Why Don Brash is evil (yes I said evil), why the Woke protestors who rushed the debate at Auckland Uni empowered him & what everyone in NZ is missing about Free Speech

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Sigh.

Don Brash is evil and should have been rightfully protested at Auckland Uni, as he should be rightfully protested anywhere he speaks.

But prostrators last week at Auckland Uni decided to go beyond righteously protesting Don, and instead managed to martyr this arsehole by rushing the debate and trying to deplatform Brash.

As the protestors stormed the lecture theatre and tried to drown the debate out, the hall full of students cheered for Don Brash to speak.

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They. Cheered. Don. Brash.

Holy. Fuck.

It’s the Woke’s desire to deplatform, scream down and strangle off any debate that triggers them that is recruiting fascsists, it’s not preventing them.

Let’s be clear here.

When I say Don Brash is evil. I’m being literal, not figurative.

Don. Brash. Is. Evil!

Too often this fucking debate gets caught up in Brash’s ‘right’ to speak. Too often this fucking debate gets derailed by ‘it’s-just-his-opinion-and-even-if-it’s-a-mean-opinion-he-has-a-right-to-think-and-say-it’ styled garbage.

Too often we ignore what we know about Don Brash’s Orewa Speech and rightfully damn him for that.

Brash’s weak chinned, nervous and overtly polite smile in the public eye is always that of the guilty who have managed to get away with a terrible crime. Every desperate stab at legitimising his Orewa Speech like the woeful Hobson’s Choice, reeks of an intellectually guilty conscience in the convulsions of a late mid-life crisis guilt trip.

Don. Brash. Is. Evil.

Why do I keep saying that? It’s because it’s true.

Brash’s Orewa Speech changed politics in New Zealand. His articulation of Māori Privilege, that they had a grievance culture and his one law for all rhetoric  forever caused a Trump orange shit stain on New Zealand’s race relations.

His Speech was the greatest insult since the betrayed promise of the Treaty itself.

Now at this stage of the blog, you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt and charitably agree that some might concede Brash’s words were harsh and bordering on a kind of bigotry, but then quickly assert that doesn’t mean Brash shouldn’t have the right to express those opinions and nor do those opinions even closely amount to Brash being evil and will challenge me that my use of such a word is hyperbole on my behalf and that by throwing around a word like that so needlessly, I am in fact being as counter productive as the woke protestors who rushed his stage and doesn’t this just all make me a hypocrite?

No. I don’t need nor require your benefit of the doubt.

No. It doesn’t mean he has a ‘right’ to those opinions.

Yes. The word evil is entirely appropriate.

No. The Woke Left be cray cray and I’m not cray cray.

Don. Brash.Is.Evil.

Do you know how we know Don Brash is Evil?

Three words.

The Hollow Men.

Nicky Hager’s magnificent coverage of what was really driving the Orewa Speech that Brash gave has been utterly ignored by the mainstream media and as such is never front and centre whenever Brash returns from the grave with his latest attempt at legitimacy.

We know from the emails that were leaked to Hager that Brash and the people around Brash who wrote the Orewa Speech KNEW that what they were claiming when it came to Māori privilege and special treatment and the so called grievance industry were all bullshit myths that they couldn’t prove.

They had a media plan to throw journalists off the scent when the media came demanding examples of all this Māori privilege because they knew they couldn’t prove any of the hateful things they were claiming.

They knew they were creating a false fabrication but went ahead with it anyway.

They manipulated us by playing to the worst angels of our nature, and they knew that. The Orewa Speech wasn’t the tell it like it is musings of a polite Gentleman who was prepared to challenge the PC thought Police, this was a carefully stitched together lie of hate that everyone of them knew was false.

That’s not Free Speech, that’s not intellectually courageous, that’s spitefully Machiavellian.

Māori have been horrifically impacted by our brutally passive racism. Māori are 380% more likely to be convicted of a crime and 200% more likely to die from heart disease and suicide. Māori are paid 18% less and 34% leave school without a qualification. Māori die earlier and suffer more. Māori had 95% of their land taken from them in less than a century and were almost wiped out at the turn of the 1900s.

Couple all of that with a pittance in terms of reparations for stolen land, and to have that legacy defined by Don Brash as ‘privilege’, when he fucking knew it was a lie makes Don Brash evil.

To repeat a lie you believe is true is ignorance. To repeat a lie you know to be untrue is evil.

 

Free Speech in a democracy is not about your right to stand up and mouth off any old bullshit opinion you have. You get that protection by extension and the narcissistic culture we wallow in makes us believe Free Speech is all about ME, but the truth is it’s not a ‘right’ for you as an individual for your own selfish purposes, it’s an obligation as a citizen’s only weapon to strike out against the hegemonic structures of economy, culture and society to be able to speak truth to powers that don’t want to hear it.

Brash and his enablers knew that what they said in the Orewa Speech was a lie, free speech is the power to stand up to Brash and point out to the rest of those listening how he manipulated them and made them fools.

The power of free speech is when you hear a part of the argument you didn’t know existed, and that on hearing it, changes every preconceived certitude you previously had.

The Woke need to stop the cowardly attempts of stripping people of free speech, and instead use that free speech to show Brash up for the evil he is because I suspect the more NZers who really understood how contrived and calculating the Orewa Speech really was, the more infuriated they would be at how they had been fooled and deceived.

We beat the hard right by engaging with them and wiping the floor with them, we only empower them by crushing their free speech.

 

 

 

58 COMMENTS

  1. “We beat the hard right by engaging with them and wiping the floor with them, we only empower them by crushing their free speech.”

    100% correct Martyn.

    We need to counter Don Brash arguementswith ‘common sense’ responses and certainly not just using mob rule as it never succeeeds to win people over.

    • I’ll reread The Hollow Men tonight, and am pleased to see you using words like evil. Getting people to speak can be hard; I’ve been in situations where we agree at a pre-meeting meeting to raise an issue, I raise it, and been supported only by silence. Even the manager in the ghastly govt dept I worked in told me he didn’t know why people wouldn’t speak up at meetings.

      Same in a charity I volunteered at, being asked to say something at a meeting because no-one else would. Our kids may still be leaving school less articulate than their US counterparts, in which case we’re not doing something right, and they need to be able to speak to stay healthy; we now have cowardly little toads hiding behind the anonymity of blogs and social media and spewing malice.

      I have seen evil done and I resent carrying its shadows.

    • Well, reading the transcripts of Simon Wilson’s speech and Don Brash’s it’s pretty clear who delivered a cogent finely nuanced speech that examined the distinctions of free speech and who trotted out the same old black/white rationales that we’ve all heard before.

      Really are worth comparing and should get a wider audience.

      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12103900

  2. Well said. I think we missed an opportunity with the recent visit of the two Canooks to take them to a marae, show them about what it means to reconcile past wrongs, and to go forward as two cultures blending, becoming richer. We have concepts here like turangawaewae that if examined make us unique. We have blended families, we have a resurrected culture we all are beginning to accept as “us, ours”.

    It’s not perfect but any empirical look at us and we are moving on, we are blessed. We should be making dinosaurs like Brash embarrassed by the demonstration of our rich vision versus his narrow views, let him stand them in the open for us all to compare with what we have. And with the Canooks we would have either have exposed bigotry, or given them something Damascene to learn from.

    My challenge to the woke Left. Strip your own privileges bare and stop preaching, demanding. Make us better through actions that bring us together. Start with allowing everyone’s voice to be freely judged.

  3. According to the biblical narrative, the only time Jesus got enraged was when the money-changers set up at the temple, in order to exploit the naïve and powerless commoners.

    It matters little whether one believes in the literal truth of the bible or not, the message is clear. Exploitation via the control of money is wrong. And that is exactly what Don Brash stands for.

    For me, Don Brash represents the international banking system, which creates money out of thin air and charges interest on that money.

    For me, Don Brash represents the exploitation of the common people and the looting-and-polluting of the commons to the point of collapse by those who already have far too much.

    Evil is a fair word to describe destructive sociopaths like Don Brash.

    • At least post some links or use your own words to back up your cynicism/sarcasm. You do have an actual reason to feel the way you do about Hager, don’t you? So incredibly intellectually lazy.

      • Not so. He covers his arse with lots of could’s, might’s and may be’s thereby showing it’s merely an interpretation of the stolen material, stripped of it’s context, reassembled into the least charitable version of it’s meaning and sold for profit.

        • Legrandfromage – Read Hager’s book for heaven’s sake, you are talking cowpats again. And please polish up your grammar and your syntax, they’re not very good – read more and you could improve without having to even try.

        • “He covers his arse with lots of could’s, might’s and may be’s ”

          Got any examples?? Or maybe/might be/could be you’re full of bs and are just making it up?

          Sounds likevyounhave skin in this,LEGRANDEFROMAGE? Were you one of the scoundrels in that book?

        • Like in Dirty Politics? From page 129, relating to The Smiling Assassin and the job on Cunliffe relating to Donghua Liu?
          I’m quoting verbatim – let me know where the maybes, coulds, mights are.

          “From the start there was something fishy about the scandal. The first clues appeared the following day, 19 June. New Zealand Herald journalists asked Cabinet minister Michael Woodhouse, who had released the Cunliffe letter, if he had told Key; at 3 p.m. he changed his story and said officials from his office had briefed key’s office on the letter; and then at 7 p.m. he said he had personally told key’s office about the letter and arranged for them to be sent copies. He had told Key’s staff on approximately 10 May. They had had weeks top plan what they would do with the letter.”

          Seems pretty straight up and unequivocal language to me.

    • He didn’t say that. But he referenced “The Hollow men”. So what was it about that book that was untrue?

    • Legrandefromage – wee bit cheese-stink here – Hager does actually document what he writes. Remember, Hager doesn’t have to make things up- he’s not a politician.

      If you read “The Hollow Men,” you can see this for yourself. Or you might try “Dirty Politics” its simpler and shorter.

      Oh yes, Nicky Hager has written horrid horrid things about politicians, but none of them have ever sued him, they just swivel their eyes and bleat – Conspiracy theorist conspiracy theorist or something similar – as advised.

  4. Ignore Brash and he will go away. He’s been in his crypt for a while, but now Natz lost the election they realise that the right can use the 5% lefties whose most important issue is to heckle dinosaurs and give them publicity and get the right wingers and right wing media around race and identity politics back for the benefit of Natz.

    This gets much more important things off the media landscape such as climate change, increasing inequality, low wages to cost of living, and how increasingly the taxpayers are paying top up wages for minimum and living wage workers so that the employers can profit more and use that money in other ways (forays into China and blowing multimillions on partnerships for example for Fonterra as well as 8 million dollar salaries while making people redundant and lowering farm payouts, lawyers to get massive chicken sheds in Dargaville and stink out the town for Hong Kong based Tegal, having the councils give away free water for polluting bottling plants overseas and rubber stamped by our own politicians, closing down libraries at universities, giving free rein to private universities to recruit foreign students for poor quality degrees which generally with a lack of English skills, poor attendance due to working (thanks fake financials!) and appalling teachers they are unable to get to the required standard thus lowering the credibility of the NZ degree for everybody else, (but hey, someone made a profit so all good!) …

    …nope we don’t hear any of that, instead months of media on a couple of Canadian nobodies and now the return of Brash who also is effectively a nobody.

    However a great opportunity to get the MSM media types and liberal lefties who find the above too challenging to confront so prefer the comfort of a mainstream fielded issue like race, nice and simplistic to understand, to get them frothing wildly at the mouth.

    You may not have noticed but neoliberalism is happy for any coloured person to do their minimum wages work and buy their goods as long as they can lower wages and conditions and replace those who get sick or injured quickly and at no cost to themselves.

    Even better in NZ the taxpayers pay for their health care, housing top ups, kids, education and so forth. So much so that someone worked out that the taxpayers have to put in $5000 a year to top up minimum employers wages if they have 2 kids and the government only gets $9 in taxes from the living wage!

    Sounds sustainable to continue as a welfare state????

    Rome is burning while the left are worrying about reclaiming the word cunt.

    Every man and his dog in the Natz and other parties are trying to find iwi ties (Bennett, Bridges) so they can ‘speak’ for Maori.

    Meanwhile Maori have less voting power because of immigration changes the Natz implemented as well as changes so that prisoners can’t vote and trying to get as many Maori into prison as possible. But not much protest about that from the left, which long term will do the most damage to the position of Maori in NZ simply by ensuring they become more of a minority and if they lose Maori seats, it’s over for them politically if it keeps going in the Natz direction (helped by hysteria by the rabid left on focus on what people are saying, not what is actually happening).

    Sigh.

  5. I think ‘evil’ is a perfectly good word. It’s also a perfect word to use re-brash.
    brash is, like his colleagues, an impertinent trouble maker for fun and profit and by that I mean he gets pleasure out of seeing his handiwork living rough in the streets while knowing he makes diddle stiffening money out of that for himself and his mates.
    I don’t however agree that the media etc should give him 50% airtime to spew his logical fallacy, puff-wank. He should not be able to do that without him having serious concerns for his well being. He’s had his day. It was a dark day for us and gets ever darker. Enough is enough.
    He should be running and he should be screaming.
    He should be in prison where those of you who can love unconditionally are able to take him cup cakes of a visiting day. Those others, myself included, could go there and read out the list of things he and his kind have subjected us to and the impact of his, and their actions, have had on our lives in, perhaps, a most strident way.
    For those of you who may have missed this interview.
    Pretty good stuff here.
    https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
    Relevant to the above is Gillian Triggs
    “Just the facts. The facts are the facts.”
    The fact is, don brash is an evil arse hole with a doctorate and he does not deserve equal airtime. Listen to Gillian Triggs.

    • Nobody said anything about equal/50%, whatever airtime. It’s not a sit down interview on prime time (where such false equivalence holds weight).

      The argument is between those who want to deny him/them any airtime and those who say that he/they is entitled air their viewpoint, no matter how vile.

  6. Of course he’s evil, and at least part Reptilian.

    Thanks for the discussion of Hollow Men. I am one of the ignorant who haven’t read it

  7. Spitefully Machiavellian though he may be, but debate him we must.

    He’s part of the NZ race relations scene whether we like it or not. He’s also a NZ citizen and has a right to speak about his views, as does Chapman.

    The onus then is on us who disagree. We’ve had Richard Prebble being hit with an egg, Stephen Joyce with a dildo and Don brash with mud. Relatively harmless but certainly displaying the depth of feelings against their views.

    But the above achieves little in the long term. Whereas debate does.

    And if our democracy is strong , we will at least keep those with exclusivity and racist views in check. And monitored.

    Storming a stage and closing a speaker down can be counterproductive,- yet essentially the same thing was done with the NZ media at the launch of the MANA / Internet party. And that was backed by the same extremist right wingers who are now crying that they and their speakers are being denied freedom of speech.

    We would do well to remember that.

    The right are hardly innocent on that score as well.

    Brash may have an odious message, but he is still a NZ citizen, still represents the warped views of some and its our duty to debate and oppose, not close down.

    I draw the line however, at foreigners coming here and trying to stir up strife ,- particularly when their message is sprinkled with the irrelevancies of their own home country’s making, not ours. I believe we have every right to deny entry to those seeking to come here who’s sole aim is to make mischief and foment social unrest unnecessarily.

    And that’s the same message I would give to the far right wing in this country who are obviously mounting a campaign at present by financing and facilitating this current rash of far right wing extremists to our shores. If the far right in this country cannot stand on their own two feet and debate New Zealander against New Zealander on relevant issues pertaining to NZ ,- they have no right bringing in foreigners to do their dirty work for them who do not even speak on issues relevant to this country.

    All they bring in is their socially unsavory viewpoints which could stir up violent confrontation.

    So let Brash speak , demolish the argument through debate, – and show the far right extremists in this country we have no need to import henchmen to do our work for us. Unlike them.

  8. But Don Brash is a master of weasel words.
    He goes on RNZ’s The Panel and asks the country the very reasonable question: What is wrong with saying that everyone should be equal?”
    What is wrong with that, indeed?
    Nothing at all.
    Except that Don Brash does not actually say that.
    He hints at it, implies it, but what he actually says belies his contrived “I have been sinned against…” expression.
    He constantly reinforces the view that his beliefs and his culture are the ones that matter, and all others are inferior.
    It is not much different from people who complain about foreign people conversing near by in another language that they don’t understand.
    Some people feel threatened by that, they get instant paranoia and assume these people are talking about them, derogatory of course.
    If they want to live here they shouldn’t speak in their own lingo in public, they should speak English, that’s what we all speak here.
    Remember the stories about how Maori children were punished for speaking Te Reo in classrooms?
    The reason why I loath Don Brash is because he is a master con artist. Take away the veneer of respectability from him and see him for what he really is: a self-appointed guardian of English white man imperialism who is terrified that his cosy little world of privilege and exploitation will come crashing down on him if those damned natives get restless!

  9. Enough of this nonsense, why don’t all you key board warriors take a breather & do something really positive for our nation like; supporting the give a little crowd funding campaign to buy back Lilydale station from its American owner so that it can be gifted to NZ. Turning private property into public property means returning it to the local commons, from where it was originally appropriated. This is a revolutionary anti-globalisation act.
    https://givealittle.co.nz/project/we-are-buying-lilydale-station-for-nz#

  10. “If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those who we despise, we do not believe of freedom of speech at all”. Noam Chomsky.

    That is why the right dont scream and yell like children throwing tantrums when for example, Phil Goff speaks to a group of Nats.

    The left on the other hand take pride in behaving like a group of children throwing tantrums.

    • ‘the right dont scream and yell like children throwing tantrums”

      That’s because they believe in a sense of entitlement. “were rich so were more important”!

      • Just because someone leans to the right does not mean they are rich. Your comment is one of the dumbest I have ever seen on this blog.

  11. Note this also:
    “Shortly after the delivery of the Orewa speech, Brash fired his Māori Affairs spokesperson Georgina te Heuheu because she would not publicly support his speech.

    After the February peak, National suffered a steady decline in public opinion polls, leaving it 11 points behind Labour at the end of 2004.

    In 2004, following a political speech given by the Prime Minister Helen Clark inside the Christchurch Cathedral, Brash wrote to the Dean of the Cathedral, Peter Beck. In his letter he criticised Clark’s use of a church-venue for delivering a political speech, and he raised questions over her views on religion and on the institution of marriage. After Clark retaliated, Brash apologised for any offence that his comments had caused to her, and revealed that his Chief of Staff, Richard Long, had written the letter, not Brash himself.”

    Found on Wikipedia:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Brash

    That man has proved to be an ABJECT FAILURE, in whatever he tried his hands or mouth on.

  12. Yeah but you know when I get sneered at in the supermarket, when I have to before so pump gas, when I struggle in job interviews and when people stand over me in the swimming pool changing room, none of them wanted debate, they wanted to feel good about dominance. Who is there to debate them when it counts, and does debate really make a difference to those who already have their beliefs, I’ve spent the last 2weeks debating racists on Facebook, they do t want reason, facts, studies or even to understand, they want friends who hate the same people, and now that it’s been permissions , it’s happening

    • Paul, sadly I agree with what you are saying here, and I am sorry what is happening to you. You are correct in saying that many people don’t want to debate or discuss. But worse, even when they do,they can manipulate with half-truths, or deliberately lie with no compunction about it, and are totally at ease with their own peer group in doing so.

      Were I one of the protagonists in “The Hollow Men”, I would be mortified having people know that I was so duplicitous, but it’s all a game to them, it’s a different morality.

      The myth of Maori privilege was the purpose of Brash’s Orewa speech,
      and it also provided red-necks with a scapegoat – “that’s where all my money’s going” – and it worked; it was a very damaging blow for race relations in New Zealand, and as such, a polar opposite of what any political leader should be wanting to achieve – because certain men and women wanted power, and its fruits, for themselves, and they were unscrupulous about how they went about getting it.

      They didn’t do Maori any favours, and they stereotyped Pakeha badly too.

  13. The Left need to ignore these shrivelled up old white men who have basically been professional bludgers all there lives, they have never done an honest days work in their lives.

    Brash should basically be in a Retirement Village as he is not making sense these days, however never actually did ?

    As far as I am concerned I never understood neoliberalism, and to this day I still do not understand neoliberalism, and I doubt I ever will understand neoliberalism ?

  14. Crickey. If Brash is evil, what adjectives are left for the likes of Pol Pot, Pinochet, Hitler, Caecescu, Mussolini, Myra Hindley, et al.?

  15. Thanks for this Martyn. I’ve nearly finished rereading ‘The Hollow Men’,
    and incredibly, I had forgotten just how systemically and ruthlessly dishonestly the National Party leadership, and its minions, and its mega-rich supporters behave.

    Brash defies description – the language doesn’t exist.

    The issue goes beyond Maori, its for everybody, because what Hager’s book shows is that they have no concern for New Zealanders who are not them.

    The only concern which the National Party shows for NZ people, is for the power which we give them when they dupe us into voting for them, after which we’re tossed to the wolves viz them, as they vacuum up our taxes.

    Had Brash got into power, the social landscape would probably be even more destructive than it now is, but his soiled little philosophy – sorry to debase a good word – will still be alive and kicking – even if Doug Myers and Roger Kerr- aren’t.

    Hager shows it like it is, and anyone who thinks that any neolibs care about the people who they are elected to represent has got it wrong.
    They care for the few.

  16. As for giving credence to Brash’s position lets look at the facts on NZ identity politics – in my view we don’t have a major issue, and government need to start concentrating on real issues and real solutions to climate change and self inflicted inequality which effects everyone.

    With Identity politics the reality is there is higher amounts of women and Maori in parliament and LGBT issues aka gender neutral toilets and new birth certificates have been met. Move on.

    But still the identity politics lefties and politicians think it is a drum to continue to beat so much that it is more paranoia about these “persecuted” groups.

    Brash is an antidote to overplaying the identity politics card that has been addressed already or niching wider issues aka poverty effects not just Maori women but increasingly larger groups of identity as does the decline of wages in real terms.

    The Natz are not attacking identity politics groups and instead claiming the niche, John Key rocked up to the Auckland Pride Parade, both the deputy and opposition leader identify as Maori.

    The Natz are pro immigration as wells as happy to sell off the country to the highest bidder. Apparently when Peter Thiel bought his citizenship he didn’t give the CHCH donation to the government but to John Key’s “personal” earthquake charity.

    In NZ we have a female Prime minister who just had a baby, Greens have more women MP’s than men and so forth. Is there really an issue here on gender?

    There is a lot wrong with NZ, and I would not say any of these identity issues are one of them.

    When people are in survival mode, or one pay check away from not being able to pay their mortgages or the cost of living keeps rising, or some multinational polluter pops up next to them and stinks/pollutes their community out, then guess what, that percentage gets turned off politics if banging on about Women/Maori/Gay/ethnics rights ad nauseum.

    Brash can help by fielding resentment, but he only gets to do that because every time the guy pops up it seems to generate massive headlines and go back to the Orewa speech. Clearly the speech never worked then, and not likely to work now unless lefty dimwits keep him in the headlines, they keep immigration up so the message is a new one and the new government keeps banging on about identity politics and and marginalising the mainstream.

    If government want to help women, then make it mandatory for a organisation to disclose wages, increase the minimum wages and wages in jobs where women are employed aka nurses, teachers, care workers etc.

  17. Brash is not evil…he’s an obedient servant. The one who’s evil is the one who pushed WiFi into schools…check out Barrie Trower yt on is WiFi safe for children. Check out latest findings on blue-light emitted from their phones and laptops which damages eyesight. Those people who target our children are truly the evil ones.

    • Of course Don Brash is evil. Donald Brashes current mind set is very much the result of over decades of cultural genocide following a one-sided war.

      • Agree, whilst the s**t goes down the Left destroys itself arguing about sectarian issues that affect only those without immediate issues like paying the rent.

  18. Still attacking the Left, while still no posts on the University of Auckland’s racist hypocrisy masked behind phony calls for free speech.

    Free speech for racists and fascists not so much for anyone else.

    And definitely not for Maori with a strong record of standing up to the establishment.

    May 12, 2011

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4996046/Harawira-lecture-axed-because-of-redneck-racism

    The Mana Party leader was due to speak about the foreshore and seabed at Auckland University Law School.

    “All of the rednecks at the university decided to create such a ruckus that the Law School cancelled it. In 2011 we’re still being pushed around,” Harawira said.

    A Facebook page set up to promote the event attracted abusive and angry comments from both supporters of Harawira and the protesters who were against him.

    Asked why this was an example of racism, Harawira said there were only Pakeha involved in the protest planned at Auckland University.

    “A lot of people think that racism is dead and buried but clearly it’s not. I’m a Maori MP and I should have the right to talk to Maori law students.”

    Racism was more widespread than many New Zealanders liked to believe, he said.

    “That’s unfortunate, but it’s true. I think what’s happening at Auckland University is an example of that. I’m not fussed by that.”

    Hone Harawira was an elected MP. Brash’s only supporters are clique of seriously well heeled white racist conservatives.

    How come this moneyied bigot is allowed free speech but Hone Harawira is not?

    And nobody bats an eyelid.

  19. Martyn, isn’t this free speech whinge from the right part of a bigger issue – or an issue in disguise – that we are seeing a growing conservative Christian-right in NZ politics; not so much in one party butt scattered like dark matter on the extreme end of the spectrum, and slowly coming together to form a Judeo-Christian mass? A block that wants New Zealand ‘to look, act and believe like us’ (a Judeo-Christian way of life, in other words).

    Think half the nutters in NZ First; the likes of O’Connor, Bridges and Mitchell in the Tories; New Conservative party (led by that Baker character, with the Pasifika preacher as his go to man); Dr Don the Bore; and Destiny.

    And then there’s all the unsavoury banter, rhetoric and mantra that they spew up on websites like Kiwiblog (Mr Blobby Tory pollster), Whaleoil (mad offspring of ex-prez of the Tories), Free Speech Coalition (Dr Don and his cronies, and the last fossils of the Act and United Future parties) Right Minds (more cronies and fossils of Dr Don, and chap with Boerish-sounding name), Family First (Bob Mc and the Kid Beaters) and the Not Sensible Sentencing Trust (odorous bunch funded by dodgy US money).

    If not, why not?

  20. Martyn, isn’t this free speech whinge from the right part of a bigger issue – or an issue in disguise – that we are seeing a growing conservative Christian-right in NZ politics; not so much in one party butt scattered like dark matter on the extreme end of the spectrum, and slowly coming together to form a Judeo-Christian mass? A block that wants New Zealand ‘to look, act and believe like us’ (a Judeo-Christian way of life, in other words).

    Think half the nutters in NZ First; the likes of O’Connor, Bridges and Mitchell in the Tories; New Conservative party (led by that Baker character, with the Pasifika preacher as his go to man); Dr Don the Bore; and Destiny.

    And then there’s all the unsavoury banter, rhetoric and mantra that they spew up on websites like Kiwiblog (Mr Blobby Tory pollster), Whaleoil (mad offspring of ex-prez of the Tories), Free Speech Coalition (Dr Don and his cronies, and the last fossils of the Act and United Future parties) Right Minds (more cronies and fossils of Dr Don, and chap with Boerish-sounding name), Family First (Bob Mc and the Kid Beaters) and the Not Sensible Sentencing Trust (odorous bunch funded by dodgy US money).

    If not, why not?

  21. “Free Speech in a democracy is not about your right to stand up and mouth off any old bullshit opinion you have.”

    Actually, it is.

    So long as you don’t incite violence in doing so (which is adequately protected by law), then free speech means you can say whatever you want, even if other people find it offensive.

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