Delingpole: Christmas Card Store Paperchase Caves to SJW Pressure; Punished by Massive Conservative Backlash

The Grinch stands behind a police officer using a laser speed detector
Getty/Joe Raedle
James Delingpole

Read this tweet. Then weep for the future of Western Industrial Civilization…

The tweet, let me explain, comes from the corporate communications department of a popular UK chain of stationers called Paperchase. There are Paperchase outlets on every high street in Britain. Sometimes you go in to buy stuff you need — a pen, a notebook, some glue, a birthday card; too often, you end up leaving with a pile of stuff you didn’t need because, damn it, it’s all so bright and jolly and breezy and seductive and you never realized a box of paperclips could look quite so much fun, fun, fun!

That, more or less, is Paperchase’s business model; and it explains why it is so especially popular in this season of wrapping paper, gaudy stocking fillers and cards.

But now, as you see from the tweet, Paperchase has done a terrible thing for which it has felt compelled to apologize.

What on earth could this crime have been, you may wonder.

Did it, perhaps, run an ad with a bad taste Christmas card featuring Harvey Weinstein with a snowy beard and a red and white costume dandling an embarrassed looking Elf Helperette on his knee?

Did it make the mistake of forgetting that Christmas is for everyone — not just for the kind of old-fashioned and probably dangerous reactionaries who are into all that retro stuff involving barnyard animals, shepherds, angels and some kid in a crib — but most especially for Muslims and should preferably be referred to by its correct name — Happy Holidays — lest anyone be offended?

Was there, perhaps, some terrible accident at the printers, so that instead of “Paperchase: for all your Yuletide stationery needs” the advert actually featured a picture of Adolf Hitler dancing with a group of Hitler Youth in the snowy Bavarian Alps with the message “Tomorrow belongs to us!”

Nope, it was none of those things.

Instead, the appalling, almost unforgivable crime that Paperchase had committed was this:

It had placed an advert in one of Britain’s most popular newspapers – the Daily Mail…

…a popular newspaper which, quite unforgivably in the eyes of the SJWs who now police the commercial and business sphere, happens to be conservative.

Yes. An unpleasant, hard-left organization called Stop Funding Hate called on its 80,000 Twitter followers to write to Paperchase expressing their disquiet that it should be advertising in a newspaper which didn’t share their hard-left views.

And astonishingly, unforgivably, Paperchase caved.

As was recently the case with Keurig, however, this may be a decision that Paperchase comes to regret.

Sure, in the very, very short term it provoked a few positive responses from the usual soap-dodging Occupy types.

Problem is, soap-dodging Occupy types are not, in the main, the people who underpin Paperchase’s profits.

The people who underpin Paperchase’s profits have rather more in common with the Daily Mail‘s readership profile.

Now gloriously, inevitably the backlash has begun:

In this piece for ReactionLife, Iain Martin captures well the grisly left-wing censorship and corporate cowardice that led to this bad decision:

There were 480 tweets in response, with Stop Funding Hate, the unbelievably pious campaign on Twitter set on destroying media outlets its supporters disagree with, in the forefront. Getting attacked by Stop Funding Hate is, it seems the corporate equivalent of being denounced in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a chronicle of the witch hunts in New England. An assault online by Stop Funding Hate produces blind panic in the public relations department and the only way to save yourself if named is to grovel or denounce others.

But he feels more awkward than he should about the correct response:

There is talk from advocates of free speech, and those wanting the mainstream media to survive, of boycotting Paperchase for its decision. Again, the heart sinks. More boycotts. More anger. Personally, I will avoid the place where I shopped several times a month, but with a sense of regret as much as fury.

Nope, Iain. We need to keep boycotting Paperchase until next Christmas and beyond. Until its share price collapses and every store closes down, in fact.

Why?

Rules for Radicals, Rule #4:

“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

They started this war.

But we’re going to win it.

 

 

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