OPINION: We can disagree profoundly with someone like David Gaughan without trying to put him out of business

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from Northern Outlook

From columnist Verity Johnson: Middle NZ was asked whether it cared enough about cancel culture to stop supporting a local boozer and beer brand whose owner wrote a racist Facebook post calling Māori the "scurge of society". Apparently, it doesn’t.

That’s not to say it necessarily agreed with the appalling comments – many of them openly said that they didn’t. Rather they just didn’t think cancelling the brewery was justified. Especially after Eagle Brewing owner Dave Gaughan’s apology.

The disgusting, heartbreaking part of all this is that cancel culture used to be called boycotting. Boycotting was one of few effective weapons of the genuinely disenfranchised. It was the furious, white-hot fire that forged real revolutions from Rosa Parks to Gandhi.

Until we stole it. We took it off the streets, into the wine bars, and disembowelled it. Ripped out its heart and teeth. Death by gentrification. Gaughan’s not the only one who should apologise.

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