At the moment certain words in the English language are being ruthlessly redefined by activists determined to change or stretch the meanings of words to accommodate their rhetoric. To show you what I mean, imagine if the term barber had always had a negative connotation but the word hairdresser had a good connotation. Professionals who made their living cutting hair would, therefore, stop referring to themselves as barbers and would instead refer to themselves as hairdressers.
Now imagine that due to activism from anti-haircutters the term hairdresser also became tarnished and now hair cutting professionals had to find new ways to describe themselves to avoid the negative social connotations around the two words, hairdresser and barber.
“No I am not a hairdresser,” they would protest, I am a stylist. I have nothing at all in common with hairdressers or barbers.
Now imagine that the smear, “hairdresser” and “barber” started being applied by the activists to anyone who used cutting implements: the lawnmower man, for example, and the guy who fillets fish at the supermarket. Every professional who uses cutting implements to do their job is now looking over their shoulder wondering if they will be next. Scared of the social stigma and threatened boycotts and death threats that they will face if they get labelled with a word that used to have only one meaning.
Now let’s come back to reality. A reality where a headline in Stuff reads…
Was James Cook a white supremacist?
Not only are activists now smearing almost any person with conservative, Christian, right-wing, patriotic, nationalistic views or pride in Western civilisation as a white supremacist these days, they are also now trying to smear famous historical figures.
The conclusion of the Stuff opinion piece on this occasion is that Cook was not a white supremacist but the fact that anyone was even asking the question is as ridiculous as asking if the guy who mows my lawn is a barber.
quote.Dame Anne Salmond says it is “irresponsible” to twist the past and remember Captain James Cook as a villain.[…]end quote.
While we have had plenty of white supremacists in our shared history, then, the evidence suggests that Cook wasn’t one of them.
The hit on poor Captain Cook may have failed in this case but the seed has been sown by Dame Anne Salmond that somewhere in New Zealand’s history lurks the dreaded white supremacist. The narrative that somehow New Zealand is a racist country with a white supremacist history has begun. It won’t be long now before white supremacists are found under every rock in both our past and our present. Mark my words.
