This week two politicians, one on each side of both the Tasman and the political aisles, announced that they had been diagnosed with aggressive cancers. Both announced that they would be stepping back from their political duties while they sought treatment.
But the very different reactions to each spoke volumes.
Labour minister Kiri Allan has been diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer and will be taking medical leave from Parliament.
Allan, whose ministerial portfolios include Conservation and Emergency Management, made the announcement via social media on Tuesday morning[…]
Social media has been flooded with messages for Allan.
“I’m so sorry to read that Kiri. It is very brave of you to let everyone share in this with you and your whanau. Best wishes,” wrote National Party leader Judith Collins.
Newshub
Across the ditch in Australia, Liberal senator Jim Molan has also announced his “aggressive” cancer diagnosis.
NSW Liberal Senator Jim Molan has revealed he has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form of cancer” and will take leave from the Senate.
Senator Molan said he would have further testing to confirm the prognosis and commence treatment after he was diagnosed with the cancer last week[…]
The Senator, who is also a retired major general in the Australian Army said the diagnosis had come as a shock but noted he had “many reasons to be positive”.
The Australian
Reading Twitter would not be one of them.
With their characteristic “compassion” and “kindness”, the Twitter left immediately flooded the social media sewer with vicious bile.
A self-proclaimed “Australian born Lebanese”, whose timeline is full of pro-Palestinian and pro-China posts (including disparaging the “alleged genocide of Uyghurs”), posted a photo of a toast “to Jim Molan’s corpse”, along with photos of fireworks.
The aptly-named @horriblelizard gloated, “Oh well better late than never”, while a journalism student and “Anarcho-Syndicialist” [sic] smirked, “I would say this is direct karma”.
Lest anyone think that these are just Twitter bottom-feeders and not “polite society”, consider the following from child and family psychologist and frequent ABC commentator Dr Jennifer Wilson: “I couldn’t care less if Molan has cancer”. In the same tweet, Wilson dismissed Molan as “a monstrous man”.
But nowhere was the vile double-standards of the left better displayed than by one Jenny Frecklington-Jones, who first re-tweeted Kiri Allan’s announcement, then turned on Molan by retweeting a far-left newspaper hit-job, while demanding to know how many “asylum seekers” were dead because of him (answer: none, you vicious twit).
Fortunately, not all on the left are hateful and vile. Retired senator Doug Cameron, perhaps the last actual worker to ever grace the Labor party, wrote that:
“I had many robust and bruising run ins with @JimMolan while we served on opposing sides in the @AuSenate.
We disagreed on most (all?) issues but this is devastating news for him and his family.
Best wishes to Jim and family, good luck and get well!”
Twitter
Yet even Cameron’s decency was met with a flood of hateful replies from his followers.
Greens leader Adam Bandt, who in 2018 smeared Molan as a “war criminal”, has so far been silent.
Jim Molan has served his country with honour and integrity as a soldier and then as a politician.
Honour. Courage. Patriotism. Service. No wonder the left hate him so much.
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