False victory claimed by “Free Speech Coalition” – Auckland Peace Action
“The so-called “Free Speech Coalition” is claiming a false victory after realising that their legal challenge was fatally flawed. The group has unilaterally withdrawn their urgent court case because they realised that the case has nothing to do with free speech. They raised $90,000 to prosecute the Mayor when he had nothing to do with the decision making,” said Valerie Morse, member of Auckland Peace Action.
“This is instead a simple victory for the diverse communities of New Zealand, for racial and religious tolerance.”
“The ‘Free Speech Coalition’ is calling people who oppose racism and Islamophobia ‘thugs’ because we are not prepared to provide our public spaces to right-wing extremists to meet up and rally. Yet, it is the supporters of these fascists speakers who are threatening serious violence, not the other way around.”
“Auckland venues clearly had a contractual right to cancel the booking based on what they believed were well founded security concerns. These concerns have been borne out over the past two weeks with supporters of the two Canadian speakers making public threats to kill, rape, run over and smash two women who spoke up against them. Another person threatened our group with semi-automatic weapons.”
“We have a great history of resisting racism and injustice in this country using non-violent tactics: from pulling up survey pegs at Parihaka, to getting on the pitch during the Springbok tour, to taking to the seas to stop deep sea oil drilling. We are part of a huge movement for justice and peace – we will give no space for racists trolls in Aotearoa. We will organise anytime such racists or fascists try to come to Aotearoa New Zealand.”
“People in this country need to understand that the racist right is fundamentally violent. They have no interest in debating ideas or understanding what is going on in the world, instead they seek to spread a politics of hate: hatred of Muslims, hatred of women, hatred of gays, hatred of lesbians, hatred of transgender people, hatred of anyone who isn’t white. History shows us that those kind of politics have profoundly disturbing real life implications for people.”
“It appears that the ‘Free Speech Coalition’ were involved in the arrangements to bring Southern and Molyneux to Auckland. They have been unable to secure a council or private venue. Now the ratepayers of Auckland can seek costs from this coalition who preferred to raise vast sums of money to support a platform of hate speech than to stand up against racism.”
Now we have a lot of anti free-speakers saying stand down, lets deplatform, let’s do this and let’s do that, lets takeaway speaking rights. No other group says that. But we have a spirit of cowardice in a lot of males. Now I’m going to say a lot of them are not cowards. A lot are ready to defend the community at all costs. But we have a section with in the left who are straight up cowards. They’re cowards to the core, a coward would say stand down, don’t fight. What would you have us do like cowardice men do. Would the anti-free speakers have us walk around amongst thieves singing we shall over come??? Is that what they want us to do, marching around singing huge trees, while the next land grab is being lined up. Bitch please. They don’t care about your nature spirituals. Alt-rights don’t care if you’re walking in circles chanting down with capitalism. Land grabs is capitalism, wealth confiscation is capitalism. They like it when you act this way because you’re acting like a docile coward that they can ignore. Fucking tacticool shit.
Lots of truth there Sam in every word.
If no-one spoke out, we would be slaves today!
And in some way we are now all becoming slaves at least in the ‘economic’ sense.
This is probably due to less and lass of us all that dont now speak out for our own convictions.
“the price of freedom is constant vigilance”
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/desmond_tutu_454120
Judean people’s front calls people’s front of Judaea “splitters”.
What a bunch of petty factious squabbling amongst our self appointed moral guardians all this has caused.
The right will be laughing hard.
“Free speech coalition” my sainted arse. Its no more a “free speech coalition” than the “Taxpayers Union” is a union made up of taxpayers. Both are fronts for the right, and te reo “expert” Don Brash fronts the so-called “Free Speech Coalition”. Its sad to see so many sucked in by that toxic group. Yeah, the right have scored bigly on this one, but mainly by using so many on the left as “useful idiots”. I despair.