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Southern, Molyneux and Free Speech
36 Plays6 years ago
This week we defend free speech by defending the right to deplatform speakers! We also discuss the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court bench in the U.S., and even have some local Romanian news to share. It's a global conspiracy to keep you entertained.
Learn more about M's academic work on the Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories at:
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Transcript
Introductions and Banter
00:00:03
Speaker
the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Here in Auckland, New Zealand, it's Josh Edison, and there in Bucharest, Romania, it's Dr. M. R. Xtenteth. It is indeed.
00:00:20
Speaker
Now, Dr. Denteth, I've noticed more sort of sloughed off carapaces around the place than usual. Have you done your yearly molting? I have indeed engaged in what we call back home and in aginging. So I have inaged and I've been aged by exactly one unit. So I am now a unit aged. Excellent. Well, I'm like a whiskey, which is even more prestigious because I've gone from the $90 bottle
Patreon and Behind-the-Scenes Content
00:00:50
Speaker
to the $99 bottle. Ooh, lala. Now, I have a birthday present here for you. If I can just sort of force it through the webcam. I keep telling you, we can't do prop comedy unless you actually tell me ahead. Because as it's gone through the camera, it's turned into this purple notebook. And frankly, I've already been writing in this for quite some time. Is that going to turn out to be a pop vinyl? It's got a pop vinyl-like shape.
00:01:19
Speaker
No, now that you mention it, I realise I didn't shout out the extra money for the matter transporting webcam. So I think that's probably just going to have to stay here until you're back in the country, which is not long, I understand. You know, if we had patrons, we could afford that matter transporting camera. And this is a useful time to remind listeners that we do have patron benefits if you're willing to donate
00:01:46
Speaker
a dollar a month towards this podcast you will get behind the scenes material and by behind the scenes you'll get between five to ten minutes of my rambling between episodes explaining things that may or may not have happened in the episodes and
Complexities of Free Speech
00:02:02
Speaker
all sorts of hijinks and related things. So just for a dollar a month, you get more podcasters guide to the conspiracy and by more, you just get a lot of rambling by me. But it's quality rambling. And also it has fairly interesting background stuff about the work I'm doing on conspiracy theories academically. And interestingly, because I do not look after the Patreon campaign, I'm not actually signed up into it.
00:02:30
Speaker
so I don't get access to these bonus ones. So it's entirely possible that you can talk about me behind my back for as much as you want, really. And I would never, ever know. The gig is up. Also the jig. No, no, I haven't stopped jigging, but I have stopped gigging. Yep. Well, that makes sense. Right. So.
00:02:48
Speaker
We're going topical this week, topical to New Zealand, no less, no yet, no less. No, it was right the first time and I bollocks it up by hypercorrecting. But before we do the local news, we should do the newsy news, newsy news news. Yes, let's go global before we start eating locally. Breaking, breaking, conspiracy theories in the news.
00:03:15
Speaker
This week, we're defending free speech by advocating that some people don't deserve platforms.
Conspiracy Theories: Kavanaugh's Nomination
00:03:21
Speaker
Yes, as Voltaire once famously said, I like what you say, but I will not be moderately discomforted by you saying that at my dinner party. Voltaire, what a guy. Famously a cannibal, don't you know? I did know that. Voltaire ate and consumed the entirety of my family after the French Revolution. Really?
00:03:39
Speaker
Just my mother's side. Which reminds me, what about the conspiracy theories about the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh as Supreme Court Justice of the United States of America? Yes, like the French Revolution and the three centuries of French cannibalism that followed, the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court bench is awash with conspiracy theories.
00:03:58
Speaker
The following thesis comes from Seth Abramson, assistant professor of communication arts and sciences at the University of New Hampshire, and someone who was a bit of a conspiracy theorist on Twitter when it comes to the Trump presidency. A reminder here to non-lawyer listeners that when we say a bit of a conspiracy theorist, we aren't using conspiracy theorists in the pejorative sense. There's nothing prima facie wrong about conspiracy theorizing. It's all about the evidence.
00:04:26
Speaker
Man. You are one hooby-fruid. Yes, Abramson has been theorising about the nomination of Kavanaugh after it came out that retiring justice Anthony Kennedy had secured his nomination. Something which was then promptly denied by the White House.
00:04:44
Speaker
That in itself was a little suspicious, especially since Trump campaigned in part on the idea that he would appoint the Supreme Court people approved by the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society being a conservative and libertarian think tank which follows the doctrines of textualist or originalist interpretations of the US Constitution.
00:05:07
Speaker
That is, they think we have to interpret the Constitution not with respect to modern laws, but rather that of the framers of the Constitution and its amendments. Kavanaugh was not on the original Federalist list, but he was added later, which is just one of the many strange things about US politics, but that's a matter for another time.
Supreme Court Retirement Politics
00:05:28
Speaker
Abramson's focus has been on the connections between Kennedy and Trump,
00:05:33
Speaker
Kennedy's son and Trump, and Kennedy and Kavanaugh. The latter is easy. Kavanaugh was Kennedy's law clerk. The former, though, are interesting. Kennedy's son worked with Deutsche Bank, one of the few institutions which has granted loans to Trump in recent history, given he's considered a risky investment by US banks.
00:05:52
Speaker
Abramson suggests that this is a conflict of interest. Then there's the notion that Supreme Court justices time their retirement to fit their political views. Whilst Kennedy has been a bit of a swing justice, and that sometimes he has sided with liberals, he's still considered to be mostly on the conservative side of the bench, and thus will have timed his retirement to suit the election of a Republican president.
00:06:21
Speaker
Abramson is suggesting collusion between Kennedy and Trump both in the timing of the retirement and the connection between the Kennedy family. Anthony Kennedy's family, not the other Kennedy family. Although both are Irish Catholic. We should probably discuss anti-Catholic conspiracy theories in the US at some point, but not today. No. Anyway, Abramson is suggesting that Kennedy and his son hold influence over Trump.
00:06:45
Speaker
and thus Trump selected a candidate which serves Kennedy, and also Trump. Yes, much has been made over Kavanaugh's purported stance on prosecuting, or in this case not prosecuting, sitting presidents, in that he doesn't think that that's a good idea. Although, if you read the piece he wrote, he's a bit more nuanced than that.
00:07:06
Speaker
He does think prosecuting a sitting president is a bad idea, because of how it would screw over the executive branch of the government, which is why he thinks you should indict and then prosecute, i.e. remove the president from power before laying charges.
00:07:25
Speaker
So, yes, he thinks prosecuting a president is bad, but only because there's a constitutional mechanism in place to remove presidents so you can then prosecute them as former presidents. All in all, Abramson's conspiracy theory is interesting because there's a mixed message out there about the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. But it seems at rest upon making some assumptions about Kavanaugh, which might be based on misinformation.
00:07:50
Speaker
Which is not to say that Kavanaugh is a sterling example of a human being. He's reportedly, notably anti the environment, and has very conservative views on abortion. Now who else has conservative views? Old Vleddy Vlad, Vlad Putin.
Novichok Poisoning Case
00:08:07
Speaker
The Pootmeister. And he's in a spot of bother. Last week we reported on the breaking news of another Novichok case in Wiltshire near where the Skreepals were poisoned. Yes, it turns out the Metropolitan Police in the UK are convinced the newly poisoned UK couple touched an item contaminated by the Novichok used to poison the Skreepals. Oh noes! And the Novichok agent could contaminate the area for up to 50 years. Oh noes again!
00:08:35
Speaker
and one of the newly poisoned people has died. And now we get serious. Dawn Sturgis is now dead and her partner is in a critical condition. Russia's response to this has been officially to both deny involvement and claim they're being bullied by the West, particularly the UK, to take responsibility not just for a poison they are known to manufacture, but an attempted assassination on a person of interest to them.
00:09:04
Speaker
Media outlets sympathetic to the Kremlin are claiming the UK is variously jealous that Russia is hosting the World Cup, that they want to upstage Putin's coming meeting with Trump in Finland, or other theories which definitely aren't designed to deflect blame from Putin and his cronies. Talking about deflecting blame, the UK seemed to be in turmoil over the resignation of David Date,
00:09:27
Speaker
That's not a typo, is it? His name really is David Davis. So when I was writing the sigma, I was going, he can't actually be called David Davis. I must be. David Davis. Yeah, David Davis. Anyway, the resignation of David Davis and Boris Johnson from the government a few days ago, although it seems Prime Minister
UK Political Turmoil and Conspiracies
00:09:44
Speaker
Theresa May has managed to keep the government afloat anyway.
00:09:47
Speaker
But some are claiming that Davis and Johnson's resignations are less to do with Brexit, and more to do with the Electoral Commission's forthcoming prosecution of the Vote Leave campaign. Davis and Johnson were prominent Brexiteers, and the suspicion is that they have resigned in order to get away from being prosecuted.
Romanian Anti-Corruption Scandal
00:10:04
Speaker
Which doesn't really make sense when you think about it. They would be prosecuted regardless of their political position. Indeed, they might even be less likely to be stung by the law if they happen to be in the government.
00:10:13
Speaker
But sometimes big events need weird explanations and Brexit is admittedly such a comprehensively stupid idea that the only way to make sense of it, if any of it, is via a conspiracy theory or two. Finally, in local news, to me,
00:10:27
Speaker
The chief anti-corruption prosecutor of Romania, Laura Kudratu Kovisi, has been sacked from her office by the president, not because he wanted to, but because he was ordered to do so. What happened? Well, Kovisi has been quite successful in her prosecution of a lot of corruption cases in Romania,
00:10:48
Speaker
since taking office in 2013, which has earned her the pleasure of Brussels and the displeasure of the current Romanian government.
00:10:58
Speaker
Despite Romania being considered one of the more corrupt EU nations, the current government, the Social Democrats, have claimed Covisi has ruined Romania's image abroad and that she has exceeded her powers. And by exceeded her powers, they mean they don't like the fact she prosecuted their leader who received a preliminary prison sentence for instigating abuses of office.
00:11:24
Speaker
Smells fishy. It's a conspiracy by the government to cover up the fact they don't like being caught embezzling and engaging in fraud. Rather than change their ways, they'd rather just get on with being corrupt.
Free Speech Debates in New Zealand
00:11:38
Speaker
It's what they're good at, after all. Hmm, that sounds like Miss Covisi is having her speech stifled, Em. Is that a segue? You're a segue. Well, so where's my towel?
00:11:51
Speaker
Right, so now back to New Zealand, where all the action is, I assume. It better be, because I'm coming home soon, and there better be action going on when I'm back. Well, we'll see what we can drum up. For now, you'll just have to settle for the fact that...
00:12:05
Speaker
Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux, who were going to have a show here in New Zealand, have had their show cancelled. Now you're probably thinking, as was I, as was most people in New Zealand, who were Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux? Do you know who Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux are? So I actually knew Molyneux. Southern I wasn't aware of, although it turns out that I kind of was aware of her from
00:12:30
Speaker
having seen her name in news reports. So, Molyneux I knew, because Molyneux is a podcaster, and air quotes for people listening, a YouTube personality, and for an academic the best bit, a self-published author. So, write books,
00:12:48
Speaker
but can't get those books published by a publishing house, so uses the old Vanity Press route, which for academics is kind of a death knell. You kind of need the imprinture of a publishing house to show that your work has had some degree of review, and also some degree of editorial oversight.
00:13:06
Speaker
But yeah, so Molyneux is someone who has a YouTube channel where kind of, and I don't know why he says kind of, he definitely peddles pseudoscience about how non-white immigrants will never be able to assimilate into white society.
00:13:27
Speaker
because they're just genetically predisposed to having lower intelligence than white people. Because, you know, people of colour, they are inherently inferior. Sounds like a lovely fellow. Yeah, except that his wife actually might be worse, because Lauren Southern
00:13:48
Speaker
not only believes these things but back in 2017 she was supporting the white identitarian group defend Europe which is one of those groups which opposes immigration by non-white people into the traditionally white bastion of Europe and she was supporting them by basically trying to stop refugees actually landing
00:14:17
Speaker
in Italy by basically trying to push them away from being able to get onto land, on the notion it would be better they drown at sea than step foot in Europe. Yes, I believe she was on a boat that was trying to... I'm not sure if she was actually getting in the way of refugees, but she was definitely getting in the way of a Doctors Without Borders ship, which had they let it go on its way would have was off to help refugees.
00:14:46
Speaker
See, so they're very much anti-immigration. I mean, I say we've never heard of them. We are both, as we've made fairly clear numerous times on this podcast, of the more leftward persuasion politically. These two are darlings of not just the right, but the alt-right. So it's probably not surprising that we've had little to do with them. So they
00:15:09
Speaker
Have shows planned for Australia? I have not yet heard if those shows were going through. At first, there was talk that their visas were being declined in Australia, but now it turned out that's not true. So I'm not quite sure if the Australian show is on or not. The New Zealand show, which they sort of tacked on to the end of that tour, very much is off because the venue that they were going to, their show was going to be at, was the Bruce Mason Center in Takapuna on the north shore of Auckland here in New Zealand.
00:15:37
Speaker
That is a venue owned by the Auckland Council. And the Auckland Council, in particular Auckland Mayor, Mr Phil Goff, basically said, nope, you can't use council venues for this sort of, that was basically hate speech. It has been characterised and not entirely unfairly, I would say.
00:15:59
Speaker
And that really set a whole lot of stuff off. Phil Goff, it's probably worth pointing out, is equally left leaning, probably more so.
00:16:09
Speaker
Well, certainly more so than me, in that he was the leader of the Labour Party here in New Zealand. Your politics are more to the left of Labour around that. I would like to point out that he was in the 1984 Labour government that did the whole neoliberal reform. He is a big fan of neoliberalism. He was the only member of Labour that was in support of the TPPA to say that Phil Goff is left wing, is
00:16:39
Speaker
It's just not true. He was in the Labour Party. He's a right-wing member of the Labour Party. He's not left-wing. He's simply socially progressive with very, very conservative economic outlooks.
00:16:55
Speaker
At any rate, he's certainly to the left of Lauren Southern and Stephen Molyneux. Oh yes, but then again, most trees are to the left of Lauren Southern and Stephen Molyneux. Rocks with no political opinions are to the left of Lauren Southern and Stephen Molyneux. Now, individual politics aside, this is very much thrown the cat among the pigeons here in New Zealand because a hold of people said, hang on, you're
00:17:23
Speaker
denying people's free speech, are you not?
Legal Aspects of Free Speech
00:17:27
Speaker
This is the Auckland Council, which is, if not government, it's local government, definitely, using its powers to prevent people, prevent private citizens from coming here and saying things purely because we don't like the things that they are saying. And when you put it in those terms, it starts to sound a little bit fishy. But obviously, this is
00:17:52
Speaker
And it has very much turned out to be quite a complicated issue in terms of you have the usual disjunction of what is considered morally good compared with what is legal, what meets the letter of the law and so on and so on and so on.
00:18:10
Speaker
And debate has been going about this for the last, what, two weeks? When did it all kick off? It's been at least more than one week now. Actually, only about a week ago, but it just feels like it's been going on for longer because so many things have occurred. Now, let me say something about free speech. Free speech is a situation where we have the right to say whatever we like,
00:18:34
Speaker
without the government stepping in and censoring us. But the thing about free speech is that no one deserves a platform. Lauren Southern and Stephen Molyneux, if they came into the country, would be allowed to say whatever they like
00:18:53
Speaker
But they're not necessarily entailed to have access to council property to be able to say it. So, effectively, what Phil Goff and the Auckland City Council did was deplatform them to say that, look, you can say what you like, even though we disagree with your saying it, you just can't say it in a council venue.
00:19:17
Speaker
And it's not as if Auckland City is a communist commune where the local government owns everything. There are, and I did a search, a lot of private venues, which the promoters of The Southern and Molyneux Show would have been able to hire to allow Southern and Molyneux
00:19:39
Speaker
to give their talk regardless. They have not been banned, their speech has not been censored, they've simply been told you cannot make that speech in this particular building. And this is where things get slightly dicey, in that it may be the case that what Phil Goff did turns out to be illegal. So they had a booking at the Bruce Mason Center,
00:20:06
Speaker
that booking was going through, the council stepped in at the last minute and went no, we think this is going to be a health and safety concern, i.e. we're worried about violence so the booking is not going ahead.
00:20:21
Speaker
It might be the case that that was not grounds for cancelling the event. It also might be the case that it was grounds for cancelling the event. The Bruce Mason Centre is run by Auckland Events. Auckland Events does have a clause in their contract about harms and damages.
00:20:42
Speaker
And as we'll talk about later on in this podcast, there is going to be a legal case here to see whether the Auckland City Council acted legally by retracting the venue. But the important thing to note, this is not a free speech issue.
Conspiracy Theories and Free Speech
00:21:00
Speaker
This is a deplatforming issue. They could have made their presentation in a private venue, but then they wouldn't have got those tasty council subsidies
00:21:12
Speaker
to make it ultra cheap for them to give their show. And that's also going to be part of our discussion as to why they tried to do the performance they were going to do in Auckland in the first place. Yes, I think, yeah, as I understand it, it is definitely complicated by the fact that it is the Auckland Council who was behind it. Had it been a private venue and a private citizen,
00:21:37
Speaker
saying, yeah, you're not putting that show on in my venue, then I don't think there would be an issue at all. But yes, because it's local government doing it, things are a little more dicey. But as you say, we will find out. But yeah, before we get on to that, of course, this is not the podcaster's guide to free speech issues. This is the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy and conspiracies there be. First of all, this is the sort of thing that
00:22:07
Speaker
your alt-right types like to point to, to claim that there is a grand conspiracy among the left-wing controlled media and left-wing governments and the left in general to persecute them and to make their lives a misery. So they, obviously I'm not particularly familiar with their works and I have no care to be, but I'm assuming this is a claim that they will have made. And if it isn't, then people very much like them I know have made this claim that the left are out to get them
00:22:37
Speaker
And being banned from venues such as this is just more evidence that there is a giant conspiracy railed against them. Now, the obvious reply to that, I suppose, is, or it could just be that they're arseholes and people don't like arseholes. And I think that's particularly conspiratorial. But nevertheless,
00:22:56
Speaker
It's a conspiracy. And it's one that we do see a fair bit, don't we? We do. And there's a complicating factor here in that yes, it is true that they've been de-platformed in the past and they've been criticized for their speech. But it's also the case that Southern in particular sometimes engages in acts she knows are going to cause bans.
00:23:23
Speaker
in order to then give the impression that she's being banned all the time. So she was refused entry to the UK and she was refused entry to the UK due to acts of speech she caused in the past, the kind of thing that she knew the British authorities would hold against her. So by performing those acts she could then ensure she'd get no visa to enter the UK
00:23:52
Speaker
to then use that as proof positive that the socialists in the UK are against free speech and isn't Europe turning into a custard pot of terrible, terrible things. I don't know where that analogy came from, but that's what I'm sticking with. Yeah, I can think of very little else now.
00:24:13
Speaker
than a giant, custard pot of socialism and seething resentment. And this is the thing. On one level you might call this a self-fulfilling prophecy. On another level, you might say, no, they're going around trying to get themselves banned in order to present evidence of a conspiracy against them to format their support base. I mean, it's analogous to sort of standing in someone's face and insulting them personally
00:24:43
Speaker
at length until they finally get sick of it and punch you and then say, haha, see, I knew you were a violent person. Look, you've just proved how violent you are and how biased you are against me. Which is what the National Front does in the UK. So the National Front goes round filming incidences of people of colour committing violence towards good white British people.
00:25:10
Speaker
Except that what they do is they go into areas with a highly diverse population. They find a member of the community who isn't obviously white. They shout in their face for long periods of time. Wait for that person to then physically hit back at them and then they put that particular part of the clip on YouTube to show that these people are inherently violent.
00:25:37
Speaker
It almost becomes not exactly a false flag because you're not trying to blame the actions on someone other than you're not claiming there's a third party carrying on there, but it's performing an action designed and it's all about provoking the reaction, not achieving something with your specific actions. I don't think I said that very well, but I know we've talked about this in the past when it comes to a lot of the terror attacks that you see happening in the West.
00:26:06
Speaker
Terrorists know they're not going to bring down Western society by blowing up a building or running over people in a van. The reason they do those attacks is to stir up prejudice against their own people in inverted commas. So Muslim terrorists perform an act in the West that drums up anti-Muslim sentiment, which victimizes the Muslims who are living there, which makes them easier to radicalize and join the terrorist movement. They're basically a recruiting tool.
00:26:35
Speaker
They're not actually, first and foremost, an attack against their enemies. Yes, I mean, this is why for quite some time I've advocated that I don't think Al-Qaeda meant to bring down the Twin Towers. I think they were as surprised as everyone else was, that after they flowed... Yes, it wasn't been large enough.
00:26:54
Speaker
weren't there documents of his that suggested he was quite surprised? Yeah, because I think they wanted to perform an attack upon American soil in order to format their support base. And then when the Twin Towers fell, that was an added bonus. No one was predicting that. It was quite surprising. Yes. And the other one on a completely different angle, but something that shows you this tactic is around who was the British
00:27:24
Speaker
journalist who did the documentary about Scientologists and they managed to wind him up completely.
00:27:29
Speaker
and caught him losing his rag totally on camera. Oh, see, I'm only thinking of the Louis Thoreau, but yes, the other documentary... That was a few years before him. Yeah, it was. Yeah, because actually there's been three now. And yes, that was a case of he got very, very annoyed, and the Scientologists captured that bit on their own cameras, so that when his documentary came out, they went, oh, no, no, no, but look, this is your supposedly clam, clam, clam.
00:27:58
Speaker
Placid. See, Clam is a way of saying calm and placid at the same time. So I like it. This Clam journalist, although actually it sounds like I'm trying to be like a claim bad American. This Clam journalist, that's my terrible American accent. All my accents are terrible. This Clam journalist isn't actually as Clam as he appears to be. Clam. Yes, he was. Yeah.
00:28:24
Speaker
It's quite interesting. To his credit, when you watch the documentary, he also includes the footage of himself completely blowing a stack, but prefaces this by including all the other footage where he shows the Scientologists following him around and harassing him all the
The Free Speech Coalition's Motivations
00:28:40
Speaker
time. But anyway, back to the original issue, Stefan and Molyneux and their canceled show. As people have pointed out, as soon as their venue got canceled, they canned the show, and as you say,
00:28:54
Speaker
There were plenty of other private venues that could conceivably have agreed to host them, but they don't appear to have tried to salvage the show at all. Once it got canceled, they pulled the plug immediately, which suggests that they weren't that committed to the show here and that perhaps, yes, getting deplatformed in this fashion is quite good enough for them and a result that they're happy with, because again, they get to play the victim card.
00:29:20
Speaker
back back here that the reactions that have been going on back here have been um have been a sight to see so there's this um this free speech coalition have popped up overnight to um challenge the the the council and uh phil goth's ruling because free speech is under attack exactly now so everybody everyone at least in their public statements have been very clear to say now look i don't like southern and molinear i don't agree with what they're saying i think they're saying bad things but
00:29:50
Speaker
The test of free speech is how you treat the people who you disagree with the most. And free speech is that important that we must do something about it.
00:30:02
Speaker
It's just interesting that this is the case that they've chosen to test it against when it's certainly not the first issue of free speech that has popped up in New Zealand in recent times. And not the first issue of free speech this year. But we'll get on to that in just a second. Let's talk about this free speech coalition. Who's in this free speech coalition? Well, we have now, is this an exhaustive list or is this just the most interesting personalities?
00:30:27
Speaker
This is the exhaustive list on their website. This is their founding members. Now we have Dr. Michael Bassett, who is a former member of the left wing Labour Party. Although he is quite a right wing personality these days. Yes, yes. There is Dr. Don Brash. If you're in New Zealand, you'll remember Don Brash as the leader of the National Party quite some time ago now.
00:30:53
Speaker
his rise to leadership. And the leader of the Act Party. Well, yes, that was eventually that happened. But it was it was his leader of the National Party that he sort of raised eyebrows with his famous Orewa speech, Orewa being a place in New Zealand. And in the lead up to the oh, gosh, I can't I can't count back elections far enough. It was the last election that the Helen Clark Laver government won anyway. And the lead up to that election, he gave a speech which was very high on the anti-Māori dog whistling.
00:31:22
Speaker
and that set the tone somewhat for his campaign for that election. Then went to the even further right-wing act party, is a very right-wing individual overall. We have Ashleigh Church, who is a business leader about whom I know very little. Is there anything?
00:31:39
Speaker
Notable to be said there. So, Asi Church and the next member, Dr. David Cuman, who's a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, involved, I think, with the Israeli Business Institute, which is a pro-Israel think tank and quite condemning of
00:32:01
Speaker
any statements which are considered to be anti the state of Israel. We'll come back to that in a minute. We have Melissa Darby, an academic from the University of Canterbury. We have Stephen Franks, another ex-national MP, as I recall, now a lawyer. We have Lindsay Perigo, who is a broadcaster, former television journalist, radio journalist, these days raving lunatic.
00:32:27
Speaker
I think it's, if you read his Twitter anyway. For people who don't know who Lindsay Perrigo is, Lindsay Perrigo would consider himself to be the last true Ayn Randian objectivist in Aetora, New Zealand. And he runs a website. And this website is solo-passion.com. Solo-passion.
00:32:49
Speaker
Now, Solo here is meant to refer to sense of life, objectivist, passion.com. But solo-passion.com does sound like it's the ultimate website to go to when you want a bit of a wank. You go to solo-passion.com. And metaphorically, that's kind of true, but... It's true. Lindsey Perrigo has been wanking online with his words at Solo Passion for quite some time. So, yes, I mean, if I...
00:33:16
Speaker
His Twitter feed is a sight to behold, quite frankly. He is an interesting fellow. We also have... He's really concerned by libtards. Those libtards. And fry quacking. Is fry quacking? I don't know what a fry quacker is. You don't know what fry quacking is because it's a word he made up. He makes up a lot of words. He has for a long time. He also despises people who uses neologisms.
00:33:42
Speaker
Except for his own. But that's another matter entirely. You know, tell me about a fry quaker. He's here for a long time. Talk to me. When you hear him on the radio, he speaks in a very proper sort of tone that no natural human being ever actually speaks in. But he believes this is the correct way that one should enunciate and has referred to local to read newsreaders for quite a long time, actually saying, well, they don't talk, they just quack. They just quack. It's not proper. The renunciation is terrible. They just quacking.
00:34:13
Speaker
Now he's added fry quaking onto that to refer to vocal fry, which is basically, I don't know if you know what it is specifically, it's when your voice goes a little bit too low and it goes a bit crackly at the end there. It's something that women are more prone to because their voices tend not to be as low as men, but it's something that men do all the time. Philip Seymour Hoffman spoke entirely in vocal fry. But anyway,
00:34:38
Speaker
So a fry quaker is basically his way of saying a woman who doesn't talk properly. I've got mildly off track here. So I'll go back to the list. We have Rachel Pallane, a writer, Chris Trotter. We spoke too much about Lindsay Biergo, so I don't know if we should go into Chris Trotter too far. He's a very hard left commentator, but very
00:34:59
Speaker
One of those identity politics is ruining the left. It's all about class. Those damn Maoris should shut up with your agreements and get behind the workers. We should all be working together to oppose the right, which means that any problems that might be going on in society should be ignored until such time the right are defeated.
00:35:17
Speaker
So, Maury, I know that you're disappointed. Stop hearing those damn grievances. Yeah, so let's stop. We'll pat you on the head and we'll deal with those grievances once we've got rid of the bad people, which, as Maury have pointed out, kind of makes him one of the bad people they want to get rid of. And finally, Jordan Williams, a lawyer who, as well as being a member of the Free Speech Coalition, is the founder, I think, of the taxpayers union, who are basically another right wing
00:35:47
Speaker
think tank? I don't know. People who come out and complain. I don't think they do much thinking. I think they do more tanking. That was quite good, actually. Did you just come up with that now? I did, I did. They're basically, they're opposed, they're a bunch of taxpayers, as are we all, essentially, if you have a job, they're a bunch, or buy things, I suppose, GST. Yeah, that's the thing.
00:36:08
Speaker
So there are a bunch of taxpayers who are very concerned with how governments spend money, although specifically how left-wing governments spend money. When right-wing governments spend money, they don't seem to have too much of a problem with that. So all in all, quite a sort of rightish group. Lindsey Perigo, I know, is very, very, very quite vocally anti-Muslim. He does not like that Islam at all does Lindsey Perigo.
00:36:33
Speaker
Don brash has had racial issues in the past. I'm not too sure about the rest of them. So there's
00:36:39
Speaker
When you're talking about defending the speech of a bunch of white supremacists, or white nationalists, or do they like to call themselves, things are looking a little bit shaky. Especially since some of these members are kind of anti-free speech anyway. So Don Brash in junk did Nicky Hager's book, The Hollow Man, which basically argued that Don Brash as leader of the national party was basically a man in a suit for vested interests operating in the background.
00:37:09
Speaker
he tried to stop that book from being published. He's campaigned on trying to get rid of Treo Maori on TV and the radio. He doesn't want to hear that stuff, so he's trying to impose limits on that kind of speech. And that's even as much as he doesn't like it when people say Kiara.
00:37:29
Speaker
on a bit before talking or it's in supermarkets, yes. Because he just doesn't understand what that means, Joshua. He's missed the memo that say a nice way to say hello. To say hello. That every single person in the country knows. Lindsay Perigo wants to restrict the vote to basically men and men who basically agree with his political views. So he wants to restrict the political speech of people who aren't
00:37:58
Speaker
people like him and then we get the confusing case so Chris Trotter was on Radio New Zealand just the other day and he was going look I'm just in this coalition because I want to protect free speech rights and as far as I'm away far as I'm aware as far as I'm aware Molyneux and Southern haven't ever engaged in hate speech they've just engaged in things which are
00:38:26
Speaker
controversial to say and I don't think we should be banning controversial speech which goes to show he hasn't actually looked into the people whose speech rights he's defending because he's going well I don't think they've said anything particularly bad defending someone who's tried to stop doctors getting to immigrants off the coast of Italy
00:38:49
Speaker
And Don Brash said the same thing on another radio broadcast. I'm not aware of what Molyneux or Southern actually think, I'm just defending their right to say it. And in both cases they went, we do think there are limits to speech, but that applies to hate speech. And yet it appears they're now setting up a free speech coalition
00:39:11
Speaker
to defend the right of people who engage in hate speech to come into the country. So not only are there members of the Free Speech Coalition who are against free speech in certain situations and admit there are limits to free speech, they also haven't done any basic research into the people they're defending.
Past Free Speech Issues in New Zealand
00:39:36
Speaker
And here's a hot tip.
00:39:38
Speaker
If you end up defending Nazis, for example, it's a bad look. Well, yeah. The ACLU in America has defended Nazis and the like, haven't they?
00:39:52
Speaker
sometimes. They have but they kind of do it from a position of being informed and they also do it from the position that the US constitutionally has a very different attitude towards free speech than most of us in Westminster derive systems do. But yes, I mean even if you fall on the line that says
00:40:17
Speaker
that, look, you should be defending anyone. And if you are defending Nazis, well, that's OK, because that's how strong your commitments to free speech are. There is the issue that, as we said before, this is not the first free speech issue to pop up in New Zealand in recent times. So it's not that you're defending, you're sticking up for white supremacists, and that's a bad thing. You're sticking up for white supremacists when you kind of haven't stuck up for other people in the past, people who
00:40:48
Speaker
possibly of a darker complexion than these two who are being looked at at the moment? Yes, so the most obvious connection is the actual banning of a musical act odd future from a few years ago who were denied entry to the country
00:41:06
Speaker
because they had previously incited violence towards the police in Boston. So they were not even allowed to come and perform in the country. And many people at the time went, well, yes, we just don't want people like that. I mean, inciting violence towards the police.
00:41:24
Speaker
That's a terrible thing to do. We don't want them in the country. And whilst there were some murmurs of, we think that might be a free speech issue, by and large, people back home went, oh, no, no, no, that's fine. That's fine.
00:41:41
Speaker
And then earlier this year, Bob Jones, aka Sir Bob Jones, the racist, decided to film to film decided to film and decided to sue a filmmaker who had actually pointed out that a column he had written in the National Business Review was incredibly racist.
00:42:03
Speaker
Because she did to call him racist, despite the fact that if you write a racist column, you probably have engaged in a racist speech act. And if you've engaged in a racist speech act, that makes you racist. And people didn't want to form a free speech coalition in support of her.
00:42:25
Speaker
and raise $50,000 to mount a legal challenge against the fact that Bob Jones was suing her. And in both of these cases, we're dealing with groups or individuals who aren't white, and it seems that when they're not white and we restrict their speech or try to restrict their speech through the legal settings,
00:43:09
Speaker
these people don't get concerned.
00:43:10
Speaker
that also, unless, you know, even if you were to take the racial element out of it, the fact that this was done by former Labour leader Phil Goff, now mayor of Auckland, and that's always been a bit of a bone of contention as well. This is a thing about Auckland's political landscape that a while ago, the council system was restructured. The person behind the restructuring was Rodney Hyde, right wing politician, currently, or at the time, the leader of the very right wing act party.
00:43:40
Speaker
And people always thought at the time they set up the situation so that the right-wing national MP John Banks, who was going to be contesting the Meryl T, would become mere, and then they were setting it up so to benefit their right-wing Meryl candidate. Unfortunately, he did not become mere. The left-wing, Leon Brown, became mere, and now the ex-Labor MP Phil Goff has been mere.
00:44:06
Speaker
which I think pisses off a lot of people in right circles, that we damn Aucklanders keep electing the wrong sort of people to be mayor. And so some people have also said that this isn't about free speech at all, or it isn't about free speech nearly as much as it is about giving Phil Goff a black eye. So they've whipped up their $50,000, the mounting illegal challenge. Now, some people have said that they might have a case here, that it is entirely possible that the court case will go in their favor. We don't know. So it's all just a little bit fishy.
00:44:41
Speaker
Let's count up all the conspiracy theories that we've mentioned. So we have a conspiracy theory that says that Molyneux and Southern are being oppressed by left-wing interests around the world. We have a conspiracy theory that says actually they quite deliberately go out of their way to cause trouble so they get banned or deplatform to
00:44:58
Speaker
And I don't really know where to go from here, to be
Conspiracy Theories Recap
00:45:05
Speaker
form a dissent.
00:45:05
Speaker
honest. It's a wacky issue.
00:45:07
Speaker
We have our conspiracy theory that maybe the free speech coalition is actually a bit racist towards people of colour and that they're really only defending the rights of white liberals like themselves. We've got the conspiracy theory that it's a left-wing plot by a local government to control the political landscape
00:45:30
Speaker
in Auckland. We've got the conspiracy theory by the left that this is a right-wing plot to destabilise Phil Goff. There's a whole bunch of conspiracy theories here because this is quite a big issue back home.
00:45:45
Speaker
which gets us into the very tricky way in which we talk about free speech and the limits of free speech within our own particular nation state. Well, there you go. So it may have sounded like a couple of lefties having fun ragging on a bunch of right wing individuals. And it was quite frankly, it was fun. But
Outro and Episode Wrap-up
00:46:07
Speaker
there are conspiracy theories as far as the eye can see so it all makes sense that we'd be talking about this in our podcast now. Indeed. I think we're about out of time. And you appear to be out of bandwidth because you've suddenly become very pixelated and you now sound as if you're broadcasting from a submarine. That's interesting because you'd look and sound fine at my end although it is coming up saying internet connection problems so
00:46:30
Speaker
Things coming in my direction are fine, but I'm heading towards you. It's all super, I'm afraid. Yeah, well it's the old adage that download speeds in New Zealand are much better than upload speeds. Upload speeds are the limiting factor for our internet connections back home. It's probably true. So what I'm saying is, why not watch the video version of this episode this time, and that way everything will look and sound amazing.
00:46:54
Speaker
whereas I can only assume the audio podcast will just be filth, just drivel, just unlistenable trash, quite frankly, in market contrast from how it normally is. Right, well, in that case, to sum up, happy birthday, once again. Thank you. We'll doubtless shower you with present when you get home.
00:47:19
Speaker
uh sign up to the patreon thing for a bunch of patron benefits which the more i say it the more it sounds like hand jobs to me quite frankly but uh it assures me that it's not at the moment there's a very small number of patrons so they're very easy to service okay well here we go in that case be it spare not a thought for even forearm strength just sign up in great numbers and see if you can see
00:47:44
Speaker
serviced a lot of you so I think that's the end of an episode which means it's the end of an episode it is indeed it is the end of an episode it's the end of an era but only the era of this episode each episode is its own epoch exactly and its epoch has a beginning a middle and then a very very steep decline which we're experiencing right now so perhaps before things decline any further
00:48:11
Speaker
We should just say goodbye. I'll start by saying goodbye. You've been listening to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy.
00:48:22
Speaker
It is written, researched and performed by Josh Addison, a.k.a. Monkey Fluids, and MRXtenteth, a.k.a. Conspiracism on Twitter. This podcast is available where all good podcasts can be found, as well as iTunes, Podbean and Stitcher.
00:48:43
Speaker
It can also be watched on YouTube. Just search for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, or, if you happen to be technophobic, consult the auguries. You can support the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy via our Patreon page, as listed in the podcast description, or just by searching for us on Patreon.
00:49:06
Speaker
You can also support us via the Podbean patronage system, if that is more your style. You do you. If you want to get in contact with us, why not email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com, or find us on Facebook. And remember, it's just a step to the left.