Kerre McIvor: outrage at US election party-goers misplaced

The Hoppers Bar in Ponsonby Road where a disagreement broke out when someone objected to a gathering who were watching the American election. Photo / Hayden Woodward

I don't normally give air time to the cancel culture activists – those people who hold a particular world view that they believe we all must share and who think dissenters to that particular world view must be silenced.

Generally, these individuals have done little in their lives other than build up a social media profile and that, they seem to believe, gives them a platform to decree what is, and what is not, right. What is acceptable to believe and what is not. What is acceptable to say and what is not.

However, a particularly shrill voice rose above the counter culture clamour this week, when a young woman took exception to a gathering at a local Ponsonby bar. Apparently, she saw a ute drive past her with two large "Donald Trump political flags" and decided to investigate further. I have no idea what Donald Trump flags look like, but this young woman did and took offence.

She sent out a tweet to her army of the woke and they descended upon Hoppers Bar – where Golden Dawn used to be – and discovered a group of people holding a party to watch the US election. But that's not what the young woman saw. She saw a MAGA party because five people were wearing MAGA hats and she made the leap from the gathering being an election night screening to it being a party for racists and deplorables.

She and her mates started making a scene and were escorted from the premises. And then these brave warriors started their campaign. They called for a boycott of Hoppers and accused the owners of being "white supremacists".

Pretty strong stuff. All because a group of friends, some of them American, some of them Democrat supporters, some of them Trump supporters, decided to hold an election party and to bring along a collection of memorabilia. Wow. She and her friends left the place where they were having a good time and went out of their way to be offended. And the sad thing is, that's not even surprising these days.

I don't like what I've seen of Trump. I don't like his tweets. I don't like his politics. I don't like his attitude to women – but then I didn't like Bill Clinton's, either. But millions and millions of people have voted for Donald Trump in the United States elections and they are not all - as this young woman and her friends would have us believe - mouth-breathing, knuckle-grazing racists. Hispanics have voted for Trump. Suburban mums – who presumably have no desire for Trump to grab them by their respective p****** – have voted for Trump. African Americans have voted for Trump. And if this group believe that they have the right to tell African Americans how to vote, maybe they're the racists.

It's people like this who give oxygen to politicians like Trump. If you don't like the bar and its clientele, don't go there. This woman left a bar where she was perfectly happy and went to a bar where she could make herself angry. What's that about? I've been to Hoppers before and it's a most convivial place to meet. I liked the fact that the clientele were people of all ages and all ethnicities – it doesn't seem to be trying to cultivate a certain age group or level of hip. They have a great band there on weekend afternoons and you will find all sorts of people holding diverse points of view, enjoying a discussion over a beer. That's what adults do.

Once these petulant acolytes of the cancel culture grow up, they'll be able to do it too. Until then, if they choose to boycott the place and take their anger and their offence and their judgey condemnation of anyone that's not them elsewhere, that suits me just fine.