So, New Zealand is getting its very own Ministry of Truth, complete with the grandly Orwellian title of “National Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism”. It’s also known by the even-more-incomprehensible “He Whenua Taurikura”, which translates to the splendidly Maoist “a peaceful land”. Xi Xinping, with his “Harmonious Society”, would no doubt approve.
And who better to put in charge of such a Maoist menagerie than deranged, poo-flinging monkeys?
(Hell, we’re probably already on the watch-list anyway. Might as well give the Stasi agents a bit of a chuckle to brighten their day.)
The appointment of one of the directors of the government’s research centre for counter-violent extremism has been described as “problematic” and “disturbing”.
And that’s from the left. Imagine being so demented that even Martyn Bradbury thinks you’re batshit-crazy.
Left-leaning political commentator Chris Trotter said it was a “very disturbing appointment.
“I consider Kidman to be an extremist” while left-leaning political blogger Martyn Bradbury described the appointment as “insane”.
Here’s the thing, though: there’s whole libraries of things I no doubt disagree with Martyn on, but his commitment to free speech is admirable and, in the contemporary left milieu, almost singular. The same goes for Trotter.
“Labour pushed back on their hate speech madness, but are still trying to find new ways to restrict free speech, meaning this new Extremist Research Academy will have vast influence over very large powers, which brings us to the problematic appointment of Professor Joanne Kidman,” he wrote in his blog.
How problematic? Let us recount just some of the dung she’s flung.
In 2020, Kidman accused fashion designer Trelise Cooper of perpetrating “colonial violence in floral polyester” after she named one of her dresses “Trail of Tiers” […]
[Bradbury] said “Kidman wanted Cooper cancelled for a dress, that’s her threshold for hate and extremism, a dressmaker who had no idea of an indigenous atrocity.”
He believes Kidman is unsuitable for the government-appointed position. “That’s the person in charge of an academy on extremism? Someone who is triggered by a dress and who used their platform to start a woke lynch mob?”
As Bradbury rightly says, given Kidman’s hair-trigger threshold to erupt in screaming fits of keyboard-rage at what she, without a trace of irony, dubs “hate”, any findings of an “extremism centre” headed by her simply cannot be taken seriously. Unless, of course, you’re the Ardern government, for whom taking blatant idiocy seriously is a given.
Here’s some more of Kidman’s greatest hit-jobs.
Kidman has, in the past, publicly criticised those whose views deviate from her own, including social media “pile-ons”, authoring petitions and name-calling “offenders” as “settlers” […]
On May 27th, she tweeted “nice example of historian-as-bigoted-dickhead to add to the pile of sixty-twelve million reasons why 99% of university historians should have a curfew and an ankle tracker”.
Kidman has attacked journalists whose articles she disagrees with, once describing a Wellington reporter as “still drunk”. Kidman often uses the derisive term “settler”.
On June 10, 2020, during the height of the Black Lives Movement in the United States, Kidman wrote, “white academia: you’ve ‘discovered’ racism this past fortnight and taken to the streets in support of BLM. Now it’s time to turn your attention to the saturating whiteness of your own universities, disciplines and teaching & research practices, and recognise your own complicity.”
She has also been triggered by the name of a cat. Yes, a cat.
As the Free Speech Union point out, Kidman seems more than a bit of a censorious bully.
“Professor Kidman has claimed that words are equivalent to violence and has been at the forefront of numerous attempts to silence others.”
For someone who will be spying on everything Kiwis say and do online, Kidman isn’t exactly inclined to openness and transparency on her own behalf.
Kidman didn’t respond to written questions […]
Since her appointment, Kidman has hidden her Twitter account.
Chris Lynch Media
As is always the case with socialist Stasi societies, it’s one rule for the proles, another one entirely for the nomenklatura.