30am weekdays on Channel Ten.