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Wednesday, July 17, 2024

David Farrar: Time for Labour and Greens to take a stand against violent rhetoric from TPM


As the United States reels from an attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, the focus in on the need for those involved in politics to be more moderate in their discourse.

The same weekend, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said on Q+A:

We’ve got a Government that is genocidal, ecocide, we know that they are white supremacists

(If they’re a genocidal government) There’s no if, they are.

This is violent extremist language and it is time for media (huge credit to Jack Tame for pushing back on it) to scrutinise TPM to the same degree any other party saying such stuff would be. If the co-leader of a centre right political party accused the previous Government of waging genocide against whites, then it would be the lead story for days, with demands that such extremism be condemned.

And this is extremism, that promotes violence. If you keep telling 20% of the population that the Government wants to commit genocide and exterminate them, then of course that will lead to extremism and violence. It is beyond the realm of acceptable discourse from an MP, let alone a co-leader. It is far more extreme than anything Trump or the most left representative in the US says.

Ultimately Labour and the Greens need to step up, to stop this. This is not the type of language that you can just say “I wouldn’t express it like this” in response to. Labour and Greens should rule out Te Pati Maori playing any role in a future Government, unless they drop their violent extremist language.

If they don’t, then NZ will follow the US down its current trajectory. You will encourage more politicians on both the left and right to use violent extremist language as a way to build support, and it will end with someone wounded or dead.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...


Enough!

Learn how to behave as adults in an adult world - on the taxpayer purse!

We - tax payers and your paymasters - are not impressed.

Anonymous said...

This reflects the violent norm structurally embedded in pre-colonial tribal maori society. Despite the chiefs at Waitangi desperate for Crown sovereignty to save Maori from their own self destruction, it is interesting that this violent norm persists.Maori have failed in their own goals of tempering their own violence.

Other NZers however do not have to accept maori violence and are fully entitled to the protection of the Crown. But... where is it? It is critical that the crown takes a stand and makes it unequivocally clear that manifestations of violence, politically or otherwise, are not acceptable in NZ.

The more so given events in the US in the last few days and still unfolding.

Anonymous said...

David, they won't. The fact that they won't hold maori party to account for their toxic remarks and behaviors means they are just as guilty. Wake up folks the far left are very very dangerous monsters.