UPDATE: The petition was started by Tina Ngata and Anna McAllister. We in error thought that it was started by Debbie Ngarewa-Paker because our link to the petition had the following on it.
Maori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer started a petition to pressure a business to fire one of their employees because of the views he expressed on his personal YouTube channel.
She has succeeded and, in addition to losing his job, the man’s relationship with his significant other has also been damaged.
This is not only cancel culture: it is thought policing. Calling someone a racist is easy, anyone can do it and it doesn’t have to be true. Smearing someone as a white supremacist is also easy and it also doesn’t have to be true.
More and more around the world, we are seeing people being accused of being racist or white supremacists, not as an insult but as a way to silence them and in extreme cases like this one, to maliciously cost them their jobs.
Is it really that easy now in New Zealand to cost someone their job?
It seems that it is but only if the person is a) male and b) pale.
The Maori party is a racist construct as it is a race-based party for only one race. It is incredibly ironic that the co-leader of such a racist party would feel justified in starting a witch hunt against a man for allegedly having racist and white supremacist views.
I suspect these days that anyone who makes fun of Maori, or who criticizes or discusses He Puapua, would be seen as a racist and a white supremacist in Debbie Ngarewa-Packer‘s eyes.
Before political correctness, some people would have described this man as just another whinging Pom and they wouldn’t have watched his videos. No big deal.
I note that so far the Free Speech Union has been silent on the matter. Are they too scared of being smeared by Debbie Ngarewa-Packer as racist and white supremacists? This is exactly why people like Ngarewa-Packer can get away with destroying a man’s life for having views that she doesn’t like or finds offensive. People are too scared to go into bat for him because they are worried that they will be next.
Who will be next? The power rush Debbie Ngarewa-Packer will be experiencing right now will encourage her to find new targets. She doesn’t need to contest ideas that she disagrees with or is offended by when she can cancel them instead.