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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I saw a comment on stuff yesterday from a Chinese education official disscusing international students coming to NZ .His comment was why would he send students to NZ TO STUDY when our Universities are now well below Chinese ones .This government is shooting itself in the foot daily .Luxon bleats about the need to get high education but has gone about destroying the education system ,and now his trained idiot has been let loose on the very people who do the educating .The Chinese have taken note so numbers coming from there will be small but the Indians are so desperate they will export as many fake students here as they can .
lol the quote is completely proving Seymour’s point.
Victims gonna victim.
The quote is completely proving Seymours hypocrisy, there fixed that for you.
What a load horseshit KCC. Seymour sounds like f’ing Pol Pot. Go after any one intellectual. He’s a slimy little shit.
Pol Pot was a leftist
Who gives a toss what he was, that is who Seymour sounds like. Both nasty pieces of work. Seymour is almost a cultist.
Exactly Wheel, Ennius trying to create an argument out of nothing. Like saying Willis is a rightist and has social morals.
The radical right are running the Coalition of Corruption.
The phony handwringing by the Natz weak leadership about any radical right legislation: “oh, well it’s in the coalition agreement so we have to go through with it” is a transparent cop out.
Disproportionate power to those propelled into parliament by their wealthy donors.
Shame on all who voted these corporate lobbyists into power and sold out their country.
Read their pre-election policy statements & understand what they imply next time ffs.
Even a school kid could tell what the agender was before the election if the looked past the anti Maori bull shit .The ones screaming the mot now are the ones who voted them in .Not much profit being made in NZ as pointed out by IRD when they said 42% of businesses are not paying tax and record numbers are closing .Soon there will be no money left for the 1% to steal off the 90%.
We should take great comfort from our biggest frights. It means seymour, the dirty little bastard, and his dirty little friends can’t hide any longer.
As a farmer I can tell you with some qualification that a farmer’s most vile enemy is other farmers.
I thought you’d lost your farm because of Roger Douglas?
Who funnily enough was a farmer. Of pigs, naturally.
Before he moved on to human livestock one he realised they were far less more and far more profit.
As if to illustrate Martyn’s point about the 4th estate, this bizarre personal attack on academia by the ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister – who would need to investigate himself as the PM’s stand-in – is downplayed as a tit-for-tat exchange on Stuff this morning: https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360733697/dame-anne-salmond-v-david-seymour-tit-tat-row-between-deputy-pm-and-academic
That story has been taken down now because 66% supported the Academic .Clearly the right wing doners have applied pressure on the management of stuff because it is seen as picking on the idiot acting PM .
it’s still up – I voted just now.
We clearly need more of these people speaking up because the kiwi hobbits are to dumb to see the reality of what is Happening in NZ right now .
If we did not have them the red necks would be all unemployed and living on the street as the 10% would be stripping them of property and civil liberty .as the dumb red necks that voted for Trump are now finding out as all their exploited workers are taken away and deported .Those red necks are now realizing their business does not run with out those exploited bottom feeders and are also realizing they are not sorted and are the new bottom feeders .
Even a school kid could tell what the agender was before the election if the looked past the anti Maori bull shit .The ones screaming the mot now are the ones who voted them in .Not much profit being made in NZ as pointed out by IRD when they said 42% of businesses are not paying tax and record numbers are closing .Soon there will be no money left for the 1% to steal off the 90%.
Yes, gordon early childhood centers are under threat with low pay and less qualified workers, note I call them workers not carers as this job is not a babysitting role despite Act and the rest of the CoC government treating it like one. The CoC claim to advocate for better education standards, yet ECE is the foundation or building blocks of education for young children. Then if we look at elderly care seemores euthanasia bill was about people choosing and dignity in death, yet they don’t care about palliative care. And they are happy to bring in hundreds of foreign workers in order to keep wages low in this line of work, mostly women of course. We are now hearing more horrific stories of our elderly being neglected in homes. Seemore needs to be reined in, but he won’t cause our PM is too weak and too busy running away overseas, so he does not have to face up to all the damage the CoC are doing.
He will bring in euthanasia for over 65s who dont smoke so the government save on the pensions .
That is one way to reduce the fiscal burden and enable tax cuts for working NZ.
Not saying I’m against it.
Yet Te Party Maori had actual guns in their banners and protest logo and crickets from this blog.
Nz is becoming so partisan.
what a load of utter shit .You are a very poor AI BOT .
“Playful 8% Seymour” is definitely not here to play. It is orchestrated corruption verging on Treason. Don’t ever underestimate this vain, egotistical critter – he is a danger to NZ. And he grows more arrogant by the day – as if that was possible! Of course our weak, pathetic, PM Luxon, should be reigning him in but is incapable of doing that. He’s too busy running around the world thinking he is an important leader whereas he is truly an insignificant PM of a small inconsequential country. And where do our Media sit on all of this – safely on the sidelines, too scared to rock this already shakey RW CoC-up. Shame on all of you who do nothing and more so, those who won’t even see what is happening until it is too late. The clock is ticking……
Luxon goes over seas to hide now days when the going gets tough for him .Note he lets the feral dogs out while he is away .
Forget Damien @ Martyn. He’s a pesky contrarian flea and always was – you just didn’t see it. Him and his ilk – like Seymore, Jones of Ngati Ranana, and others thrive on being in the media in order to keep boosting his ego.
Meanwhile little Flibbertigibbet Brookywookie is still desperate to have His baby
Labour have a lot to undo when they take back control next year. And that will be the end of Seymour and his plastic deputy.
Haahaa ‘Tell him he’s dreamin’
Perhaps you should have a name change squeaky (again!) to Walter Mitty, you’re such a dreamer.
And you a wet dreamer. Labour has no choice but to undo the CoC’s carnage, idiot right.
The dreamer is you thinking Mr 8%er is the answer, Change your name to Sleeping beauty gay boy.
Moderator?
No moderator for NSC – who I think could be one of the mods.
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