Twitter thread into madness & the dangers of a Counterspin show trial
I don’t often interact with people on Twitter, I use it to post the blogs and drop hilarious comments about topical issues, but a recent Tweet seemed to stir up a thread that made such a perfect example of how fucked social media is as a medium that I needed to repost it here.
So here was the initial kick off…
…so I need to be slapped for suggesting this was a poorly planned knee jerk by the Police…
…now Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara is a staunch activist against fascism and they have mana, but I think they didn’t read my post, because I didn’t say that at all.
I said these two are dangerous and as such required a professional case from the SIS to deliver a conspiracy charge that could stand up in Court, rather than the knee jerk charge they’ve been delivered with.
That led to a pile on from a range of woke warriors who clearly hadn’t even read what I had written to proclaim that I was an apologist for fascists.
This is how crazy the woke online have become.
The danger with an ill thought out knee-jerk against extremists like the Counterspin Duo is that we only build them by providing them with a show trial!
We keep escalating this because the extremists on both sides want a fight!
Just like Mallard at the Parliament protest, we keep escalating rather than de-escalate.
This Show trial is bloody dangerous!
Their first defence against providing their passwords will be Journalistic privilege!
They will argue they are doing journalism against the State and are refusing to provide passwords too protect that journalism!
The Judge will have to consider if what they do is Journalism giving them a bloody platform to promote their nonsense!
Very quickly this starts becoming a trial about whether or not they are journalists! Did the Judge who granted the arrest warrant know that they were Journalists or that they might attempt to mount a Journalistic privilege defence?
You see where all this might go now?
What if they get off?
What if they prove they did have Journalistic Privilege?
Has anyone thought this out?
We fucked up the Parliament Lawn protests and radicalised thousands more than we started with!
I fear we are going to make the same mistake with this Show trial, which is deeply problematic because these two are actually a genuine threat.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
I did read your post and you did say “…whatever clown is responsible for knee jerking the arrest of these two should be taken out the back and slapped until the stupid comes off them!” and “This has been appallingly handled and someone needs a smack.” Maybe in future you could make your point without using references to physical violence. Violence is for the inarticulate.
I see your point Martyn, in that if the CS morons were actual threats then the full force of the state should be bought against them, but I disagree as to how big an actual threat they are.
These sovereign citizen types are totally detached from reality, but I disagree that they actually make their followers any more dangerous than they would be anyway. The sort of people who genuinely believe in the sort of nonsense that Alps et al. are pushing and will engage in violent action over it will engage in unhinged behavior for any reason or no reason at all. If you look at violent ‘QAnon’ actions in the US, it all involves unfortunate people who had the same problems before they came across QAnon as afterwards.
Reading the ridiculous nonsense that Counterspin posts, like the amazing post from yesterday afternoon saying that they can’t be prosecuted for spreading obscenity because the US Supreme Court has declared that pornography is not obscenity (they didn’t post a link to porn, they posted a link to a dumb ‘documentary’ made by a failed comedian) is not going to turn some regular dumb conservative meatpuppet from placidly voting for National every few years to hunting down Labour Party politicians.
We do need real action to deal with these problems. But in the case of the people who might actually decide to attack politicians for God Emperor Trump, they need mental health care which unfortunately was abolished with deinstitutionalization.
No it isn’t, the massacre film was deemed an objectionable document. They got done for spreading this. Nothing to see here. move on.
NZ Twitter is a dead platform, literal echo chamber compared to groups on Face Book that they screech should be taken down. I don’t understand how twitter has any clout at all.