Is anyone from the Woke Left firebombing the University of Auckland for platforming Don Brash?

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1. Well martyn,

   The University of Auckland is platforming Don Brash?

   if we don’t show any interest in the ‘brash’ among us then all the fest will be amonst the converted already and we dont meed to care abbout the spread of liberal idea being sent abouit how to rort the system and make money which is what Don Brash is advocating.

2. So, more more homelessness in Aotearoa then? Good to know this is what is being focused on.

3. Free Speech at Auckland University: (Maori need not apply).

   How can the hypocrites running Auckland University extend an invitation to white supremacist Don Brash a platform citing “Free Speech” when they have previously banned Maori Activist and politician Hone Harawira from speaking there?

   This racist double standard needs to be condemned in the strongest language possible.

   1. +1000

   2. Interesting eh? Free speech is being lauded by pakehas. But they’re never (rarely) the target of “free speech” from the right. No wonder pakeha indulge themselves with fetishization of free speech.
      It might be different if pakeha were targets of free speech. Oh, wait, they banned Hone Harawira. It seems some pakeha snowflakes were troubled by Hone speaking.
      Free speech is a white male construct because it emshrines their privilege. Try to fight back with counter-opinions and apologists like Chris Trotter berate antifascist activists for speaking out. “BE SILENT! DON’T DRAW ATTENTION!! DON’T DO ANYTHING!!” he admonished activists.
      Yeah, how did that turn out in 1930s Germany huh??

4. Yes totally agree the so called “woke left” have all the charm of Chairman Mao,s cultural revolutionary’s The Red Guards, but hey thats what you get for defunding public schools and welfare dependants, uneducated, angry, misinformed and easy to lead malcontents, and who can blame them.
   They will keep lashing out till they and employed and fed.
   Remember that Don Brash is a small minded beneficiary bashing fuktard, hard to feel sorry for that arseclown.

   1. What a great idea, modern Chinese cultural history should be a mandatory topic at school and yeah let’s not forget what a dumb ass Brash really is. And, who needs the Stasi with smartphones.

5. Free speech for some but not for others

   Attacking and mocking the Left?

   And censoring comments that disagree with your point of view?

   Don’t you think that this a bit of a contradiction Martyn?

   Meanwhile in Britain in a similar vein supporters of self proclaimed free speech advocate Tommy Robbinson trash a left wing book shop.

   https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/bookmarks-socialist-bookshop_uk_5b681a60e4b0fd5c73db5b07

6. There is no such thing as free speech, at least not for most of us.

   You really should should know better Martyn, remember when you were guesting on Radio NZ and you dared to criticise John Key, and got sacked for it.

   That other self described Free Speech advocate Chris Trotter, who knows better how to self censor, never said a word in your defence.

   Chris Trotter like you, is another person who censors comments from those on the Left who disagree with him, while hypocritically championing free speech for fascists and racists.

   Neither of you are demanding that Hone Harawira, who was banned from speaking at Auckland University, should be invited to have share a platform at the University to counterbalance Don Brash’s white supremacist hate speech.

   As Te Reo Putake said, and he’s right, There is no such thing as free speech.

   https://thestandard.org.nz/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-speech/

   P.S. And don’t you dare publish this comment out of context, while censoring my previous comments.

   1. Neither of you are demanding that Hone Harawira, who was banned from speaking at Auckland University, should be invited to have share a platform at the University to counterbalance Don Brash’s white supremacist hate speech.

      Pat.

      Were you at the Auckland University Marea the night Hone was denied access at Auckland University?

      Were you?

      I ask because I don’t remember you being there.

      I was there.

      I spoke that night at the Auckland University Marae alongside Hone and I challenged the white right wing activists who had caused the cancellation of Hone over their denial of free speech.

      Do you remember what I said Pat?

      I attacked those free speech deniers face to face, I attacked their bullshit arguments and I wiped the fucking floor with their bigoted and narrow views.

      I don’t remember you being there Pat.

      Don’t @ me with your projections of what you think I am Pat. My principles, my values and my mana are all still intact when I criticise this drive to strangle off debate to create trigger free safe spaces. This hyped up over-reaction by the Woke is martyring a tired bigoted dinosaur, rolling my eyes at the counter-productiveness of this doesn’t suddenly make me a Nazi Pat, or Nazi platformer.

      Please don’t embarrass yourself any further with what you think I should do.

      1. Don’t @ me with your projections of what you think I am Pat. My principles, my values and my mana are all still intact when I criticise this drive to strangle off debate to create trigger free safe spaces. This hyped up over-reaction by the Woke is martyring a tired bigoted dinosaur, rolling my eyes at the counter-productiveness of this doesn’t suddenly make me a Nazi Pat, or Nazi platformer.

         Yeah, well you should stop hypocritically censoring comments while preaching free speech. I have not accused you of being a Nazi, or Nazi platformer. Those are your words, not mine.

         What is distressing to me though, is you slyly accusing the Left of threatening “firebombing the University of Auckland”.

         This is in line with Chris Trotter’s similarly abusive language accusing the Left (presumably including the Mayor), of acting like fascists for stopping Lauren Southern, and Stefan Molyneux from speaking here.

         “Free Speech Denialism Is Fascism In Action” Chris Trotter

         Auckland has been called the most culturally diverse city in the world.

         In my opinion stopping Southern, and Molyneux from speaking here is in the same proud tradition as the Left stopping Mosley’s Black Shirts demanding the right to parade in Cable Street in the Jewish community, part, of pre-war London.

         Auckland has been identified as one the most culturally diverse cities in the world.

         Mayor Goff, who for many years was the representative for Roskill, the Auckland electorate with the biggest immigrant community in Auckland, would have been keenly aware of the danger of Southern and Molyneux’s deliberate attempts to stir up race hatred against immigrants. Having been witness to the violent attacks on immigrant families in his electorate, that on one occasion followed one of Winston Peters racist public outburst against immigrants.

         You and I obviously don’t agree. But rather than me embarrassing myself; when you suggest violent intent from the Left, you should probably best consider the aphorism that when you find yourself in a hole, the best advice is to stop digging.

         Not even Don Brash has claimed that threats of violence from the Left is why he was banned from speaking at Massey.

         Dr Brash said he was “appalled” at the university’s decision, which he believes was motivated by comments he’s made in the past about “Māori privilege”, the use of Te Reo in public broadcasting and his beliefs about the Treaty of Waitangi.

         Vice Chancellor Thomas told RadioLIVE that Dr Brash’s views are incompatible with Massey, which undertook a new initiative in 2017 to communicate that the university is “Te Tiriti o Waitangi-led”.

         Newshub.

         https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/08/revealed-the-threats-that-shut-down-don-brash-s-massey-university-event.html

         I spoke that night at the Auckland University Marae alongside Hone and I challenged the white right wing activists who had caused the cancellation of Hone over their denial of free speech.

         Do you remember what I said Pat?

         I attacked those free speech deniers face to face, I attacked their bullshit arguments and I wiped the fucking floor with their bigoted and narrow views.

         I don’t remember you being there Pat.

         And I applaud you for this.

         But instead of putting up a post condemning the University of Auckland for gagging Hone on one hand, but putting out the welcome mat for Brash on the other, you have put out a post attacking the Left, and what on earth is a “Woke” anyway?, Is this another abusive term borrowed from the Far Right?

         As for me not being there on the night that the University of Auckland gagged Hone Harawira. Yeah, me and the rest of the country. Surely this is pretty slim grounds for your criticism of me.

         Again, think: “Hole”, “Stop digging”.

         I think what you and Chris are missing here Martyn, (but something that Te Reo Putake picked up on), is that the right to free speech is just like everything else in our New Zealand post colonial capitalist society, not equitably granted, in fact the Free Speech playing field is seriously tilted in favour of the Right.

         Maybe in a perfect world fascists and racists wouldn’t be taken seriously by millions of followers, and you Chris Trotter would have a point, but in our imperfect world where inequality in all things, including free speech, is the rule not the exception.
         For the millions disenfranchised by capitalism, in both word and deed, the lure of fascism which blames ‘the other’ for their alienation can be quite attractive even empowering.

         ‘The Other’ from Wikipedia

         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_(philosophy)

         The term Othering describes the reductive action of labelling a person as someone who belongs to a subordinate social category defined as the Other. The practice of Othering is the exclusion of persons who do not fit the norm of the social group, which is a version of the Self.[7] Likewise, in the field of human geography, the action term to Other identifies and excludes a person from the social group, placing him or her at the margins of society, where the social norms do not apply to and for the person labelled as the Other.[8]…

         ….In The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq (2004), the geographer Derek Gregory said that the responses of U.S. President George W. Bush (2001–2009) to the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 reinforced philosophic divisions of connotation and denotation that perpetuated the negative representation of the non-Western Other, when he rhetorically asked the U.S. populace Why do they hate us? as political prelude to the War on Terror.[13]

         President Bush’s rhetorical question led the U.S. populace to make an artificial, Us-and-Them division in the relations between the U.S. and the countries and cultures of the Middle East, which artifice is a basic factor of the perpetual war on terrorism, and is a step away from eradicating the imaginary representations of the Self and the Other created with the Orientalist geographies produced by Oriental Studies; about which the cultural critic Edward Saïd said that:

         To build a conceptual framework around a notion of Us-versus-Them is, in effect, to pretend that the principal consideration is epistemological and natural—our civilization is known and accepted, theirs is different and strange—whereas, in fact, the framework separating us from them is belligerent, constructed, and situational.

         — The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq (2004), p. 24.[14]

         Imperialism and colonialism
         The contemporary, world system of post-colonial, nation-states (with interdependent politics and economies) was preceded by the European imperial system of colonies (settler and economic) in which “the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship, usually between states, and often in the form of an empire, [was] based on domination and subordination.”[15] In the imperialist world system, political and economic affairs were fragmented, and the discrete empires “provided for most of their own needs … [and disseminated] their influence solely through conquest [empire] or the threat of conquest [hegemony].”[16]

         1. +1 Pat. Eloquently put.

            By the way, Martyn, I protested your banning from RNZ as well. Not that it did much. But I sure don’t recall Don Brash speaking up for you. Maybe he did and I missed it.
            I wasn’t able to speak the venue where Hone was banned. A bit hard when you’re not in the same city and my rent takes up nearly 70% of my income. So what?

         2. Don’t care virgin

         3. You wouldn’t be the Pat O’dea that was a foremost champion of the White Helmets in Syria would you? I remember you well. And you were completely suckered by the U.K intelligence community who set up the White Helmets as a bogus “First Responders “Group. They were a false flag construct engineered to take in the credulous and the naive.I would be rather embarrassed if I had fallen for what was obviously a propaganda exercise. The information was all there for anyone with reasonably critical skills to discern. So, what say you Pat? You seem to have a talent for getting the wrong end of the stick!!!

7. Is “woke” your buzz word so people can tell you’re still “down with the kids”?
   For goodness sake I remember going to a protest in my 30’s and seeing all the kids putting on face masks and scarfs to hide their faces and realizing I was too old for this shit. When they started with the picking up things to throw at cops I was way too old for that shit! People underage will always talk the talk and be sure that they know everything – most of us wake up from that age and chill. Nothing is absolute not even freedom of speech, as people have found out there are consequences to speaking your truth – the right wing is seeing that for the first time! Their speech has been unfettered until recently – as someone who has been battered for left wing speech I have mixed feelings about the fact that the people who are agitating are now getting some of their medicine

8. who is the main enemy in this situation?–it is those that benefit from a divided reaction to neo fascism

   when Māori are against Pākehā, urban professionals against provincial bumpkins, ‘woke’ against ‘not so woke’, and so on, it makes it difficult to see that Don Brash’s dated racism is being used by real neo fascists liking a somewhat acceptable frontman

   tofu eaters, if that is what some opponents of Brash are, have only got their tactics wrong in this case, don’t deny platforms–take them on!

   1. Whut? Why the beat up on tofu? Whats tofu ever done to you?

      1. Sounds too much like ‘toe -food’ for a start.

         A hot steak and cheese pie is far better on a cold winters day.

9. If you want to know how to handle racists I suggest taking the time to watch this talk by Daryl Davis, a Black American who befriended a leader of the KKK. I only wish that I had his integrity and generosity of spirit.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw

   You need to watch it till the end to find out the final result.

10. You couldn’t pay me enough to attend.

    I will never understand why people want to hear the Brash brand of tripe. His stance invites violence either directed at him while feeding off the ill-informed audience or at his subjects (those disadvantaged by capitalism or colonisation) after the event. Ugh.

11. You don’t ever ‘fire bomb’ a public building or institution, not a university, for sure, it is a crime, and while some may want to ‘fire bomb’ a private, polluting car, ok, if you can face the consequences, but be careful, as it is not recommended.

    So let it run its course, universities are great places for debate and discussion, even protests, and that is what must be honoured. Allow free speech AND the right to protest.

    Looking forward to a great outcome.

    1. The only political bombing done in NZ has been by the right, not by the left, with the murder of the late Ernie Abbott, trade unionist, in 1984. And it had nothing to do with race – this was class.

       Again in the 1951 watersiders’ strike, the armed forces were brought in by the govt to act against the workers, and the workers’ interests, and the workers’ families, to a viciously chilling extent, and that was nothing to do with race either, that was a partisan govt acting in the interests of the ship owners; the PM actually announced that country was at war, and at war with it’s own people.

       Any current idiocy about potential left-wing ‘violence’ is contradicted by history, unless of course one regards biffing a dildo or a turd or a tomato as an act of violence.

12. And who cares about climate change, global warming, a century summer heat and drought in Europe, much of Europe, in Russia, Siberia, Korea and now also in NSW in Australia, posing the greatest threat to humanity and our food resources?

    I fear the mostly urbanised, disconnected citizenry of the ‘developed’ world has long lost the plot, they are out of touch, live in a bubble, and debate while the Titanic is sinking FAST.

    Idiots is what comes to my mind, so often now.

    1. Yes Marc.

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