Cough cough – umm Te Reo Putake about your attack on Chris Trotter

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
18
41

Comrade

How are you?

Well I hope.

Look I didn’t want to bring it up, but I feel your attack on Chris Trotter over at the Standard is a bit ironic.

It’s odd that you have been so brutal to Chris over the issue of free speech…

Chris Trotter has got a new gig as a fluffer for fascism. Never forget that. Next time you read one of his pompous pieces in the paper or on a blog that should know better, remember that this is the guy who was happy to big up bigotry.

…I mean apart from the fact I think you are being extremely unfair and a bit spiteful towards Chris, whose history of political commentary and left wing history makes him a taonga to our cause, it’s odd  that you have attacked him over freedom of speech because you blogged over here on The Daily Blog after you were banned from The Standard for breaching their rules on freedom of speech…

Te Reo Putake – Socialist, vegetarian, contrarian and footballer, Te Reo Putake was until recently the wittiest, most engaging and most infuriating writer at The Standard Blog where he was banned during their latest identity politics purge. TRP intends to continue battling for the battlers and kicking against the pricks in real life and here at the Daily Blog.

…to attack Chris for freedom of speech from a blog that you yourself fled to when you had your speech censored on the very same platform you are now attacking him from is a tad disingenuous isn’t it comrade?
I appreciate this issue is vexatious, there are real concerns colliding with vital principles at stake, but this attack on Chris is beneath you.
Yours in solidarity
Bomber
PS – You are of course welcome here again the next time you get banned from The Standard.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. Just want to point out to team free speech denial that the two most powerful positions in New Zealand are held by woman. So how does that effect your ideas of patriarchy, power and enfluence – positively, or negatively?

    • So how does that effect your ideas of patriarchy, power and enfluence – positively, or negatively?

      That it is a long, slow process with some obvious success, Sam – but with still a long way to go…

  2. Cheers, Bomber. I kinda agree with you, which is why the link to the piece on the front page of the Standard has this teaser:

    “There’s never been Free Speech and that’s not actually much of a problem according to Te Reo Putake, who is no stranger to the downside of Saying Things.”

    My crack at Chris is about his siding with the class enemy. And, for the record, if Chris is a treasure to the left then I’m Alladin’s fucking cave.

      • This? http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2018/07/doing-right-thing-for-wrong-reasons.html

        “If you were wanting to run a principled free speech campaign, then simply as a matter of PR, it might be a good idea not to have so many outright racists in it. Or people who have been outright hostile to free speech in the past. And be led by someone who hasn’t called for critics of the government to have their arts funding cut.”

        As they say in the union movement, if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

        • @Te Reo Putake – you’ve got anger spilling out all over the place – are you sure Chris Trotter is the right person to direct it at because you seem way over the top right now.

        • Except when you follow the links Jordan Williams didn’t call for Cattons arts funding to be cut.

          What he said was “If Ms Catton isn’t thankful for the substantial support by the New Zealand Government while she wrote The Luminaries, maybe she could use some of the substantial royalties to pay the money back.”

          Give “some” of it back as a point of principle perhaps?

          Yeah… nah.

  3. Well said Martyn,

    I was banned from The Standard in 2014.

    Just 10 days before the Election of that year, but we at The daily Blog have always experienced total free speech positivity, without any sharply critised reactions from our moderators and we are so very grateful for this wide level of tolerence, that makes free speech real and better than any other medium.

    I myself was injured in a large scale chemical poisoninng incident while overseas and have many years in recvery and learning about our environmnet so my principal focus is on chemical science and caring for others in health matters so I have always been about sending my expressions of my knowledge learned through my life, and sadly have several times been highly critised by a pack of right wong trolls over on the Standard as several roam there freely.

    They dont appear to believe chemicals are dangerous to humans apparently, but if they had been poisoned as 40 workers in a ‘wrongly left’ unventilated building were like me whoo contrated life long disabilities they may change their minds.

    This lack of respect on some blogsites for others point of view is sadly still today an issue, that is now being internally discussed inside The Standard, we were told in a blog just earlier this week by the moderator.

    But we are very grateful those same right wing trolls are not able to hunt people here in blogs on The dauly blog, so top marks to you sir Martyn Bradbury as youn run a very warm and effective socail blogsite that I would highly recommentd to everyone who has an itch to scratch.

    Thank-you from our family for running the best social blog in NZ.

  4. “but this attack on Chris is beneath you.”

    ….. except obviously it wasn’t.

    I am quite amazed at how many authoritarian leftists inhabit The Standard , all doing Alex Jones et al’s work for them, recruiting for the right wing.

  5. Part of the fight against prejudice involves getting people to stop saying prejudiced things – I suspect this might be why we’re having this debate right now.

    There is a obviously a contradiction between the need to preserve free speech and the need to stop making prejudicial statements. I don’t know exactly to manage the contradiction but I think that another ideal – respecting all life – should be adhered to here. Which is to say that the people we are debating with are life forms that deserve to be treated with respect and dignity :-). If we can’t do that then we’re no better than our friends from Canada.

    One thing is for sure those 2 have really succeeded in making the left look silly

  6. The best thing would have been for an all left wing coalition to challenge Phil Goff’s decision. That way the essential issue of free speech versus censorship could have been debated, rather than spiraling into a deep hole of partisanship. Which, incidently, is going to hurt the left far more than it is going to hurt the right.

  7. It seemed to me that watching Chris Trotter comment about anything over the last 15 years particularly in television forums is that his comments were always used by the right to attack any left position or policy.
    There is nothing better than a supposed left wing commentator pouring scorn about how bad the Labour party is or the left in general to a sympathetic right wing audience and a corporate media organisation that will do anything to weaken the left by any means necessary.
    Divide and rule is the mantra of the Neo liberal order and its supporters and the left and its bastions have been conquered and consumed.

    • Trotter is a genius in relating the finer details of political history, but his preoccupation with academia makes him a pompous arrogant git when it comes to analysing the current political situation.
      The world is about to enter a period of protracted bloodshed driven by the capitalists greed and fear of losing what they have attained/stolen. That is why your point about the divide and rule strategy is so crucial.
      The “left” need to get their act together quickly, as they are about to get steamrolled by the neolibs before they have time to pull their pants up.
      The left are currently weak, ill prepared, disunited and beset by infighting and petty point scoring. They need to realise quickly the enemy is not within, and there will be no mercy from the right when the time comes.

  8. It’s more ironic that TRP posts about free speech on the Standard whos owner and certain moderators have a long history of actual abuse and banning of those who don’t fit their personal clique.
    What a bad joke.

  9. Chris Trotter is wrong about this:
    The trouble with the idea of free speech, is that so few are capable of delivering to the responsibility of it.

    Though we may have a right to our opinions, none of us, no-one has a right to be wrong. Such a right would completely undermine our public education institutions. If people have a right to be wrong, then the role of public education would reduce to nothing more than the moulding of our children into useful cogs for the military, and industry. There could be no greater learning and understanding, no creative achievement, and together we could not make progress towards any improved future.

    No-one has a right to be wrong, … and so no-one has a right to lie and cheat, or mislead and delude, or deceive and con, or to carelessly stir up trouble and strife. Rather, as reasonable and rational members of a healthy society, we each have a civic duty-of-care to stand-up those amongst us who are wrong, those that are false prophets and sowers of discord, and to correct them; and they have a civic duty to stand corrected. The great responsibility of free speech, then, is the reason and rationale necessary in recognising right from wrong in the first place – surely an exercise of our very best intentions and goodwill.

    It is Chris Trotter’s mistake to equate the civic management of false prophets and sowers of discord, to the undermining of free speech: especially when it is those same liars and cheats and troublemakers that are doing all the damage.

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