It’s no secret that the authoritarian left thrives on stamping out comedy it doesn’t quite agree with.

And thanks to the recent conviction of Markus Meechan — who goes by Count Dankula on Youtube — the UK establishment has all the legal precedent it needs to weaponise the criminal justice system against its citizens in order to do just that. As I’m sure by now you’re probably aware, Meechan uploaded a video of his girlfriend’s pug performing a Nazi salute and was subsequently tried and convicted of hate speech under the Communications Act. In a bizarre and frankly disturbing turn of events, the judge ruled that context and intention were irrelevant considerations, meaning than any joke, so long as it is deemed ‘grossly offensive’, is subject to potential criminalisation from hereon out.

The endgame of this common law principle is obvious to anyone not indoctrinated by the religion that is social justice. Unless things change, the UK is headed for wholesale government dominion over the thoughts and utterances of its citizens — and other Western Nations are not far behind. We have already seen some early warning signs that this transformation is taking place. The most recent — involving a crowded elevator, a women’s studies professor and an off-hand comment about lingerie — is less famous than Meechan’s case, but equally significant in light of the climate of censorship that has lately emerged.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, ‘the fuss started when Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of political theory, and Simona Sharoni, a professor of women’s and gender studies, ended up in the same crowded elevator during a conference in San Francisco last month’. Sharoni said she offered to press the floor buttons for people in the elevator, whom she described as mostly conference attendees and all, except one other woman, white middle-aged men. Instead of saying a floor, Lebow smiled and asked for the women’s lingerie department ‘and all his buddies laughed,’ Sharoni wrote in a complaint, the details of which he disputed, to the association later that day.

So clearly what’s happened here is that professor Lebow — who happens to be 76 years old — has tried a cheeky and slightly old-fashioned one-liner in order to ease the tension in a crowded elevator. Not exactly a rip-roaring knee-slapper of a joke, but a joke nonetheless — the sort of comment that anyone’s grandad might come out with and that no reasonable person would think twice about. Little did he know, however, Lebow was sharing the elevator with a woman who teaches the make-believe and viciously anti-male field of women’s studies for a living.

I really must stress that Sharoni is beyond being your average politically-correct liberal — this woman is a joyless, agenda-driven social justice warrior leftist, or if you want to use the definition given by Steven Crowder, a person who uses words like ‘micro-aggression’ unironically.

In case you needed proof, this is what she had to say about the supposed ‘incident’:

‘For decades, women and other marginalized groups in the academy had to put up with white men who decided what counts as a violation and what is ‘frivolous. As someone who has dedicated her life to confronting sexism in academic spaces, I cannot and will not remain silent when misogyny is at play.’

I know what you’re thinking. How dare I stand in opposition to this woman, or should I say, this harbinger of justice — who’s simply standing up for her god-given human right not be offended? Well, wait and see what happened next.

‘After glancing at Lebow’s name tag, Sharoni says she went back to her hotel room to check out the association’s code of conduct. She then wrote to Mark A. Boyer, the association’s executive director. He forwarded the complaint to the group’s Committee on Professional Rights and Responsibilities, which determined that Lebow had violated the conduct code’.

After being informed his conduct was under investigation, Lebow reached out to Sharoni with a snarky and unequivocally awesome response.

‘I certainly had no desire to insult women or to make you feel uncomfortable,’ he said. ‘Like you, I am strongly opposed to the exploitation, coercion, or humiliation of women. As such evils continue, it seems to me to make sense to direct our attention to real offenses, not those that are imagined or marginal. By making a complaint to ISA that I consider frivolous — and I expect, will be judged this way by the ethics committee — you may be directing time and effort away from the real offenses that trouble us both.’

But it turns out that he was wrong. Lebow was indeed found guilty of being ‘offensive and innapropriate’ and was told to write an ‘unequivocal apology’ to Sharoni and submit a written copy to association’s executive committee. Failure to comply in this would result in appropriate sanctions.