William McGimpsey, a prominent voice of the so-called “woke Right” in New Zealand, recently posted on X a condemnation of Ani O’Brien’s open letter to the Helen Clark Foundation, accusing her of engaging in “cancel culture” for calling out Professor Peter Davis’s comments linking the Netanyahu government to rising antisemitism. According to McGimpsey, Davis’s comments are “controversial but true,” and the Free Speech Union (FSU) – of which O’Brien (along with myself) are board members – should be protecting such speech rather than “haranguing” individuals and organisations.
This is not the first time McGimpsey has taken this posture. As a commentator who blends classically liberal ideals with fashionable identitarianism, he often opposes open discourse while paradoxically shielding highly contested moral claims from criticism. His stance represents a growing trend within segments of the political right who style themselves as contrarians but fall back on the very moral absolutism they claim to oppose when confronted with pushback. And here, that confusion is on full display.
Let’s get one thing clear: Ani O’Brien is not canceling Peter Davis. She is challenging him. She is not demanding his deplatforming, firing, or criminal sanctioning. Her letter does not call for Davis to be silenced. Instead, she is engaging in robust counterspeech – the very practice McGimpsey and certainly the FSU claim to champion.
In fact, O’Brien is using the best, and only tool a liberal society provides for confronting bad ideas: argument. Her letter is measured and focused. She points out that blaming Jews – even obliquely – for the antisemitism directed against them, especially in the current climate of rising hate crimes and intimidation, is morally grotesque and intellectually lazy. To suggest that the conduct of a foreign government makes antisemitism somehow inevitable or understandable is to surrender to the logic of bigotry itself.
Criticising such a statement, particularly when it comes from someone as prominent as the former Prime Minister’s spouse (who is still active in public life) is not cancel culture. It’s democratic accountability.
McGimpsey, however, seems to hold a different standard. In his worldview, any moral criticism is a form of “cancellation,” particularly if it targets someone who he agrees with. This is where the woke Right begins to mirror the very excesses they deride on the progressive Left: rebranding emotional discomfort as oppression, and any form of scrutiny as suppression.
But McGimpsey is not alone in his confusion over free speech – what it protects, and what it does not.
Free speech is not freedom from criticism. It is the freedom to engage in criticism. If Davis can express his opinion, then so can O’Brien. If the Helen Clark Foundation can platform controversial ideas, others can challenge – robustly – those ideas. They can deliver the George Foreman uppercut on Gerry Cooney if they so wish, hurling them off to the furthest reaches of the fringe. Free Speech doesn’t just allow for that – it encourages that. This is the progressive, marketplace of ideas in action – messy, adversarial, but essential. What McGimpsey is proposing isn’t a defence of free speech at all, but a tiered moral system where some are allowed to speak without consequence while others are punished socially for pushing back. Sound familiar?
But speech that enables bigotry, even unintentionally, is likely to be challenged. That’s how we build a freer, more just society – not by silencing people, but by refusing to let rotten ideas go unexamined. Ani O’Brien understands this. William McGimpsey does not.
