Calls for ACT to return far-right donation
Activists and civil rights organisations have called for the ACT Party to return a donation it received from a far-right extremist who threatened to destroy mosques after the Christchurch terror attack
ACT Party leader David Seymour has come under fire after accepting a donation from a far-right extremist and characterising the man’s threats to destroy mosques as “a silly comment on Facebook”.
In October, Newsroom reported that a far-right extremist who had threatened to “destroy mosque after mosque till I am taken out” had made a donation to the ACT Party by auctioning a hat signed by Seymour.
Mike Allen is a Christchurch e-bike salesman whose parody Trump hats – which read “Make Ardern Go Away” – went viral after he was temporarily banned from selling them on TradeMe. Newsroom then reported that the proceeds from the hats went towards funding advertisements for far-right Facebook pages, including the now-deleted page on which Allen threatened to destroy mosques.
On Sunday, left-wing activist Byron Clark called for Seymour to pass the donation on to an organisation that could make better use of it, like the Foundation Against Islamophobia and Racism (FAIR) or the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand.
Clark, who regularly monitors New Zealand’s far-right, framed the call as a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #DonateDavid.
“David Seymour said before that he can’t control who’s going to vote for him and I understand that position, but he can control whether or not he takes money from the far-right. So I’ve challenged him to donate that money he received to a cause like the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand or the fund for the March 15 shooting victims,” Clark told Newsroom.
“People on the far-right who are seeing David Seymour accepting money from them are seeing it as a legitimisation of some of their beliefs, that a mainstream politician is not refusing to take money from them,” he said.
Other left-wing activist groups like Auckland Peace Action and Paparoa also rallied around the hashtag.
Look, there are plenty of good reasons to attack ACT, but trying to build a nobody into a Nazi supporter of ACT and claiming that ACT have somehow benefited from this far right relationship is just nonsense.
I’m no fan of ACT, I’m currently running a campaign in Epsom to get Labour, Green & NZ First voters to vote for Paul Goldsmith to lock ACT out of power because it’s increasingly apparent that the woke keep handing ACT free speech ammunition and that it could well be a National-ACT Government which no one with empathy, compassion or basic reading skills wants.
I’m also no fan of Trump like hats and I’m no fan of Muslim bigotry, but Newsrooms story on this right wing clown is just all over the place.
1 – If some dickhead wants to sell Make Ardern Go Away Hats, then you know what, this being a progressive liberal democracy means he can. Do I think it’s distasteful, sure do, but personal taste is not a good enough reason to ban him from selling dickhead hats.
2 – Is he a white supremacist? This bloke has a mixed race child with his Asian wife, he’s certainly deep undercover if he’s a white supremacist.
3 – Regarding the whole burning down a Mosque thing, he was responding to a news story about a Muslim acid attack and said that if someone threw acid into his daughters face, he’d burn down a mosque. Not a nice thing to say, but within the context it doesn’t make him Adolf Hitler. Once you know the context of his comment doesn’t it make Newsrooms coverage of it as disingenuous as The Spinoffs coverage of the Labour Party sexual assault complaint?
4 – He said Islam is a problem, well lots of people say Christianity is a problem too. Personally I think the vast scientific, mathematic and astronomical break throughs we learned in the West from Muslim scholars was essential for our collective advancement as a civilisation and that the extremes we see are more to do with the radicalisation the West generates by propping up abusive regimes. But hey, we are all allowed to have opinions, even if they are ill thought out and dumb.
5 – ACT signed a hat and it was raffled for some nothing amount and Newsroom are trying to create a Nazi where one isn’t and trying to claim ACT are profiting from this straw man Nazi.
If I said, ‘If a dirty pervert Catholic priest molested my daughter I’d burn down every Cathedral I could find’ – should a political party return my donation?
This story and the attempt to build the protagonist up as a Nazi and ACT benefiting from Nazi donations is honestly such an embarrassing hot mess. There are plenty of good reasons to hate ACT, inventing them is lazy.
This is bullshit journalism and basic shit blogging. It is one sided manipulative news like this that is killing off journalism, not saving it.
Weird how the more investigative and local the journalism the more they get called out… Otago Daily Times called out for ‘racism’ about a cartoon, Newsroom which is one of the better reads for local stories now being put down for their ‘opinions’.
Sorry I see fake stories from the MSM daily and the left don’t normally care too much.
Yet to see anybody wondering about RNZ agenda and how many on the right and exploiters benefit by bringing NZ First down and their campaign for more aged migrant parents and more arranged marriages in NZ… apparently anyone not giving a hand out to overseas folks (to the tune of 1 million dollars+ for each aged relative and dowries obviously don’t exist in woke thinking) is racist…
weird as well as all these stories that Labour and COL fall for often blow up their faces aka Sroubek and IGS https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/384041/sroubek-double-antolik-likely-to-have-visited-new-zealand, Len Brown & Bevan Chuang https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2013/10/brown_confirms_he_acted_as_a_referee_for_his_mistress.html Jason Kerrison and Gitonga Obadiah with Kris Faafoi https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/117990267/broadcasting-minister-kris-faafoi-promised-to-speed-up-immigration-process-for-opshop-singer-jason-kerrison
Funny how all these people eventually expose their private txts to the Natz for political reasons, and help foster a feeling of left incompetence and nepotism.
Maybe rather than blaming the media the left politicians should A) keep their pants on or at least not give jobs/references to mistresses, B) try to think what a taxpayer might make of it finding out their taxes are going to jailed drugs smugglers and aged boomers international love interests direction with COL in charge.
And journalists wonder why the public don’t believe them anymore and then stop buying the newspapers…
Point of order: “it could well be a National-ACT Government which no one with empathy, compassion or basic reading skills wants.”
Claiming a monopoly on moral goodness, empathy and intelligence is a characteristic of the left in general and the woke in particular that is both very wrong and utterly revolting.
Otherwise, yes Newsroom tends to be Spinoff lite, it’s quite woke, well to do and urban chic. I bet the guy in the article was white and probably a boomer, must be bad.
Newsroom could as well have written the article on how e bike sellers are far right nazis but man that wouldn’t fit the narrative would it.
Specifically the woke are enamelled with gonads and melanin and woke academics in particular are absolutely preoccupied with its hidden magic and descriptive force. That these two things are the bases for woke ideology it’s no wonder they see Nazis everywhere even amounts there own ranks. It’s delusional, extremely destructive and the woke has to let go of its desire to dismantle left wing movements.
Monotheism is fascist… ask VP Pence 😉
Some of my best friends are Maori does not automatically make you not a white supremacist. The page where Mike Allen threatened to “destroy mosque after mosque till I am taken out” has been taken down so I’m going just by memory but Mr Allen when disagreeing on-line with Byron Clark made a point of listing his arsenal of rifles and shotguns and a follower stated that Mr Clark now had a target on his back. I believe there is potential danger in laughing off this situation.
From an objective independent point of view; if Seymour put effort into promoting the right wing economic policy on which ACT was founded, the Party might once again attract a philosophical following.
But as Rodney “allowances “ Hide trashed the economic Acumen of ACT with Later day John Banks crusade of justice with 3 Strikes and your out m8, Seymour dances his way through the labyrinth of politics with little if any understanding that economic policy is the key social justice
Thats a simple hack! MAGA, Make Act Go Away!
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