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Dieuwe de Boer
rightminds.nz
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Opinion
Jacinda Ardern and Andrew Little have announced a new “violent extremism research centre” called the National Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, which is a bit of a mouthful. Its shorter Maori name is He Whenua Taurikura, which seems to roughly translate to “A Prosperous/Peaceful Land”.
It will be co-led by the distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley, who needs no introduction, and by Professor Joanna Kidman.
Who is Professor Joanna Kidman? I briefly perused some of her professional work and she seems to care deeply about the ancient soil and blood of her paternal ancestors. She sounds like a Maori ethno-centrist who advocates for the interests of her people. (To be fair, I don’t think her Maori ancestors signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 or ratified the Kohimarama Conference in 1860.)
She set her Twitter account to private at around the time of the announcement that she’d be leading this new research centre. But the internet is forever. Chris Lynch has already described her appointment as “disturbing” and detailed cases of her thin-skinned behaviour in academia, but I decided to scrutinise her tweets and let her interactions tell the story.
In her own words, she is an indigenous scholar and native scholar-activist.
“Settler/coloniser, we are your worst nightmare. And coming soon to a university near you.”
She retweets accounts of left-wing activists with firearms convictions and cartoons of land back advocates murdering colonisers. (This might fall into what extremist researchers call “stochastic terrorism“.)
Her timeline shows 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.
She described the freedom convoy protests as an “incel paradise” because women did the washing. Mocking incels is a proven way to reduce violent extremism among the incel community (/sarc).
A common theme in her tweets is criticism of whiteness, specifically in academia and journalism. She endorsed the statement by a colleague that “dialogue as a human right reflects the whiteness of the mainstream approach to dialogue, which upholds as universal the values of the dominant white culture”. She criticised “white-centred responses” in academia. She criticised the patriarchy “of colonized academic men, including those who are not Pakeha”.
She’s so far removed from the middle class that she believes those in media promoting meals on a shoestring budget are “sanctimonious middle class gits”. She believes that “settler denial” in sociology is “BIPOC erasure”, that universities are “colonial institutions”, and that “whiteness has a dress code.”
I could go on, but you get the picture. She really likes calling white people settlers. I’m sure that’s a great way to de-radicalise extremists. Just keep calling them settlers until they see the error of their existence.
However, it may not be good for social cohesion to promote a raging anti-white bigot to a position that’s supposed to be responsible for serious work.
The Stuff reporting on the extremist research centre announcement initially mentioned that “the royal commission had considered such a centre but decided it might be ‘expensive and perhaps ineffective'”. They’ve since memory-holed that bit of useful insight. It appears the expense and ineffectiveness of the new centre is its highest goal. He Whenua Taurikura is about providing vanity jobs and scholarships to far-left extremists to enrich themselves while engaging in academic warfare against 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.
Is it called the extremist research centre because it’s for extremists?
