Time for Labour and Greens to take a stand against violent rhetoric from TPM

As the United States reels from an attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, the focus in on the need for those involved in politics to be more moderate in their discourse.

The same weekend, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said on Q+A:

We’ve got a Government that is genocidal, ecocide, we know that they are white supremacists

(If they’re a genocidal government) There’s no if, they are.

This is violent extremist language and it is time for media (huge credit to Jack Tame for pushing back on it) to scrutinise TPM to the same degree any other party saying such stuff would be. If the co-leader of a centre right political party accused the previous Government of waging genocide against whites, then it would be the lead story for days, with demands that such extremism be condemned.

And this is extremism, that promotes violence. If you keep telling 20% of the population that the Government wants to commit genocide and exterminate them, then of course that will lead to extremism and violence. It is beyond the realm of acceptable discourse from an MP, let alone a co-leader. It is far more extreme than anything Trump or the most left representative in the US says.

Ultimately Labour and the Greens need to step up, to stop this. This is not the type of language that you can just say “I wouldn’t express it like this” in response to. Labour and Greens should rule out Te Pati Maori playing any role in a future Government, unless they drop their violent extremist language.

If they don’t, then NZ will follow the US down its current trajectory. You will encourage more politicians on both the left and right to use violent extremist language as a way to build support, and it will end with someone wounded or dead.