We have just witnessed an example of socialist group think from our collective media. The BFD broke the news that one of its authors, Dieuwe de Boer had been raided by approximately a dozen jack-booted, armed Police in search of a rifle that was described in the search warrant as “.22RL lever-action rifle. Blued metal, brown wooden stock.”
Quite apart from the fact that Police couldn’t even get the calibre correct, the only existence of Mr de Boer ever describing this rifle was in his submission to a parliamentary select committee and a copy of that submission posted on his own website RightMinds.
Graeme Edgeler rightly queries the implications of such an imposition from the Police via Twitter, “Did @NZPolice really rely on evidence given to a select committee to obtain a search warrant? Surely they’re not that stupid? And issuing Officers get training in privilege, right? Parliamentary Privilege won’t come up a lot but they should know it exists.”
The Police for their part are misspeaking when they claim that they didn’t gather evidence from the select committee submissions because that is, in reality, the only place they could possibly have gathered their description of the rifle as stipulated on the search warrant.
You’d think the media would focus on the egregious breach of trust by the Police in pursuing a man based on his own submission before a select committee. But no, instead they all exhibited collective group-think and published the same defamatory article produced by ‘hard-left’ (sarc.) Radio New Zealand “journalist” Matthew Theunissen.
That is how a Christian family man was smeared by a Radio NZ journalist, and ALL other media followed suit, continuing the smear and defamation of an innocent man. They were in lock-step and they kicked an innocent man’s reputation into the gutter, instead of focussing on the outrageous behaviour of our jack-booted Police.
The evidence of his alleged “far-right” attitudes is missing from each and every one of these articles. Only Newshub later produced a more balanced article off of the back of support from the only MP to say anything.
Newshub has been the sole news outlet, apart from The BFD, Kiwiblog and to his credit Martyn Bradbury’s The Daily Blog, to produce any semblance of a balanced story focussed on facts rather than the conspiracy theories of a ‘hard-left’ (sarc.) “journalist”. Matthew Theunissen is probably sniggering at how he was able to make every news outlet follow his warped smear of an innocent family man. Except that when people go searching to see who this supposed “far-right” person is, all they can see is what he actually is…a family man:
Make no mistake, what we are seeing here is a willingness amongst media to smear and ridicule conservative voices as a means to silence those voices. This is a continuation of the tactics begun in 2014 to besmirch former Whaleoil editor Cam Slater. If you are a conservative voice who is starting to gain traction then the left-wing smear machine moves into action hurling accusations and labels rather than discussing the words and ideas.
It is my belief that Dieuwe de Boer was targeted by Police as a vocal voice who could be used as an example as they seek to cow the licenced firearm owner community. He has previously been smeared by media before, so they figured they’d be able to conduct this raid and I have no doubt that they had tame media ready to run the news of their bust of a “far-right” gun owner breaking the law.
It clearly never entered their feeble imaginations that maybe, perhaps Mr de Boer might actually be what he appears to be, a Christian father of three in stable and rewarding employment, with a pet dog and an enjoyment of target shooting and hunting. He is the epitome of an honest Kiwi family man. Instead, they will have formed a wonky opinion that Mr de Boer posed a clear and present danger. Why else were there approximately a dozen armed and metaphorically jack-booted Police used for what should have been a simple query as to the whereabouts of the firearm in question?
Instead, what we have now is what could be best described as a cluster-whatsit. The Minister is left flailing, digging an ever-deepening hole justifying the jack-booted actions of police instead of pausing to consider the facts at hand. Concrete and dogmatic thinking from Police has gotten them into this position, and equally dogmatic and concrete thinking from the Minister isn’t helping.
The Minister for his part was straight onto the offensive against Mr de Boer in online discussions. He expressed doubt at the story’s authenticity and expressed a low opinion of the gun lobby. When presented with the facts of the case he chose to assume that the police would not do what the article said they did unless they had very good reasons for doing so.
We will now have to wait and see the results of comprehensive OIA requests before we will get to the truth of what led Police to believe that it was ok to use approximately 12 armed Police to raid the house of a Christian family man in search of a weapon they can only have known about from a select committee submission.
Meanwhile the media will continue to demonise conservative voices. They will likely then be surprised when the election rolls around and conservative voices return parties that reflect their values and not the rowdy voices of “progressivism”.
It won’t come as a surprise to this author if there isn’t a very vocal third party campaign in Napier to dump Stu Nash. I would imagine that the local gun shops will be happy to help organise the resistance to Stu Nash’s folly of only listening to the Police. His majority isn’t unassailable. There are gun owners in his electorate who along with their families will out number his majority.
What the actions of the Police and their Minister have done is bring the tactics of the NRA into New Zealand. If the Minister had listened to his mates and people who actually know what they are talking about it wouldn’t have had to be this way. The Minister’s own rhetoric will be used to politically hang him out to dry, starting with his repeated promises to gun owners not to use regulations to change gun laws. Meanwhile, he stands accused of allowing his Police to conduct politically motivated raids against innocent families while gangs are running amok in our streets.
Those owners all vote and so do their families. They will be aghast at the actions of Police, and their votes will move. There are 250,000 gun owners, and now they are under no illusions that contrary to Nash’s claims that he doesn’t want to piss them off, he has now really pissed them off. With family members included they number around 1 million angry voters. If you add in Christians and other people who will see the Police actions for what they are and Labour are going to suffer a backlash. The only questions that now remain are what will National do? Can they find a way to walk back their previous positions? What will NZ First do? Will they sit by and allow David Seymour hoover up 5% of the vote as a result of being the only MP principled enough to stand up to the draconian and unnecessary imposition of new ill-conceived gun laws?
I can see now that the second tranche of the gun laws will, as a result of media smears and stupidity from Stu Nash, be gutted by NZ First in a bid to try and make a claim for those angry voters. If that happens then the media can blame themselves for a resurgence in nationalist and populist NZ First and freedom-loving ACT.
This year is shaping up to be a doozy. Expect more smears from the media. Conservative voices need support and one way to help them is to support the platforms that host them. Do not let the left-wing dominate discourse.