“In the end, we have to be alert to the potential political double standard: harmless jokes for me, but not for you” – Dr Kevin Veale
Mechanics, as the saying goes, have the worst cars. So it’s no surprise that those who bleat loudest about ‘kindness’ and ‘civility’ so often turn out to be the most hateful, abusive bullies imaginable.
Case in point: Massey University’s Dr Kevin Veale, senior lecturer at the School of Humanities Media and Creative Comm. In just his “sixth post ever” on Bluesky, Veale wrote:
charlie kirk won’t see your jokes about him getting shot but people who lost family or friends to gun violence might and as one of those people i say keep posting those bangers fuck charlie kirk
Apparently “people who lost family or friends to gun violence” doesn’t include Charlie Kirk’s little children, his wife, or his many friends and admirers.
If Veale’s post wasn’t enough, his many followers strove mightily to outdo him.
That’s right: Veale’s social media followers think it’s hilarious that little children had to see their father brutally murdered in front of their own eyes.
As of writing, Veale has said nothing to reprimand them. In fact, he went on to boast that “my sixth post ever has made it to large right wing twitter so welcome to the fascists”.
Ironically, Veale once wrote that:
Many people involved in online abuse are comfortable doing so under their own names.
So we see.
This would all be disgusting, if predictable enough, social media garbage, if it wasn’t for who Dr Kevin Veale is. For years, Veale has made it his stock-in-trade to finger wag people about what they say on social media.
Veale’s Open Researcher and Contributor ID states that his research:
Tracks online harassment, and argues that online harassment campaigns function as self-targeting Alternate Reality Games whose goal is to ruin the lives of those they target.
Does that include Charlie Kirk’s family, Dr Veale?
Veale’s own words repeatedly come back to haunt him:
David Seymour’s posts raise questions about what’s OK to say online.
In this piece, Veale argues that online jokes have the potential to lead to real-world violence.
As my own research shows, online harassment and violent rhetoric can raise the chances of real-world violence.
Since the early 2000s, researchers have used the term “stochastic terrorism” to describe a way of indirectly threatening people […] in the end, we have to be alert to the potential political double standard: harmless jokes for me, but not for you.
This is far from the only time Veale has railed against people for making ‘harmful’ online comments. Indeed, it might seem that he proved his own warnings about “stochastic terrorism”, when he published a call to ban Kelly-Jay Keen-Minshull from New Zealand, just days before her attempted speaking event in Auckland degenerated into violence, with multiple assaults on women’s rights activists.
Does public safety trump free speech? History suggests there is a case for banning anti-trans activist Posie Parker from NZ […] Keen-Minshull should not be granted entry under the banner of free speech.
Maybe Veale should start listening to his own advice:
Persuading people to care about and respect other humans if they don’t already is hard, and harder still if they don’t agree with them... Hate-filled people believe everyone secretly agrees with them, and the only difference is that they are ‘brave’ enough to say ‘what everyone is thinking’ and do ‘what everyone would do if they weren’t afraid’.
If nothing else, Dr Kevin Veale, remember your own words:
The line we walk past is the line we accept.
Veale is free to joke about the assassination of someone who only ever advocated peaceful dialogue in lieu of violence, but he must be called out for his double standards. If he is going to lecture David Seymour, and everyone else, about the ‘potential harm’ of online jokes, he should be expected to live by his own standards. The line he walks past is the line he accepts.
