September 19, 2016 1:00pm by David Farrar

(Former) Fairfax columnist advocates violence

So (now former – see update below) Fairfax columnist Rachel Stewart is openly boasting that she wants to break my legs and meet me in a dark alley. She emphasizes she isn’t kidding.

My crime was to critique her views that we should reduce the dairy herd by 80% and that no one would be eating meat in 10 years time. I never attacked her personally in any way – I just criticized her policies and predictions.

She seems to object to some of the comments on Kiwiblog and thinks this justifies her violent outbursts. Never mind that I of course do not see or read the vast majority of the 1.8 million comments on Kiwiblog and there is a well utilised procedure for people to complain about comments they think should be removed. Every week and sometimes every day I deal with complaints about comments from people who bother to use the process.

The real irony is that Rachel Stewart got a lot of publicity when she had threats of violence against her (which I condemned at the time). However she thinks that it is fine for her to be the one making the threats. Is this irony or hypocrisy?

Stuff reported at the time:

Stewart said she accepted people would disagree with her or criticise her work, and she welcomed robust debate. However, responses of an overtly sexual or derogatory nature abusing individuals were offensive and unnecessary.

And all I did was critique her policy proposal and prediction. And her response was to abuse me and threaten violence against me.

Stewart said she was appalled that several prominent members of Federated Farmers and Dairy NZ “favourited” or retweeted crude comments. Dairy NZ did not respond to questions.

And 14 people have favourited her threats of violence against me. Again the hypocrisy is rather over whelming.

Does Fairfax endorse the actions of their columnist in making threats of violence? Will they take action? Will her threats against me be reported on as the threats against her?

Note that I have not enabled comments for this post in case this becomes a Police matter.

UPDATE: The Taranaki Daily News informs me that by coincidence (or possibly not) that Rachel Stewart’s last column for them was the 14th of September and she was no longer a columnist for them when she tweeted her threats of violence. This may explain why she thinks she can now make such threats without consequences.