Green Party MP Benjamin Doyle has returned to Parliament saying their social media posts never had a sexual meaning and they didn’t believe they had done anything wrong.
However, Doyle, who uses they/them pronouns, recognised they were “politically naive” in not deleting their private Instagram account ahead of entering Parliament last year, something the Green Party advised them to do. However, they had not expected it would lead to “baseless, personal, and violent” attacks. . .
Whether or not the attacks were baseless, they are unacceptable.
Doyle’s behaviour is also unacceptable to many people.
His failure to delete the posts not only shows naivitey, writing them in the first place and failing to follow the advice of the party to delete them shows a lack of judgement.
It also shows a lamentable adherence to identity politics which is typical of his party, and its Australian counterpart about which Nicolas Sheppard writes:
Doyle’s behaviour is also unacceptable to many people.
His failure to delete the posts not only shows naivitey, writing them in the first place and failing to follow the advice of the party to delete them shows a lack of judgement.
It also shows a lamentable adherence to identity politics which is typical of his party, and its Australian counterpart about which Nicolas Sheppard writes:
On both sides of the Tasman, Green party politics has become ridden with flaky ideology and identity politics.
In New Zealand, the Greens have careened from crisis to crisis for a year and a half. . .
The Doyle debacle is the most recent in a far too long list.
Rather than account for and explain whether it is appropriate, the Greens opted to play the victim and use a conventional modern playbook, claiming death threats levelled at Mr Doyle, and turning things around to frame Mr Peters as irresponsible to have raised the matter in the first place.
The Greens’ PR gambit paid off: New Zealand’s media, increasingly a soft touch and given to walking on socio-cultural eggshells, bought the deflections, without giving any consideration to the idea that death threats have become ubiquitous at the toxic fringes of online discourse involving public figures and current affairs – and while such threats should never be taken lightly, most of the individuals who pose them have neither the means nor the genuine inclination to follow through. . .
Asked for a definition of ‘bussy,’ Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick said: “What we’re talking about here is terminology where context is incredibly important…and the context is, members of the rainbow community often times use terminology which could be considered to be outrageous…”
Here the idea is cultural relativist: a community outside the conventional mainstream has its aesthetics, attitudes, spirit and identity that is, in this case, at a remove, and therefore, to an extent indemnified from the staid understanding of the heteronormative wider society.
In other words, viewers should check themselves for rushing to judgement about something that might be outside their potentially reactionary frame of reference.
To illustrate how easy it is to make this play and get a societal pass, fellow Green MP Marama Davidson accused Winston Peters of “actively fanning the flames of hatred towards the beautiful rainbow community”. . .
She was no doubt sorry he is Maori so she was unable to accuse him of racism too.
The Greens used to be endearing and unabashed about their image: party conferences where feijoa wine was served, hopeless and shapeless wool cardigans, teeth that had suffered the rigours of a lack of fluoride – but they were authentic and sincere – and they restrained themselves generally to issues of environmentalism. . .
The modern Greens, with their focus on identity politics, are suffering from a paradox: the more they become preoccupied with personal identity, the more they seem to blur their political identity.
They care greatly for the planet, without giving the impression they spend much time on it. . .
Yet the NZ Greens still get around 10% support.
Do their supporters not realise the party has moved so far from its original values and is now ridden with flaky ideology and identity politics?
Greens used to be called water melons – green on the outside and red inside. Now the inside is a mix of every colour in the rainbow – except perhaps blue.
Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
We expect our representatives in parliament to be well-informed people with regard to economic and social issues so that they have the knowledge base from which to make sensible laws, and to be people of sound character whose moral judgements we can trust (if not always necessarily agree with wholeheartedly). Competence and decency are two words that sum it up well.
The so-called Greens in the NZ parliament fail on both counts. They are would-be hijackers of democracy and sensible governance and should be removed altogether from the corridors of power.
No-one has mentioned that HE didn't explain the blue spiral or eggplant and a few other things. If the Green party leaders advised HIM to take HIS posts down, why did they keep on following HIM for a year?
He really is a thicko, a product of Rose Hipkin's wonderful education system indoctrination. There is a whole generation to follow so what hope for our future? MC
Normal well adjusted adults first instinct is to protect children - this Green lot think it is acceptable to exploit them. Rename them the Nut Job Party. I used to respect them
I don't believe they were "attacks," therefore they were acceptable. We have every right to know about our politicians and what they stand for. Just imagine if nobody held these people to account. They could pretty much do as they please. I think of New Zealanders as their employers. It is perhaps unfortunate that some people get a bit overwrought when they think children could be at risk. On the other hand... maybe it's fortunate?
Why do we never see prosecutions for these death threats? Not just against the watermelons but against women MPs in general.
Are our police and security so useless that they can’t find and prosecute these nut jobs?
Flip the script.
If a white, hetero M.P. had a website where he called himself, "Biblebelt Pussy" and published a photo of a young girl on his knee, with the words "Pussy Galore", would the media take pity on him ?
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