It’s tough to hate white men today. Once upon a time, statements like “#killallwhitemen” went relatively unnoticed, whereas now they are liable to get you suspended from your political party or put your job as ‘diversity officer’ in jeopardy. Even social media, the onetime stronghold of fashionable bigotry, is no longer on their side.

Bahar Mustafa, a diversity officer at the Goldsmiths University Students Union, recently attracted a storm of media attention after banning “cisgendered white males” from diversity events, and posting pictures on social media where she posed in front of a “no whites allowed” poster.

She was later found to have joked about ‘killing all white men’ on social media, and instead of apologising, defended the comments as “a way of reclaiming the power from the trauma many of us experience as queers, women, [and] people of colour.” Proving that no hole can be dug too deep, Mustafa also argued that women and ethnic minorities “can’t be sexist or racist”.

As a change.org petition calling for her expulsion gained over 12,000 signatures, supporters of Mustafa took to social media, creating the #supportbaharmustafa hashtag on Twitter. Their efforts were quickly foiled once the rest of Twitter discovered the hashtag:

Going to be honest, as a feminist, I do not #supportbaharmustafa. It's not ok to discriminate against any group. — Cole Pram (@colepram) May 20, 2015

#SupportBaharMustafa to give your racism the appearance of legitimacy. You are not the solution. You are the problem. Stop discriminating. — Sithlord Sabrina ☠️ (@SabrinaLianne) May 20, 2015

https://twitter.com/owolade14/status/600998909079584768

I #SupportBaharMustafa, because safe-space organizers are always unfairly demonized, like this one. pic.twitter.com/Ynl3gaR3Wv — Arean (@Arean91) May 20, 2015

https://twitter.com/m2qm1g/status/600996754004320256

I #supportbaharmustafa because those damn crackers invented slavery and killed the dinosaurs. — Abyss (@LazyDudeBro) May 20, 2015

I don't #supportbaharmustafa because she's a racist and censorious. You don't represent ethnic minorities. — Harvir Dhillon (@HarvirDhillon) May 20, 2015

#SupportBaharMustafa? Hell no. She is a disgrace to all marginalized people who want a world where people look past skin color and gender. — Red Hot Take Ranger (@ShinGokaiRed) May 20, 2015

https://twitter.com/OffencePolice/status/600996064863322112

https://twitter.com/TechyFolks/status/600998401518542848

https://twitter.com/OmniUke/status/600993193228836864

The growth of “hipster racism” has been fascinating to watch. Those who laugh about hashtags like “#killallwhitemen” are the same people who spent decades crafting politically correct language codes for others to obey, as well as a host of social punishments for anyone who didn’t. After all that, did they really think no-one was going to hold them to their own book of rules?