Hager’s hypocrisy

I thought an article in Critic provides some useful illumination into Nicky Hager’s hypocrisy.

Hager attacks me for having criticised the OUSA President for her support of the Tom Scott song expressing a desire to kill John Key and fuck his daughter.

So it is important to note that Hager has no problem with someone urging the assassination of the Prime Minister, and a desire to use his daughter as an act of political revenge. This behaviour doesn’t warrant any criticism by Hager.

Now imagine Helen Clark was Prime Minister, and someone on the right promoted a song which said Helen Clark should be assassinated, and that they want to fuck her niece to get revenge on Clark. Hager would be decrying this as nasty politics, and probably calling for the Police to investigate.

The OUSA President’s salary is funded by all students at Otago. I’d say a third of them at least support National. Her condoning of the Tom Scott song is deeply offensive to many people. The notion that she should not be criticised for what she said is basically the left saying that people on the right should not be allowed to criticise.

Hager has the check to say I have selective morality:

Hager considers Farrar to be operating with “selective morality,” and that the criticism is a “subcategory of attack politics … they know their commenters are mad dogs. They empower their commenters to attack people; they have enabled this.”

Hager argues the commenters, who have made thousands of contributions to the Kiwiblog website, are to be expected; and Farrar’s manipulation of Sycamore-Smith’s column does nothing but add to the “feeding frenzy” his more inflammatory posts incite.

Has Hager ever looked at the comment sections of The Standard or the Daily Blog? His selective morality means he has no problems with the hatred and bile that is often found there – because of course it is generated at people like me.

Hager notes, “they do it in quite a systematic way … basically anyone who speaks up on the side of politics that are a hassle for the National Party gets hounded. It’s a deliberate tactic, and it means over time that all kinds of people feel shocked and chilled and potentially pushed out of politics.”

Again the selective morality is massive. Let’s take criticism of journalists. Hager could go ask almost any press gallery journalist about what sites has the most abuse about them. Anonymous authors (some who now work for David Cunliffe!) at left blogs (note authors, not commenters) regularly savage press gallery journalists who write things that displease them. I have certainly critiqued stories that I don’t agree with, but I doubt anyone can find me personally attacking journalists. On the contrary, left blogs run vile stuff against many journalists and commentators. John Armstrong is savaged almost weekly by Martyn Bradbury, but hey Martin is mates with Nicky Hager so that is fine.

Laura McQuillan makes this point today:

Anonymous Twitter accounts are popping up by the day, apparently for no purpose other than to attack political journalists’ integrity and accuse them of bias.

These trolls may have mastered social media, but they get a Not Achieved for their skills in the English language. The F-word does not for an intelligent political debate make. Journos are used to accusations of being “repeaters” and “churnalists” – those words usually levelled by Slater himself. But now, it’s web-based troglodytes accusing every journalist, no matter what the story, of spinning the National Party line. I guess that’s the result of getting your news from The Daily Blog?

It’s the same intimidation tactic Slater himself has used in the past, in cahoots with Carrick Graham et al. The rabid anonymous lefties should take a moment to wipe the foam from their mouths and reflect on how they’re just like the blogger they hate so much – the only difference being people actually want to read what Whale Oil has to say.

And Cameron blogs under his own name.

This has not been the first time a student politician at Otago has been the subject of the attack blogging strategy. Critic editor Zane Pocock published an editorial in Issue 21 relating to Dirty Politics -style revelations about previous Otago student, Beau Murrah. Involved in a 2012 scandal, Pocock points to a “deep sense of political angst” about Murrah’s role as a student politician. So much so, that the leaked documents Pocock was referring to revealed Cameron Slater’s agreement that “the little cunt is a Winstonite,” and he was “going to hang him out to dry.” Importantly, Slater revealed knowledge that “Farrar is clocking [Murrah] tomorrow.”

Here again we see a partial truth. If you read this, you would think that Murrah was attacked because he was a Winstonite. He was attacked because he went on Cameron Slater’s Facebook page and asked him if he had considered pulling a Charlotte Dawson yet? So the guy who advocated a political opponent go kill himself is the good guy, and because I decided to criticise him for his comments, I am part of Nasty Politics because I was appalled Murrah had advocated Cameron go kill himself and told Cameron I would be attacking Murrah for this.

What Hager actually believes in is that people on the right should not have a voice, and that people on the left can advocate suicide, promote songs that advocate murder and rape,and there should be no criticism of them for that – because that is bullying.

Incidentally this is not something I have revealed before, but while I did criticise Beau at the time for his advocating Cameron kill himself, I was approached by either Beau or someone on Beau’s behalf a few weeks later, and asked if I would remove my post so searches for his name would not remain high in Google Search. I did so, because I thought he had learnt from his mistake. Again in Hager world this makes me the bad guy.

Hager considers both of these responses to be problematic, because they ignore a couple of glaring issues: first, Hager does not operate under a left-wing agenda

I can’t believe she wrote that without giggling!

Hager, like many on the left, seems to resent the fact that the right now have voices, and some of us have strong voices. He demands in his book that I shouldn’t be used by media as a commentator on politics. The left have tried to organise boycotts of advertisers on right blogs, and have sent letter campaigns to media demanding that almost every voice on the right be dropped from their media spots.

There was a time a couple of weeks ago when I thought about giving this all up. But that is what Hager and many on the left want. They want a world where the right have no strong voices. Where there is no criticism of people on the left who say stupid things. Well I’m now more determined than ever to maintain and build these voices.