Hell has no fury like a mad fucking witch

The song ‘Nobody told me’ By John Lennon was released in 1984 and it contains the lyrics “Nobody told me there be days like these, strange days indeed”. I wonder what he would make of today, where a group who call themselves Mad Fucking Witches (MFW) can effectively decide who we listen to or watch on broadcast media in Australia. Make no mistake about it, Alan Jones, Kyle Sandilands and Karl Stefanovic all lost their jobs because of MFW. If advertisers hadn’t abandoned Jone’s breakfast show on 2GB or Kyle’s show on KIIS 1065 they would still be on the air and the mere threat to target advertisers on the Today Show and his radio show on Gold was enough to see Karl exit both shows. As a result, MFW are pumped with power and openly wave the scalps of their victims in front of their loyal coven. They are more organised and more brazen than ever before and regardless of your political leaning or your views on Jones, Sandilands or Stefanovic we should be concerned that they have this sort of influence.

The high priestess of MFW is Jennie Hill, and she founded MFW in 2016. The name originates from a 2016 text message sent by then Liberal MP Peter Dutton to journalist Samantha Maiden, in which he referred to her as a “mad fucking witch.” While MFW didn’t begin as an activist group it became one in 2019 with Jone’s comments on New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and at its core is a small team (reports have mentioned around 30 volunteers and a handful of part-time staff at times) and they maintain an active presence on Facebook, Instagram, and X, with around 200,000 followers. It claims to be dedicated to exposing “media lies,” bias, and content it characterises as misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of hate or bigotry. There are similarities with the US social media activist group Sleeping Giants, who also launched in 2016 and their focus is conservative right-wing websites and far right or extremist content using the same advertiser influencer tactics that MFW deploy.

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.” — William Shakespeare, “Macbeth”

Terms such as misogyny, racism, hate speech, and bigotry lack fixed universally agreed definitions as they sit at the intersection of law, culture, psychology and politics. Legal definitions in Australia (e.g., under the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 or state vilification laws) generally require conduct that incites hatred, serious contempt, or severe ridicule on specified grounds, often with a public element, to be unlawful. Courts have applied thresholds that separate robust opinion or humour from prohibited content whereas activist groups frequently expand these terms to include implicit bias, microaggressions, stereotypes and humour that targets minorities, even without direct incitement. In the case of MFW, they decide the definition, which defines the problem, they frame the solution as advertiser accountability and interpret successful outcomes as validation.

MFW applies these labels to specific media content and personalities, and the most recent example is Karl Stefanovic’s interview with Tommy Robinson which they claim involved racism and hate. MFW has said that they “only run campaigns on people who are serial repeat offenders”. Karl a repeat offender? While MFW has publicly stated on one hand, they seek only to stop what they view as harmful content, not to “cancel” individuals outright, on the other hand their mission with Jones, Sandilands and Stefanovic was clear, they wanted them taken off the air and said as much.

To achieve their goal MFW’s primary tactic is always the same, identifying advertisers associated with the content, contacting them directly and urging them to withdraw their advertising on grounds that continued association conflicts with corporate values or risks reputational damage. Supporters are told to grab their brooms, head to the group’s website for campaign resources and advertiser lists and then get to work. Having been on the front line during their campaign against Kyle Sandilands, I can tell you they are relentless, via phone calls, via emails, via social media posts and comments and even via text messages and one could say it borders on bullying and harassment, but whatever you call it, it’s very effective.

Australian law does not prohibit consumer boycotts or organised advocacy groups urging companies to reconsider where they place their advertising dollars and companies of course have the freedom to choose where they advertise. The Australian Constitution contains no explicit free speech guarantee, and courts have generally viewed peaceful advocacy and consumer choice as falling within protected expression. Companies of course remain free to ignore such campaigns however most just want the relentless emails, letters and phone calls to stop so they withdraw their advertising support. To date, MFW has largely stayed within the bounds of public advocacy and there has been no legal challenge to MFW by any advertiser or media organisation directly affected by them.

“Now is the time. This is the hour. Ours is the magic. Ours is the power.” — Nancy, Rochelle, Bonnie “The Craft”

The impact MFW is having is to reduce the range of voices and styles that remain economically viable on broadcast media in Australia. Perspectives and views deemed by MFW as outdated or harmful slowly disappear. Of course, it doesn’t eliminate such content entirely, there are podcasts and subscription models, and less ad-dependent platforms as alternative outlets.

Let’s not forget though that MFW is a business at the end of the day and to keep the business going it needs people to target and we’ve seen a focus on right wing conservative content with the scalp of Karl Stefanovic and regardless of your politics that has wider implications for society in terms of diversity of views. This is a much bigger discussion of course and I’m not going to go into it in detail here, however when different views are free to compete and face real debate, the stronger arguments rise to the top, weaker ones get exposed, and even ideas that are mostly correct become clearer and better understood but when everyone hears only one viewpoint, it becomes entrenched because nobody questions it, and it may actually deepen cultural divides rather than reduce them, as suppressed views migrate to less moderated spaces where they can become more extreme. Hearing different views that challenge your own also allows for greater freedom of thought and ideas.

We are about to see the effect of MFW on the radio industry with Kyle Sandilands soon to launch “Kyle Sandilands Live” onto a subscription based platform. If for example, the price point is $9.95 a month and attracts 50,000 subscribers (the cume of his Sydney Show on KIIS 1065 averaged 600,000) he would rake in just shy of 6 million dollars a year which is great news for Kyle but not great for radio as in the case of the Sydney radio market the available audience at breakfast would be less. If he manages to attract even only a fifth of his previous KIIS 1065 audience to his new show 120,000 breakfast listeners would be removed from the Sydney market. His success depends in part on what is on offer on Sydney radio at breakfast on FM. The weaker the offering then Kyle’s chance of success increases. I’ve said many times that the industry needs more personalities and more shows and if Kyle is successful then that success could seduce more high-profile personalities to try a similar model.

So how concerned should we be with the influence MFW is having on who we can watch and listen to? If you know something about witches, you’ll know that modern witches believe in a life force that connects all things and they follow a moral code that strictly forbids doing harm to others. Reading the MFW website and judging by the language used to describe certain personalities and media organisations MFW don’t appear to be modern witches. According to folklore when a witch turns mad it usually results in them losing control, their reality warps, and they manipulate minds based on their delusions, which often leads to tragedy. If that’s what can happen when one witch turns mad, then shouldn’t we be very concerned about a big group of mad fucking witches?