100% Political Hypocrisy – The Free Speech Party ACT launches campaign against free speech!!!

These fucking Right Wing Free Speech Champions are the biggest hypocrites!

They have the Free Speech Union, which is nothing more than a zionist apologist front, connected to The Atlas Network and the Taxpayers’ Union stable of clients, who have weaponised free speech for the right.

When Don Brash was given some truth from Matthew Hooton, suddenly it’s the power of their money and defamation claims!

Libertarian cheerleader Damien Grant cancelled the sponsorship of award winning political podcast because my Free speech offended his right wing mates in the NZ Initiative and Israeli apologists.

And now the ACT Party, the free speech party, now, they are launching an attack on Free Speech by personally attacking any critic of their despicable Regulatory Standards Bill which will rob NZ of our democracy…

Anne Salmond: Victim of the Day

Over the past week, something remarkable has happened. The Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand has fronted an online campaign of harassment of scholars who have shared their views about his Regulatory Standards Bill, naming each of them as a ‘Victim of the Day.’

Each scholar has been accused of ‘Regulatory Standards Derangement Syndrome,’ a description borrowed from Donald Trump’s followers, who accuse his critics of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.’ The portraits of each scholar are placed on David Seymour’s Facebook page under this banner, and labelled ‘Victim of the Day,’ with online responses invited.

The use of the term ‘Victim of the Day’ is, at best, careless. In the United States at present, political violence is escalating, with senators and their families being physically assaulted, even shot and killed. This has been associated with online incitements against individuals. No one in New Zealand, least of all the Deputy Prime Minister, can be unaware of these developments.

In the United States, too, direct attacks by the Trump administration on universities, university scholars and their students have escalated from attacks on individual academics to attempts to take direct political control of what is taught on university campuses, by whom, and to whom, backed by the deployment of armed force including police and ICE agents.

When universities such as Harvard have resisted these attempts, they have been punished by defunding their research and threats by the Trump administration to their right to admit international students. These and other attacks are happening to universities and other scientific institutions across the United States.

At a time like this, it is extraordinary that a Deputy Prime Minister here should initiate an online campaign of intimidation against university scholars, using Trumpian rhetoric and tactics to harass them for exercising their academic freedom.

In the United States, as in New Zealand, the independence of universities and academic freedom are designed as checks and balances on executive power, with the rule of law and the freedom of the press. All of these freedoms are being assailed in the United States at present.

In New Zealand, the concept of academic freedom is specifically enshrined in legislation. Section 161 of the Education Amendment Act 1990 stated: “161 Academic Freedom 1. It is declared to be the intention of Parliament in enacting the provisions of this Act relating to institutions that academic freedom and the autonomy of institutions are to be preserved and enhanced.”

A similar clause was carried over to the Education and Training Act 2020, s 267: “academic freedom, in relation to an institution, means — (a) the freedom of academic staff and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas, and to state controversial or unpopular opinions.”

This requires that academics are free to offer commentaries within their fields of expertise without direct intimidation and harassment by politicians.

Without this kind of freedom, new ideas and discoveries are unlikely to emerge. In academic inquiry, they must be rigorously tested against the evidence, including robust exchanges and peer review. For this to work well, the debate has to be reasoned and civil.

Academic freedom is a very old doctrine, designed to protect universities from those who seek to control research and teaching to advance particular political agendas, as in the United States at present. Such ambitions are typical of totalitarian, autocratic regimes, with the USSR and South Africa under apartheid as previous examples.

This can come from any political direction. In New Zealand, for instance, the Education Act 1989 was drafted in response to an attempt by the Fourth Labour Government to take control over ‘what was taught, by whom and to whom’ in New Zealand universities. 

That effort was vigorously resisted, and as a result the Education Act was passed and enshrined academic freedom in our legislation, along with a section that requires universities to ‘act as critic and conscience of society.’

That, I think, is exactly what the ‘Victims of the Day’ were doing when they were attacked by the Deputy Prime Minister. From an array of different disciplinary perspectives, they were analysing and discussing the Regulatory Standards Bill as contributions to public debate. 

…the hypocrisy of pretending to protect free speech and then launching an enemies list of critics is fucking dark and crypto-fascist.

With this social media enemies list, ACT are inviting their crazed, foaming, reactionary, racist activists to target these critics and take NZ a goose step closer to the hyper sectarian politics of MAGA’s America.

Note that ACT aren’t countering their critics, they are personalising and targeting critics.

Even for ACT, this is a deplorable step towards political violence.

ACT are openly fanning that now with this campaign and they deserve nothing but contempt for these tactics.

That the rest of the Political Mainstream Media are allowing ACT to get away with this, is a recognition of how so much of our Fourth Estate Guard Dogs have all been neutered into property journalism pimps forever screaming ‘it’s never been a better time to buy a house’.

ACT should be condemned for this kind of dirty politics, especially from a Party who claims to support free speech!

 

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