For a prime example of the bully tactics used by the left, look no further than “Sleeping Giants” an online “community” that obsesses in targeting businesses to gain power over those whose opinions they don’t like.

Sleeping Giants was formed in the US and now exists in 11 different countries.  Here in Australia they’ve managed to get companies including American Express, Huggies and SpecSavers to withdraw their advertising dollars from Sky News with their #AdShame twitter campaign - just because they don’t like Sky News airing a variety of opinions.

The Australian columnist Janet Albrechtsen explains their approach:

“They use social media to target companies that advertise on media platforms airing ideas, opinions and values not found at the ABC or Fairfax. These are the same ideas and values found in millions of Australian homes. These modern Stasi use the slightest pretext to thump mainstream Australians who consume media they despise. The online Stasi cast their net wider each week, from Sky News to the Seven Network and radio station 2GB.

Since August last year, the Sleeping Giants have been on a mission to trick and intimidate companies and politicians into thinking there is a groundswell of complaints from ordinary Australians …

The Sleeping Giants model has become the social media arm of identity politics, spreading confected outrage to censor people with different views. In Australia, the online shame game is aided and abetted by those who add to the Sleeping Giants feed, people such as Guardian Australia’s Paul Karp and Amanda Meade, ABC contributor Paul Bongiorno, ACTU’s Sally McManus, Fairfax’s Jenna Price, Jane Caro and a few more ABC journalists too.”

But it appears that at the core of Sleeping Giants may be just a handful of angry left-wing political activists with plenty of time on their hands:

“In-depth research by Sky News Australia using social media monitoring company Brandwatch reveals that fewer than 200 individual accounts make up more than 53 per cent of all tweets in Sleeping Giant campaigns. Even more telling, more than 70 per cent of these 200 accounts are anonymous. You can’t tell if they are real people or fake accounts. Between July 21 and September 4, 10 followers of Sleeping Giants Oz contributed 4500 times to their Twitter feed.”

In an age when social media can have enormous influence, it’s important we call out these online bullying tactics and counter their claims of widespread community “outrage”.

Advance Australia is encouraging companies and businesses to stand firm in the face of confected campaigns that are all about ensuring the left silences anyone who doesn’t agree with them.