Labour MP Michael Wood has condemned honorary lifetime Mongrel Mob member Harry Tam after a video surfaced showing him using a Nazi salute, but he wouldn’t rule out working with him.
The video, which was shared by the National Party on Wednesday, shows Tam telling a group of Mongrel Mob members not to vote for National. He also used the words sieg heil – a victory salute used by Nazis at political rallies.
During an interview with The AM Show on Friday, fill-in host Ryan Bridge asked Wood to react to the video.
“Well, it’s a guy mouthing off about politics on social media so that’s not especially novel and like about 75 percent of New Zealanders last year he didn’t support the National Party. He’s entitled to his views, I obviously don’t agree with a lot of his views and his activities but I’m not particularly sure what the story is here, ” Wood said.
The Right have gone into a feeding frenzy over a video showing Harry Tam speaking some political truth to other Mongrel Mob chieftains while using the charming ‘Sieg Heil’ Nazi war chant as a rallying call to arms for his timeshare investment presentation on political representation.
This debate manages to encapsulate the age of dumb outrage we have sunk to.
Hands up who believes that Harry Tam is an undercover Nazi and that the Mongrel Mob of NZ secretly yearn for a 1000 year Aryan race white supremacist Fascist State that operates racist death camp extermination?
No one?
Right.
That’s because Harry Tam and the Mongrel Mob ARENT FUCKING NAZIS!
The gangs took on Nazi language and symbols as a ceremonial way of rejecting and offending society!
The early gang member philosophy was that they had been abused and rejected by society so they would reject and abuse society right on back.
They adopted Nazi iconography and gestures because they offended people NOT because they actually supported a 1000 year white supremacist reich!
That Tam uses the ceremonial language of the Mob in a private meeting where he is rallying the troops is not the moment of seditious Nazi worship the Right are trying to manufacture in order to damage Labour over their meth rehabilitation program.
Would it be different if it were the KKK, white suprematists or Nazis using this language?
OF COURSE IT WOULD!
Mongrel Mob members use it to offend a society they believe have rejected them, the KKK, white supremacists and Nazis use it because they believe in a mass murder fascist state!
The former are offensive, the later are dangerously murderous sociopaths.
See the difference?
It’s not just the Right who should be embarrassed here, it’s been funny watching woke Twitter twist itself in knots defending Mongrel Mob using ‘seig heil’ because they were the same ones screaming for John Tamihere’s lynching when he said it!
Wokeness has all the moral clarity of cliques at a posh middle class school.
Look, everyone needs to grow up and appreciate the nuance of these issues above the toxic sandpit of social media.
This is former National Party leader Robert Muldoon…
…Robert Muldoon fought in World War 2 against actual Nazis and Fascists.
Here he is shaking hands with a Gang member wearing all the ceremonial Nazi regalia on his patch.
If Robert Muldoon can reach across to Gang members wearing the Nazi symbols he personally fought against, where do all you whiney fucking right wing snowflakes get off virtue signaling all your moral outrage?
Muldoon puts you all to shame. Reflect upon that.
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Thanks for your objectivity Martyn. The Mongrel Mob use of the symbolism didn’t seem to have excited too many RSA members since first adopted by the Mongrel Mob in, from memory, the 1960’s.
These days, you would find many far more serious fascists at an ACT tea party.
Who?
A baseless accusation fools no one.
Name these actual fascists and let them sue you for defamation.
You wokies cry hate speech at the wrong pronoun, you don’t get to defend actual nazi speech which is plainly offensive to Jewish people.
Reading comprehension problems?
Are you suggesting gang members are fascists after Martyn’s very clear explanation? Do you not understand ironic comparison? Who defended Nazi speech or deliberate attempt to cause offence to Jewish people.
Get a grip (or an education) Keepcalmcarryon.
He said fascist not nazi, and I would say many of the association of crooks and thieves leadership I’ve engaged with are hard right and deeply authoritarian. Does that make them fascist? Well that’s probably up for discussion. Does it make them losers like the hard left authoritarians, most definitely.
The Mob has different conventions to that of Nazis.
Harry Tam is a smart guy. Smarter than a whole collection of government departments and politicians. He knows exactly what he is doing and what buttons to push. That dude is sharp and very tuned in.
I watched that tiny segment on The AM Show, it was pointless. Two politicians pitted against each other for about 45 seconds having to answer how offensive is the Mongrel Mob’s signature tune. Who cares and who expects anything more? And this brief cameo showed why National are struggling. Bridges had a ton of material to work with and got all hamstrung with the bloody Nazi salute. What a waste of space.
Look, no one expects a gang to be anything other than arseholes and 99% of people do not care why they are arseholes, they just are. But if this organisation that is the Mongrel Mob really really want to do its bit for the ravages of methamphetamine, then why not stop distributing it, selling it and pushing it? If they are so so genuine, then why is that so hard?
Very good points! I agree! Plus it is time for a bit of Muldoon revisionism, in the light of what has transpired in our society since Rogernomics. Also he really helped the gangs, Tapa Turanga Marae with Black Power in Wellington was one example, and the really gangs respected him for his help too.
Quite true, the gangs would probably have been the first thing Adolf liquidated after he took over. The Newshub Nation today reported that that other gang, the Ministry of Health, were actively involved in the $3 million meth assistance program, testing the patients on completion. Did they test the patients before they entered rehab? What were the levels before and after? Is this methodology scientifically robust (as robust as the improvisation and blind faith we currently see with any Covid analysis)? Why give money to a gang if the Ministry of Health was running the program? Why not just tell these people to go cold turkey and save the taxpayer $3 million, you know, like the MOH tells (orders, like a standover man) people to get vaccinated or else they will pack a sad and shut the country down (works out at $30,000 per person if only 100 people come off the meth. Similarly, $200 per New Zealander has been budgeted for Covid vaccines which is itself obscene, an unaccountable money sacrifice at the altar of Big Pharma)? What term best describes a group importing and selling meth at the same time as running programs for it’s rehabilitation? Woke late-stage neoliberal capitalism? A government racket?
The point is that the pro noun police hate all things Pakeha and think a perceived micro aggression is hate speech but happy to fund (instead of a Maori face) a mobster caught on video saying “Sieg Heil”. Work out why people are seeing red! And the damage to the Labour and Green Party! Keep promoting Harry on this site as some miss guided good guy and the welcome the Natz back because the voters are not that blind to see the discrepancy!
I’m not in favor of attacking the gangs because I know why society creates them by rejecting and isolating people who fall through the cracks
But I grew up in a state house in a poor area and the gangs made everyone’s lives hell. They sell meth, they people traffic, they burn down old granny’s houses for selling weed, firebomb places … I’m genuinely disgusted by the left now firmly taking the side of gangs.
This argument is being had by people who don’t live in neighborhoods where the gangs may burn down your house so that’s why poor people aren’t saying anything publicly but a lot of us are looking at this debate right now and deeply troubled
Surely there’s a sweet middle spot between the gangs are all evil and we should get the military to kill them all and the gangs are amazing and everything they do is great and anyone criticizes them even if they are Maori is racist.
You’re closer to that sweet spot than most commentators, agreed that the mob aren’t neo Nazis but disagree that the gangs are doing good things in the neighborhood when they are still sending kids to jail to take the fall for the older ones , people trafficking and dealing meth. Na….
A million dollars a year to put thirty people through a rehab course sounds crazy expensive to me. If it works great but it’s crazy expensive but if it works it works …. Doesn’t mean the mob are violent thugs… We shouldn’t be glorifying them like the woke are or attacking them like the right are we should be doing everything we can to make sure people don’t fall between the cracks and join gangs.
Seems like National are upset about the freedom loving mob changing allegiance from Muldoons National to Jacinda. Muldoon paid the gangs with the PEP schemes, now Labour are returning the confiscated proceeds of crime. Follow the money.
Has anyone else noticed the left cheek thing Judith has going on. Wondering could she be a Muldoon love child?
Highly Likely
Apologist left wing confusion in action right here.
Well it strikes me that something is very wrong here. I don’t support anyone using the Nazi salute. Maybe these guys don’t know about the Holocaust, but it could be helpful them to learn. Part of respect and empathy training. Maybe.
But I can’t help compare it to what happened to SUFW sign the dictionary definition of women ie women equals a noun, adult female. After a few complaints this feminist group had their sign taken down. The dictionary definition of women.
What gives?
The dictionary definition of women.
It is weird, no doubt about it. I’m still trying to process it.
Sorry but what has the holocaust got to do with this discussion Anker?
The point of Martyn’s perceptive posting is that the Mongrel Mob’s adoption (during the 1960’s for goodness sake) of the symbolism of Nazism had absolutely no political meaning! They never subscribed to Nazism or any other ism for that matter – never did and never will. Their intent to offend was purely for domestic consumption and was never directed at the NZ Jewish community. Otherwise, are you also suggesting the Mongrel Mob deliberately intended to make a politically insulting gesture to offend the Russians who lost about 27 million lives to the Nazi regime? Perhaps on this point, it is also relevant to point out that it has been mooted that the on a per capita basis, the NZ Armed Forces had the highest war death toll of all the allied nations, yet the example of Muldoon suggests the Mongrel Mob’s presentation was never an a serious issue for ex-servicemen.
The fact that the Mongrel Mob continue to maintain the ‘Nazi’ rituals they adopted over five decades ago is not unlike the ‘funny handshakes’ of lodges or the incomprehensible and now largely meaningless rituals of the likes service organisations such as Rotary.
To conclude, the current information being churned out from public hearings that are at least three decades too late make it obvious that the genesis of the Mongrel Mob was the abusive intervention of the state in the lives of young Maori. Any outcome of that needs to be sheeted home where it belongs and it has bugger all to do with Nazi salutes!
The Mob using ‘Sieg Heil?’
I’m just trying to get my head around the contradictions. We’re a fascist or communist state or some sort of state because the state says we have to wear masks on public transport.
My grandfather didn’t go to war to gain our freedom for us to be controlled as such. No indeed.
Hang about though. He went to war to gain our freedom so what we say in our private places, to those we have gathered there, can be controlled by someone else? A debate about such a thing would be a thing of beauty. Davis Seymour backing Harry Tam.
Tam is no more Nazi than Prince Harry and there is probably more Nazis in good old Christchurch and some of our other south island towns.
Arcch!,… here’s another cultural tribute, this time from the Irish, you think we have problems? Then think of the Irish and the times of the ‘troubles’.
The Pogues – Boys From The County Hell
https://youtu.be/w2M7snEx1zs?t=4
We know nothing of the thousand year disagreements of opinions.
Nothing at all. And that’s coming from someone from the Scots Clann Gunn who fought against their cousins the Irish. You really should respect the peaceable and wonderful land we have.
So glad to have the example of Sir Robert Muldoon, sure he was this and that, and the PM you loved to hate at times, but he was all for the welfare state, social democracy and provided work opportunity’s for those who left school without qualifications.
I was one of those.
Yet as a consequence of Muldoon’s PEP schemes, I procured work in the best job of my life out in the bush and working on the dams of Auckland for 6 years which was only ended by the rapacious neo liberalism / privatization ignited by that hideous traitor to NZ, Roger Douglas.
Good article.
And RIP, Sir Rob Muldoon,… you did many of us proud and left a legacy that when all this neo liberal falsehood is over, we can still learn and build from. You rank alongside Norman Kirk and Mickey Savage in my humble opinion.
Couldn’t leave the topic alone, here’s the ‘ boys from county hell’s lyrics, maybe, just maybe its part of the reason our young men join gangs in the first place,… because no one cares about ’em.
On the first day of March, it was raining
It was raining worse than anything that I have ever seen
I drank ten pints of beer and I cursed all the people there
And I wish that all this raining would stop falling down on me
And it’s lend me ten pounds, I’ll buy you a drink
And mother, wake me early in the morning
At the time, I was working for a landlord
And he was the meanest bastard that you have ever seen
And to lose a single penny would grieve him awful sore
And he was a miserable bollocks and a bitch’s bastard’s whore
And it’s lend me ten pounds, I’ll buy you a drink
And mother, wake me early in the morning
I recall we took care of him one Sunday
We got him out the back and we broke his fucking balls
And maybe that was dreaming and maybe that was real
But all I know is I left that place without a penny or fuck all
And it’s lend me ten pounds, I’ll buy you a drink
And mother, wake me early in the morning
But now I’ve the most charming of verandahs
I sit and watch the junkies, the drunks, the pimps, the whores
Five green bottles sitting on the floor
I wish to Christ, I wish to Christ that I had fifteen more
And it’s lend me ten pounds, I’ll buy you a drink
And mother, wake me early in the morning
And it’s lend me ten pounds, I’ll buy you a drink
And mother wake me early in the morning
The boys and me are drunk and looking for you
We’ll eat your frigging entrails and we won’t give a damn
Me daddy was a blue shirt and my mother a madam
My brother earned his medals at Mai Lei in Vietnam
And it’s lend me ten pounds and I’ll buy you a drink
And mother, wake me early in the morning
On the first day of March, it was raining
It was raining worse than anything that I have ever seen
Stay on the other side of the road ’cause you can never tell
We’ve a thirst like a gang of devils, we’re the boys of the County Hell
And it’s lend me ten pounds and I’ll buy you a drink
And mother, wake me early in the morning
And it’s lend me ten pounds and I’ll buy you a drink
And mother, wake me early in the morning
So there you go, its not unique to NZ, its disaffected young fellas all over. We really should be taking better care of our young men.
…’If Robert Muldoon can reach across to Gang members wearing the Nazi symbols he personally fought against, where do all you whiney fucking right wing snowflakes get off virtue signaling all your moral outrage?
Muldoon puts you all to shame. Reflect upon that’…
————–
So good , Bradbury,…. so good. So much so you deserve a song also.
Jolie Môme – C’est Si Bon
https://youtu.be/7y9hIjH_7do?t=4
Please do enjoy and put your feet up as of an evening and relax! 🙂
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