WILL 2014 be remembered as the year of the totalitarian? While the most extreme forms of oppressive rule take hold in other parts of the world, we have our own dictators demanding we adhere to their moral code.

We seem to have drifted into a worrying trend where self-appointed ethical guardians display a puritanical fervour to ban things they deem offensive, no matter how misplaced or overblown their offence may be.

We are in an era where clicktivists use their undiminishing reserves of outrage to orchestrate campaigns to ban T-shirts, video games, songs with offensive lyrics ... they have even attempted to ban former Labor leader Mark Latham’s musings. During these offence orgies, the easily affronted band together to bully individuals or companies which don’t conform to their narrow world view.

Criticism, condemnation and boycotts are no longer enough; like spoilt children demanding vegetables disappear from their dinner plate, the hashtag-happy harpies believe that what they don’t like should no longer exist.

I wasn’t kidding about attempts to ban Latham’s words; there are multiple petitions to have his columns removed from the Australian Financial Review because the contents displease a select few women.

Latham has lately taken on a daddy blogger role, writing about parenting issues and has, in typical Latham style, been scathing of mothers who promote what he calls “feminist parenting”.

Call me old fashioned, but I always thought if you don’t like the work of a columnist then you can choose not to read their work. No one is forcing you to buy the paper or click on the link to their work.

But it seems that exercising personal choice or writing an angry letter to the editor are no longer sufficiently empowering. Now online petitions must be started and pressure applied to any organisation that dares produce content that is contrary to one’s personal belief system.

Unless Latham is inciting violence or using threatening language, then I don’t see how anybody who values free speech could demand that he be effectively silenced.

If his columns defamed anyone then the aggrieved have a legal option but simply being offended is not grounds for demanding the banning of articles.

Surely Latham, who let’s not forget was supported in his campaign to be prime minister by many of the Leftist feminists now demanding he be censored, has a right to express his opinions, just as his detractors have a right to criticise his work.

But despite several columnists writing caustic responses to Latham’s parenting pieces and a plethora of online invective, there are those who will be satisfied only if his work is banned.

It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen again and again as enraged activists demand retail outlets ban legal products that upset their sensibilities. This year, we’ve had Aldi and Big W recall supposedly racist Australia Day T-shirts emblazoned with “Australia Est. 1788” slogans after an all too predictable Twitter storm.

Another social media campaign resulted in Woolworths issuing a pitiful apology and pulling a singlet off the shelves which featured the Australian flag with the slogan “if you don’t love it, leave”. That campaign was more idiotic than most thanks to the involvement of Greens MP Adam Bandt.

The singlet was labelled “disgusting” and “xenophobic” and simply “unacceptable” for modern day Australia. Funnily enough, the same folk “sickened” by the “divisive” Australia Day T-shirts and the “if you don’t love it, leave” singlets seem utterly unperturbed with “F--- Tony Abbott” T-shirts peddled by a Fairfax columnist.

Earlier this month, Target also succumbed to pressure and pulled an R-rated video game, Grand Theft Auto V, off its shelves. The decision came after a campaign by women upset by the violence depicted in the game particularly against female sex workers.

In the online age, all it takes is a few key strokes to add your name to a petition or campaign to ban all manner of things. Retailers can be spooked by an avalanche of abusive Facebook posts, tweets or names on a petition and often react with panic rather than a calm and considered approach.

Target may have thought it had averted a public relations disaster by banning the game from its stores but the decision was met by thousands of equally enraged gamers who saw the ban as infringing on their rights.

Of course, we all have a right to be offended, but that does not entitle us to demand bans as soon as we see something we disagree with.

I, for one, have a very low tolerance for vacuous, asinine commentary and that’s why I avoid Fairfax’s female website, Daily Life, a slightly more miserable version of mummy blogger site Mamamia — but I don’t demand that it not exist. I simply make the decision not to consume the content it produces.

I have an even lower threshold for wretched creeps who think it’s their God-given right to send abusive, threatening or sexist messages on social media. That’s why I make use of the block button and cull any pests from harassing me. We can all take steps to avoid what we despise.

This renewed zeal for imposing one’s viewpoints by stealth is not something to be celebrated. There is no virtue in being easily offended; being hypersensitive does not make you more caring or compassionate. It just make you an authoritarian bore.

RITA PANAHI IS A HERALD SUN COLUMNIST

TWITTER: @ritapanahi

rita.panahi@news.com.au