If you’re one of those people who was surprised to learn that the national anthem is inherently racist, then you were probably surprised to learn that the Lego Group—the parent company that makes Legos—has decided to pull all its advertising in London’s Daily Mail.
This may seem like small news, but it’s actually a big deal. The Daily Mail has been targeted by an activist group called Stop Funding Hate. The group says that its first precept—the very first thing it stands for—is “Freedom of speech and freedom of the press.” That said, the group’s mission is to call target companies and shame them into not advertising in three British newspapers: the Sun, the Daily Mail, and the Daily Express.
Fair enough, one supposes. Advertiser boycotts aren’t exactly the same as restricting freedom of the press. After all, this is how market forces and social change are supposed to work: People vote with their pocketbooks, and businesses adjust.
Except that’s not quite what’s going on with Legos and the Daily Mail.
For starters, what, you might ask, is the “hate” being perpetuated by the three targeted newspapers? All three are skeptical of the left’s open-borders immigration policy.
That’s it. That’s the “hate.”
Not that we should be surprised that the Lego Group was eager to be mau-maued. They’ve been invested in liberal virtue signaling for a long time.
In 2014, the company discontinued selling Lego sets with the Shell oil logo in them over opposition to Arctic drilling. This year they’re marketing a mini-fig of a stay-at-home hipster dad with a high-power corporate working wife. Like good Scandinavians, the Lego folks want you to know that they have all the right opinions.
Not that it’s ever enough. In 2013 they were attacked by activist groups for having a Star Wars model of Jabba the Hutt’s palace that was insensitive to Muslims. In 2014 they introduced a figure in a wheelchair—and were criticized because the figure in the wheelchair was an older man and not a young child, thereby reinforcing ageist stereotypes and denying disabled children a role model. The same year the company debuted a set featuring women as super-smart scientists. Professional feminists were not placated. Here’s one in the Guardian attacking the Lego Lady Scientist set:
You cannot make this up.
In the end, what the Lego-Daily Mail story really tells us is that the left has learned a great lesson from the gay marriage movement. Same-sex marriage activists won the day by convincing people that opposition to a drastic, un-democratic change in public policy was simple “hate.” The transgender project took this line and ran with it so that now opposing the redefinition of gender so that men can use women’s locker rooms and boys can compete on girls’ sports teams has been branded as “hate,” too. And now the group in England is trying to hang the same tag on any opposition to unfettered immigration. We cannot be far from the moment when favoring an increase in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate will also be said to be rooted in “hate” if the professional left opposes it.
At the end of the day, groups such as Stop Funding Hate aren’t actually trying to use market forces to create social change. They’re using intimidation to bully businesses in the hopes that eventually the public will get the message, too. And by branding policy disagreement as hatred, they’re destroying the civility that is the lubricant of all healthy civil societies.
And however well meaning its gesture, the Lego Group is contributing to this breakdown of civility. Shame on them.
