PC Bureaucrat Stifles Free Speech in New Zealand, by Paul Collitis.
Many Australians will by now know of the recent happenings in Auckland and the “un-platforming” of “far right” YouTubers Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux. …
More recently, though, and perhaps less well known to Australians, has been the un-platforming of a former NZ National politician by a New Zealand university. The politician is Don Brash, the university Massey, and its vice-chancellor (who made the decision to have Brash uninvited to speak on campus) is none other than an Australian mediocrity by the name of Jan Thomas — my old boss, in fact.
The overpaid PC bureaucrat
She is another of those massively overpaid, glorified bureaucrats who now run bloated, over-funded, corporatised centres of non-learning and non-debate throughout the West.
Brash is a former leader of the National Party and of the Act Party and, to boot, a former governor of the NZ Reserve Bank.
The victim (and his then wife, 2006)
He was invited by the politics club at Massey to speak about the National Party. His crime is his more recent leadership of an organisation called Hobson’s Pledge, whose vision is, per its web site:
… a society in which all citizens have the same rights, irrespective of when we or our ancestors arrived.
How more non-racist and equal can one get? Not racist enough for today’s PC mob however.
This “far right” entity which basically refuses to bow and scrape before the gods of Waitangi (whose “principles”, incidentally, were actually created in the 1980s, not in 1840 as many believe) seeks to push back against the separatism — indeed, as might be argued, against the quasi apartheid that exists in quite a bit of New Zealand society, public life and governance. Out among the Kiwi deplorables, many people would think like Brash on this topic, but would never, ever say it. Think Pauline Hanson with even stranger vowels, only here is someone who also ran the Reserve Bank! A serious individual, one might think.
I’ve met Don Brash and corresponded with him, and I’d vouch for him. Very presentable, very accomplished, serious and capable, he was almost elected NZ PM in 2005.
But of course Brash is persona non grata in polite, politically correct New Zealand circles. And, trust me, this is indeed a politically correct country.
The Massey vice-chancellor, in her wisdom and having listened to voices on campus, decided that Maori staff members in particular might not be up for Brash’s visit, even though it was not compulsory for anyone to attend his talk, which was not even about Maori rights and privileges. …
Classic censorship.
And this has happened not a month after Thomas gave three cheers for free speech on campus. Universities, she said, were places of free speech and debate, just not hate speech. The term “hate speech”, like “alt right”, “Islamophobe” and “climate denier”, is a classic example of the use of the standard leftist meme, where certain terms only need to be stated in order to shut down the conversation and silence opponents. Thomas’ take on Brash was that his views were “close to hate speech”, therefore verboten on her campus. …
New Zealand is too locked down by the PC mob:
There is no Abbott, no Hanson, no Bernardi in New Zealand. Nor are there voices and strategic nodes on the right in the New Zealand media, which is very thin in ability and narrow in worldview. …
New Zealand’s public broadcaster is a joke, consisting of mostly talk radio (no television, mercifully) and goons stringing together memes they have acquired and learned from international leftist sisters and brothers or from easily accessible overseas mainstream media outlets and feeds (often the ABC). …
All the expected targets are there – Australian racism, climate change denial, xenophobia and (of course) Trump!
The hallmark of the victims of propaganda — they have no understanding:
New Zealanders, or at least their audible voices in politics and the media, simply do not “get” Trump. Having little understanding of the nuances and drivers of American politics beyond the standard MSM talking points, they are led to perceive some far right nutter on the verge of destroying the planet. New Zealand’s liberalerati are simply appalled by Trump.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
