Settler/Coloniser, we are your worst nightmare. And we are coming to a university near you!
Hello, it’s All things Political, with John Porter on Bay FM.
“Settler/Coloniser, we are your worst nightmare. And we are coming to a university near you!” So tweeted one Professor Joanna Kidman, who has recently been appointed a director of the newly launched Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism.
Or the Ministry of Truth as it is being referred to on social media.
The appointment of Kidman suggests that Ardern’s Government is comfortable and even agrees with the prejudiced views that Kidman expresses.
So who exactly is Professor Joanna Kidman?
Kidman is a professor of Maori education at Victoria University. She describes herself as a sociologist of education, and states, “I look at the sweeping forces of colonial history and how they affect the everyday lives of Maori children and their families.”
She further states:
Education is the silent weapon of colonisation. Military invasion is only ever one aspect of the blueprint for conquest.
“Education is the silent weapon of colonisation”? I would have thought education was the blueprint for the success of Maori!
Further, Education was designed to create a new kind of Maori citizen: one who would adopt British values and customs, speak the Queen’s English.
So Joanna Kidman seems to hold very strong, less-than-objective views, especially so about Maori vs settler relations. “Settlers” is a term that Kidman employs when referring to Pakeha New Zealanders.
Those very strong views have included denigrating seven Auckland academics who dared to argue that matauranga Maori, or ‘Maori ways of knowing’, is not legitimate science and therefore should not be included in any science curriculum. To that subject Kidman tweeted:
Oh settlers! I opened the Letters page of the Listener to find a bunch of Auckland University professors, inc Liz Rata, denying that Matauranga Maori is science. Where do these shuffling zombies come from? Is there something in the water.
Very diplomatic isn’t she?
A common theme in her tweets is criticism of whiteness, specifically in academia and journalism.
Her tweets show an obsession with anti-white rhetoric. Responding to Chris Trotter’s reaction to Sean Plunket’s firing as decreasing diversity, she made it clear she believes “diversity” means fewer white people.
Isn’t that an ignorant attitude from someone who is charged with countering violent extremism? It’s certainly not objective and it’s certainly a very fragile threshold for hate crimes.
How can promoting a raging anti-white bigot to a position that’s supposed to be responsible for serious work be good for social cohesion?
It may not be fitting for her role but it’s behaviour she has indulged in before. In 2020 she attacked fashion designer Trelise Cooper who unknowingly committed the cardinal sin of calling one of her dress designs the “Trail of Tiers”. That’s tiers as in layers not tears as in weeping!
Kidman argued Trail of Tiers was a play on the “Trail of Tears”, the genocidal forced march of 46,000 Native Americans by the United States Government. Kidman tweeted “I guess it’s cool to be ironic about genocide.”
If ever there was flag bearer for cancel culture and extremism, it seems like Joanna Kidman has taken on the role with gusto!
What motivates Kidman is a grim ideology that views New Zealand only in racial terms. It’s a strong view, and she wants us all to believe that the many injustices that have befallen Maori are all due to ‘white colonialism’.
Again, the Labour Government is comfortable and seemingly agrees with Kidman’s intolerance.
Conspicuously missing from Kidman’s racially charged and divisive view is any acknowledgement that the arrival of colonists brought so many benefits to Maori. None more so than the cessation of cannibalism.
How large would the Maori population be if that hadn’t happened?
Kidman’s singling out of Professor Rata may well be because she is a prominent critic of the Government’s agenda of ‘co-governance’. Professor Rata argues that it is the agenda of the Ardern Government to install Maori elite (people like Kidman) within our present governance systems, while at the same time sacrificing our democratic principles.
You can bet your last dollar co-governance will be beneficial for the Maori elite but of little benefit for the majority of Maori. And definitely not beneficial to the rest of us who are now labelled “OTHERS”.
Sadly, we currently reside in an environment where political intolerance is the norm and any such arguments against co-governance will quickly see you attacked as ‘racist’.
Given she is a vocal campaigner against what she calls messages of “hate” and regularly attacks people online for daring to have controversial or conservative views, IS SHE SUITABLE FOR HER ROLE?
Given she has, on a number of occasions, called the Free Speech Union extremist, because they promote freedom of speech at universities, IS SHE SUITABLE FOR HER ROLE?
I say definitely not! Anything coming out of this extremism research centre must be challenged.
She has been hand-picked for a vague research centre that will see the birth of a government propaganda arm that will select pro-government ‘experts’ to tell us why it’s ‘safer’ to restrict speech.
This new organisation is all about providing vanity jobs for the Maori elite and scholarships to far-left extremists to enrich themselves while engaging in academic warfare against their political enemies.
All paid for by us, their political enemies!
Nothing wrong with being an extremist, of course, but when the prime minister hires an extremist to research violent extremism one starts to wonder what exactly is going on.
I say, simply more evidence of the power of the Maori caucus.
Oh, and by the way, since her appointment, Kidman has hidden her Twitter account.