Hoiking for Hamas Least of Winston’s Bummers

Yesterday’s twitter flame war between New Zealand’s Foreign Minister and The Daily Blog editor Martyn Bradbury was a most amusing, if undiplomatic imbroglio. Talk about spat! Winston Peters is an obsessive patron of the hospitality industry as much as Shane Jones is an obsessive patron of the pornography industry, so one can imagine the distaste and alarm the midget Maori Malborough Man had for Mr Bradbury’s public call to dig out a choice bogey and flick it into his double scotch on the rocks. It was extremist, politically violent rhetoric. It was the slippery slope of a Bolshevik rising. Culinary paranoia is the start. Where will it lead? Was that fart deliberate? Was it!?

The gist of Mr Bradbury’s blog was: sometimes you gotta globalise that intifada and spit on that thang. Thắng being Winston’s favourite Vietnamese cuisine. Consider it more of a goober against genocide than a hoik from Hamas.

How to explain this intemperate scattershot ranting? A distraction, an age-related rage incident – that doesn’t quite explain it entirely. My theory is that Winston is cracking under the pressure. He has failure writ large in his portfolio and he seems powerless to do anything about it (more on that below). Here is what he said in his first tweet:

Winston Peters @winstonpeters

12:58 PM · Oct 5, 2025 · 47.4K Views

Winston’s shameful racist shenanigans and divisive politics are literally in its fifth decade, so his wailing yesterday carries little weight as far as decrying hate-mongering. “Two Wongs don’t make a White” etc. – we don’t need many examples to recite of Winston’s relentless othering to say he is the country’s most polarising politician. His MPs – and those of Act – say racist things about Palestinian “tea towels” and “terrorist garb” as those people are being butchered. His MPs and that of the coalition government are not engaged in benign banter, they are demeaning and dehumanising the victims of genocide.

We can see the dehumanisation comes easily to Winston by the gratuitous personalised remarks. He felt threatened at some level, multiple levels, by the blog enough to make it sound like a fatwa – a fatwa by the fat wa according to Winston. It’s a strange form of projection all this. And why do body shaming when you are five foot nothing – Mr Bradbury may lose weight, but Mr Peters may never gain a foot in height.

Mr Bradbury tweeted back to Winston and he then replied shortly after:

Martyn Bradbury @CitizenBomber

What an easily triggered little snowflake – the issue is the ongoing Genocide in Gaza and Winston’s shameful decision to side with war criminals – getting his knickers in a twist about a facetious line I make is beneath the mana of what is happening – your crocodile tears are pathetic Winston #nzpol

2:47 PM · Oct 5, 2025 · 7.4k Views

Winston Peters @winstonpeters

3:24 PM · Oct 5, 2025 · 20.8K Views

This is unhinged stuff that we would laugh at if it was from Trump – when he goes off on someone – because that is precisely what it sounds like. That Winston isn’t stuck on all-caps is in no way more reassuring. He be cray. And it is the pressure.

On the surface the vituperative reaction is because of the Gaza genocide. The public’s feelings against the pro-Israel goons are stronger and growing with each thousand Palestinians that are being killed every week. He doesn’t say he “fears” anything from the incitement, but that is the vibe anyway. Winston isn’t going to show up with Rimmer as taste testers to Bomber Bradbury’s Marxist Chef cooking show, but it is more likely a rando in a bar or restaurant whose had too much to drink would think ‘hey – there’s that genocide guy’ and pick a fight. New Zealand First aren’t even safe from judges in the Northern Club how can they be safe anywhere else in society?

And the other pressures underneath.

His run as Foreign Minister looks to have been fine up until now, but it hasn’t been, it’s been a disaster. Not all of his making, but one MFAT disaster after another and last week a shameful speech of weasel words at the United Nations refusing to recognise Palestinian statehood and thus breaking with Australia, Canada and the UK. His record is looking appalling right now, perhaps a nadir.

The relationship with the Cook Islands is a disaster – an impasse with no hope of a successful resolution. A personally heart-breaking situation given Winston’s affection for the place. He is unable to do anything other than get MFAT to stop their recurrent budget funding (whereby the Cooks get enough to boast they are not 3^rd World). China has totally aced NZ with the Cooks agreement. NZ will now have to spy on the Cooks – disastrous.  The humiliation of him and the PM not being able to attend the Cooks 60^th anniversary of free association must be excruciating. The media in this country don’t dwell on it, but to just send the Governor-General is a tremendous cop-out that shows the relationship that should be No.1 for New Zealand (even before Australia) is not even on the radar. And as I said it is unresolvable, New Zealand influence is basically nil.

The Chinese naval flotilla sallied right through the Tasman Sea just a few months ago. They started live fire weapons testing with about half an hour’s notice right in the Auckland-Sydney airways corridor. Pretend it wasn’t belligerent? What could Winston do but huff and puff alongside Judith ‘Joker’ Collins. Utterly powerless. Helpless. His sheepish interview later where he said his counterpart, Wang Yi, explained sometimes we don’t give advance notice as the naval commanders do what they want, was ridiculous and credulous. How humiliating to be in that pathetic situation of being forced to swallow the lies of China. And nothing he can do about it at all. So, cripplingly weak.

And he missed his New York dinner with Trump. And he’s pissy about it. Serves him right.

Winston will be after some sort of diplomatic win to deflect from the Gaza genocide and dismissal of the Palestinian cause. He probably thinks that by opting out of the Australia/UK/Canada echelon of recognition he can do something more dramatic by taking the Asian bloc with NZ in recognition in the next wave – surfing that wave and claiming credit for it. And if that actually worked it would indeed be a measure of redemption, but that is very optimistic.

I am sure Winston sees the logic in what he is doing as a danse diplomatique rather than just outright Zionism, but you do wonder whether our Cunt Richelieu has any ambitions to do anything principled, ever. When I hear Winston, I hear Muldoon. This twitter spat was classic Muldoonist counter-punching. The way they say “deviant” and “pervert” is exactly the same. The “Bussy” Doyle spite was Colin Moyle all over again. Winston is simply of another more hateful time and era – ironically enough, a time when physical threats and biffo were normal in politics. It is time to harden up sweetheart.