Two years ago smugglers managed to get 48,000 cans of Heineken into Saudi Arabia by disguising it as Pepsi. This is ironic because Heineken's latest advert, which has been described as the "antidote" to Pepsi's awful Kendall Jenner fuck-up, is actually just a poorly masked repetition of the same misguided approach some advertisers have towards social justice.

In a nutshell, the advert is a supposedly real-life take on what happens when three pairs, each with opposing politcal views, are made to build a bar together. And, as put by activist DiDi Delago, it could even be argued that the Heineken advert is worse than the Pepsi ad but "you're just too stupid to know it". Here's why it's so offensive:

IT PLATFORMS AND LEGITIMISES SEXISM AND TRANSPHOBIA

Channeling the No No No Cat, I started internally spinning out as soon as the first man in this advert started talking about his views. The way the advert is set up means that a white male member of the alt-right (sorry, "new right") is placed in opposition to a black feminist, a climate change advocate set against a climate change denier, and a trans woman forced into dialogue with a man who doesn't believe trans people can exist. None of the problematic views are looked at critically – the man who believes that women that are only needed to bear children and feminists are man-hating doesn't get schooled on why his views are genuinely dangerous, and the other man who thinks that "you're a man, be a man, or you're a female, be a female" isn't shot down either.

This means, without doing much work at all, the advert successfully puts the views of bigots on a level playing field, giving them a false equivalence they don't deserve. Not only that, but the advert actually attempts to humanise these people. You know, like, they may be a fascist, but they'll still cheers you over smashing the patriarchy! Let's just remind ourselves that study after study proves that women the world over are still disenfranchised, and that while 2016 was the deadliest year on record for trans people in the US, 2017 looks set to overtake it, with eight murders already. The majority of those killed are women of colour.

WE'VE HAD ENOUGH OF SO-CALLED SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS

There is a whole genre of "social experiment" YouTube videos that revolve around white men mocking ethnic minorities. The most common are hood pranks, where said men go into "dangerous" neighbourhoods and aggravate local black communities. The problem with these, and with the Heineken video, is that our race, our gender identity, our trans-womanhood, is not just something we can switch on and off like a camera.

We're stuck with this for life, and to have to bear the burden of misinformed views can be a painful existence. This advert doesn't go so far as to misrepresent those within it, but in some ways it is just as reductive as a hood prank – it doesn't give us the space or agency to genuinely challenge the mindsets propped against us.

NOT EVERY PROBLEM CAN BE SOLVED OVER A BEER

Post-Brexit, and then again post-Trump's election, there was an outcry from liberals shocked at the result. They decided that the only way we could move forward was to start engaging in dialogue with the people who voted for a referendum that caused a spike in hate crimes against people of colour, or for a president who was endorsed by the KKK and has rolled back transgender bathroom protections.

The problem is that this isn't an option for everyone. We've all seen the videos of black people getting beaten up at Trump rallies. Some spaces just aren't safe for minorities, and yet in this advert Heineken suggests that even the most toxic of views can be mediated if we just pull up a bar stool and chat over some weak, tasteless European beer. Sadly, it's just not the case, and, moreover, the onus of emotional labour should never be put upon those who are oppressed.