When only one eye is open, and not looking at anything else

17/05/2019
Dieuwe de Boer

When Journalism Dies, Only Activism Remains

Disclaimer: I haven’t watched Newshub’s “Because It Matters” show, as no one bothered to recommend it to me. I have, however, read a few articles on it and watched a few short related interviews. My interest in this series is due to Paddy wanting to interview me for it (don’t laugh too hard), and you can read about that in an article I wrote last week. Newshub also contacted other conservatives about being interviewed for what they claimed was a little series on “right-wing views”.

The main exposé seems to be aimed at one notorious neo-Nazi Phil Arps. This is a bit short of the rampant white supremacy we were promised, but supposedly it’s just an appetiser. (Let’s hope they didn’t lead with their best, else this series will be a snooze.) Arps is quite a disturbed individual who left a pig’s head at a mosque several years ago and likes to talk about killing Jews and Muslims.

In an interview, Patrick Gower is almost reduced to tears when explaining how Arps only got an $800 fine for this and gloated about it on video. He complains there aren’t harsh penalties and special “hate crimes” for scum like Arps. I hate to break it to you Paddy, but the New Zealand legal system (it would be a crime to refer to it as “justice”) is a joke across the board. Criminals can get home detention for bloody murder. We’ve got rapists and paedophiles walking our streets. How often have you cried about that?

Patrick Gower isn’t too worried about the state of the ex-justice system, he’s just worried that his political enemies might not get the jail time he wants for them.

This is where we come to the main problem with Newshub’s series: it’s not about journalism, it’s just political activism designed to push for changes to our laws.

It appears they haven’t even done much original research either. A third-party group of soy-latte sipping social justice warriors called Paparoa has done all the groundwork. They have a special website with a secret list of all the white supremacists out there. Good on them, I’d say, but there is a catch. There always is.

This Marxist group has an agenda. They’re not just after white supremacists and neo-Nazis, they’re also looking to bump off some of their conservative opponents and any other figures who might be critical of Islam. Would you be surprised to read that I’m on their list of “the organised far right in New Zealand“? I’m flattered, but it does call into question the validity of their lists and entire programme. What else might they be lying about? They’ve made it a useless resource by mixing in their prejudices against myself and others with, what I assume to be, profiles of actual white supremacists. That’s the problem, once you know they’re willing to lie about me then without external knowledge you can’t know if anything else they’ve written is true.

Even my good friend Elliot Ikilei gets an honourable mention on their list, although in a slightly bigoted fashion—they think he’s too dumb to figure out all of his friends are apparently white nationalists. The bonus there is that they appear to be very worried about the potential of the New Conservative Party.

Let’s get back to the docu-drama series from Newshub. The same crowd that won’t be reporting accurately on the Tarrant trial is giving kids a tutorial on how to access white supremacist material online. They’ve gone from “we won’t show or promote white supremacist material” to “here’s how to access a global network of white supremacy with a few clicks” in the space of around one week. Did they run into some sudden cash flow problems? Oh, wait, what’s this?

There appear to be some market forces at work. After Tarrant, the media has realised that such stories sell very well indeed. It’s clear that the demand for white supremacy is outweighing the supply. Like all good manufacturers, when the demand outweighs the supply, they just make more. This used to be an overseas phenomenon most recently perfectly exemplified in the case of African-American actor Jussie Smollett claiming to be the victim of a hate crime. It was a hoax. It turned out that he had to hire two Nigerians to pretend to be white supremacists and assault him. It’s the only recorded case of an American ever scamming Nigerians.

Even when Newshub is doing something good, like showing the despicable Phil Arps delivering a pig’s head to a mosque, they follow it up with a bunch of groveling apologies about how hard it was to show. It’s a bit of a mess, and quite sad to see former journalist turn into melting snowflakes, or at the very least, presume their audience is filled with snowflakes and kids needing tutorials on how to join the chan network. Thrown into that mix is Patrick Gower demanding a rematch with some Canadians who got the best of him in an “interview”.

This brings us to the crux of the matter: Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux broke Patrick Gower. It’s been nearly a year since they graced our shores, but their ghosts still haunt the halls of Newshub HQ.

You can see where this is all going. Paddy has recast Southern and Molyneux as “white supremacists” and tied them into the Christchurch terrorist attacks. As I’ve documented elsewhere, he’s not the first to try that, but he has ramped the drama up a few notches. You know who’s next in their sights? Anyone who supports either of them or might agree with some of their views. (That’s you, dear reader.)

If Paddy has been on all the chatrooms and forums, then why doesn’t he know what bone fide white supremacists think about Lauren Southern? Even I get the occasional little picture posted of me with “Jew” written over it in red. (I’m not Jewish, but thanks for asking.) I’ve never visited the chan network, but based on the comments they leave on her YouTube channel, I’d assume it gets a lot worse down there in the dark corners of the net.

Paddy’s not genuinely after exposing white supremacy, it would be commendable if he were, but he’s just trying to make more of it in a desperate attempt to keep Newshub relevant. In the crazy Marxist world that seems to be collapsing around them, anyone who isn’t one of them is deemed “far right” and put into the same basket.

We shall see if journalism decides to make a comeback, but until then the partisan activists masquerading as journalists can keep wondering why we don’t want to talk to them. Why would we waste our time when the end product will be fake news regardless of what we say or don’t say?

They really are the enemy of the people and the enemy of the truth.