Hard News: Still crazy after all these years
516 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 … 21 Newer→ Last
-
The saddest story from the Sunday papers was the Phil Judd article in the SST.
The Bailey Junior Kuraiki incident is to be expected.
I digress - mentioning the Act Party conference - Dr Brash made the comment that many voters are "not only venal, but ignorant" as the reason NZ is so behind Australia.
I consider venality rather than being the voting public c urse on itself is more the domain of politicians and civil servants the characteristics of which are to be able to be bought, the readiness to sell influence and service and to sacrifice principles for sordid motives.
IMHO the reason we are so behind Australia is the lack of real leadership over the past two or more decades.
-
Name dropped, eh. That requires me to say something.
Muriel Newman's wacky beliefs (and the tolerance, on her site, of other, sometimes truly disturbing conspiracy theories) are not wildly known about by a lot of ACT supporters (indeed, many of them don't know about Loudon's extremist past); I suspect that if such things became truly public, then...
Well, I was going to say 'such supporters might take a second look at the party,' but, in my admittedly limited experience, most ACT supporters, when told, are initially shocked by the revelation and then ignore it.
What's disturbing for a conspiracy theory theorist like myself is Loudon's popularity amongst a section of the right-wing conspiracy theorists in the US. He's a minor celebrity in the specialised field of Communist Obama Studies. If the Tea Party ever get swept to power I expect they'll name a library after him.
-
I'm still not convinced that you can get from there to what is a pretty unremarkable (although IMHO stupid) pro-business/global warming-denialist platform and say that the former caused the latter.
I don't know, Andre, it seems to me that ACT's wacky beliefs and their public policy are pretty well intertwined - most visibly in the case of climate change policy.
In the case of the Labour party example you mention, I think it's a big and robust enough party that fringe beliefs, like the ones you refer to, will get the stomping they deserve. But ACT is such a tiny outfit that they don't have those kinds of checks and balances. -
in my admittedly limited experience, most ACT supporters, when told, are initially shocked by the revelation and then ignore it.
Is this rather like when Scientologists reach OT III, and suddenly discover they've signed up for space opera insanity but are too financially and personally committed to get out?
-
The Maori Party actually hold real political power, what they do matters because they control swing votes in the centre. The ACT and Green parties are outlying appendages to National and Labour.
Then what kind of power allowed Rodney to get his supercilious Supercity super silliness pushed through... seems real enough ;- )
-
ACT has always had two distinct wings - libertarian and conservative; the libertarian mob are in the ascendant at the moment, but the conservatives are still hanging around. Perhaps libertarians are more tolerant of wacky beliefs of others and less concerned about their implications.
I would not join the Greens because of the opposition to science and adherence to New Age mumbo jumbo among a substantial bloc of its membership. That kind of wackyness is equally harmful as the ACT kind.
-
Is this rather like when Scientologists reach OT III, and suddenly discover they've signed up for space opera insanity but are too financially and personally committed to get out?
Quite likely. Although I wouldn't want to push the analogy too far; Scientology is a big organisation and once you are meshed with it, you probably can't easily get out, even if you want to. ACT is a small organisation and members could leave if they wanted to, but given the typical "We're the only ones who understand what's really wrong with the world (here's a tip; it's taxes and government spending of those taxes)," most ACT party members probably ignore the wacky woo of Newman, et cetera, because, well, like-minded idio... people have to stick together.
-
Not me...
apologies for sprinkling aspersions, I must confess the early '80s are a bit of a blur ...
-
I would not join the Greens because of the opposition to science and adherence to New Age mumbo jumbo among a substantial bloc of its membership. That kind of wackyness is equally harmful as the ACT kind.
You might find some of the NZCPT craziness in the more extreme places on Indymedia, but I simply don't think there's anything like it at any official level of the Greens.
It's with noting that Jeanette Fitzsimons copped it when she appear to lend some credibility to the 9/11 Truthers, but Newman and others can churn out racist conspiracy theories and no one bothers.
-
I consider venality rather than being the voting public c urse on itself is more the domain of politicians and civil servants the characteristics of which are to be able to be bought, the readiness to sell influence and service and to sacrifice principles for sordid motives.
IMHO the reason we are so behind Australia is the lack of real leadership over the past two or more decades.
What?
You think our politicians are more corrupt than the Aussies? Come on. Fiddling a few bottles of wine doesn't compare to having your opponents murdered. Even getting visas for Thai overstayers doesn't really come near that level.
Or are you referring to the heinous, heinous crime of letting one's driver exceed the speed limit?
-
Muriel will never get into parliament. She's just there to keep the old codgers in Northland happy.
Otherwise, she'd be Act's Hone Hariwira....
As an ACT supporter I'm happy to say that she scares the living shit out of me. Trust me, you never want to be in a meeting where she is speaking if you are on a come down (been there, done that, never, ever want to repeat that experience) :-P
-
I would not join the Greens because of the opposition to science and adherence to New Age mumbo jumbo among a substantial bloc of its membership.
Like I always say: http://www.greens.org.nz/policy
Please link said craziness, mmk?
They have a few things I disagree with, like allowing *any* public money to be spent on "complementary" health care. But that pales into insignificance behind the things that every other mainstream party supports.
-
Muriel will never get into parliament.
She was an MP for nine years Mikee.
-
Looks like I'll need to say it again.
Muriel Newman. ACT Deputy Leader. MP. Number three on list.
Not some fringe internet nutjob. A Ministerial nutjob we very nearly got.
-
been a champion of various explicitly racist myths, including the belief that Maori were not New Zealand's original inhabitants.
I'm not certain if flawed historical conjecture equates to racism. Also I'm not convinced you do the term 'crazy' justice, equating it with ACT like that.
Regarding this three strikes slogarama, what is the second strike other than a gimme from the system?
-
Greens craziness:
talk to a Reiki (!) convention on CAM
blanket GMO ban, banning food irradiation (what about microwaves?)
Yes I did vote for them, but if you are going to argue for the global warming scientific consensus, what about the scientific consensus against CAM and for public health measures like fluoridation.
-
Then what kind of power allowed Rodney to get his supercilious Supercity super silliness pushed through...
2007 Royal Commission recommendations gave impetus to a project likely to incur high risk of political blowback (its gonna stuff up somewheres), so the Nats used an expendable figurehead?
-
Looks like I'll need to say it again.
Muriel Newman. ACT Deputy Leader. MP. Number three on list.
Not some fringe internet nutjob. A Ministerial nutjob we very nearly got.
Sure, and how much of a chance would there be that (for example) Newman was able to ban all "racist policies" if she ever was elected again?
Zero. It'll be like Winston Peters' wanting to virtually eliminate Asian immigration. Sure, it's what he said regularly, even on the campaign trail, but everyone involved (expect for a few, deluded voters) knew the policies he would deliver would never actually measure up to the rhetoric. And he was the Deputy Prime Minister.
Seriously, I'm not making light of the fact that these people are crazy, or suggesting we don't call people out on their beliefs, I'm pointing out that the craziness is inevitably blunted by the realities of the parliamentary system regardless of where they end up in it. This is red meat to some ACT voters perhaps, but virtually noone thinks it'll actually be enacted, so we'd all do better to stop being distracted by the fireworks and instead focus on the genuine dangers of the "reasonable" wing of the ACT party.
After all, it's not like Roger Douglas is trying to make miscarriage a crime.
-
I'm not certain if flawed historical conjecture equates to racism.
It's true that many people, not just racists, are drawn to pseudo-history.
However, in NZ (and indeed in the US -- see speculation about "Kennewick man") there is a kind of racist, generally your classic Blut und Boden Nazi sympathiser, who loves theories that show that the indigenous people were not in fact first but preceded by another group, which in their minds destroys any claims based on indigenousness or being their first.
They like the idea that Maori are the recent descendants of Chinese sailors and Melanesian prostitutes because that suits their theories about who the tangata whenua really are, and they love Doutre's nonsense about red-haired Celts being the aboriginal inhabitants of NZ even more.
You don't have to be a racist to find crackpot history appealing -- but it helps.
Incidentally, it is startling how extreme political theories and pseudo-science seem to attract the same people (eg hollow earth theory and the Nazis).
-
Members of both the NZCPR and the Tino Rangatiratanga* crowd have bees in their bonnet over vaccination, which I think is interesting. I guess one lot hate the state's involvement and the others hate the Crown/big companies' involvement.
*Sometimes this list is publicly accessible, sometimes they shut it down to members only. Apologies if the link doesn't work - it's to essentially the same article.
-
Jeanette Fitzsimons copped it when she appear to lend some credibility to the 9/11 Truthers, but Newman and others can churn out racist conspiracy theories and no one bothers
Probably because Fitzsimons is generally very credible and considered. Newman is so reliably deranged that only fellow travellers would take her seriously.
-
how much of a chance would there be that (for example) Newman was able to ban all "racist policies" if she ever was elected again?
...
the craziness is inevitably blunted by the realities of the parliamentary system
Generally true. However, fringe policies can succeed if powerful supporters in coalition parties have aligned agendas - see Act and National currently re local government and infrastructure, for instance.
-
...so the Nats used an expendable figurehead?
good point - after all he is known as the "fall guy" in dance circles...
-
Members of both the NZCPR and the Tino Rangatiratanga* crowd have bees in their bonnet over vaccination,
I think it's more to do with an anti-science world view. The Greens are pretty suspicious about vaccination too.
-
Thanks for the illuminating but rather depressing Scientology link Sam. When I read....
Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions of his citizens together under the pretense of income tax inspections, then paralyzed them and froze them in a mixture of alcohol and glycol to capture their souls. The kidnapped populace was loaded into spacecraft for transport to the site of extermination
...I thought it sounded pretty much like the Teabagging Birthers in the US - except they know it's President Obama and not Xenu who is about to bring about the New World Order.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.