Hard News: Friday Music: Grey Fucking Area
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Thanks heaps, Russell, but may I just correct you: TEN cameras...
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Mandy of Nazareth says everything I'm thinking as far as Kim Dotcom is concerned:
As for this, Russell --
Is it rude and unsophisticated to chant “Fuck John Key!”? Of course it is. It also quite within the bounds of the kind of protest marches long attended by the kind of students at the Party Party. That a crowd would spontaneously begin such a chant is not as unlikely as it might seem – because it is not new. Tom Scott of @Peace and Home Brew has been leading hip hop crowds in the same chant for about three years.
Fair enough, but that doesn't mean the Internet Mana party gets to wash their hands of the decision to post the damn thing. Right? Argumentum ad Hiterium is utterly ridiculous, as usual, but there are legitimate eyebrows to be raised at the judgement being shown by a supposedly serious political party.
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OMG. What will the 'political marketing experts' make of footage of a mostly dressed in black crowd chanting "Shihad"?
Lock up your pearls.
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Alex Coleman, in reply to
Is it shocking that a political party that has expressly stated that it is seeking the votes of the youth who are disengaged with what politics has offerred them, does something that upsets the sensibilities of the precious swing voting centre?
Is a party only serious if it speaks to the centre?
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If we are going to talk all Hitlerian, the real reason the right are having fainting fits over this video is because it challenges a central tenet of the right's narrative. The painstakingly constructed big lie by a middle aged and middle class corporate media to feed to a middle aged and middle class audience of the cult of John Key as universally adored and loved in a tranquilized, hard-news free New Zealand is completely undercut by a roomful of young people.
Intrusions of reality into our media's la la land are always treated as phenomena inexplicable except in terms of distant externality.
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Spontaneity seems to confuse and frighten 'political marketers' and comms experts. In their world everything has to be scripted and controlled.
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Stephen Judd, in reply to
The painstakingly constructed big lie by a middle aged and middle class corporate media to feed to a middle aged and middle class audience of the cult of John Key as universally adored and loved in a tranquilized, hard-news free New Zealand is completely undercut by a roomful of young people.
Yep, that's what I've been thinking too. Incontrovertible evidence he is not popular with everyone. Hence the only way to respond is to label the offenders as deviants.
I also suspect that this brouhaha is quite helpful to IMP, in that no one they are likely courting is going to be offended or upset, and some people will go Wow, a party that comes out and says Fuck John Key is for me.
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90 minutes later the kiwblog clobbering machine will start up with "Dotcom declares a Shihad on wonderful leader John Key ..."
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I also suspect that this brouhaha is quite helpful to IMP, in that no one they are likely courting is going to be offended or upset, and some people will go Wow, a party that comes out and says Fuck John Key is for me.
Well, that's an interesting assumption. And I guess you're right -- I suspect the Tea Party don't actually give a damn about the people who find their warp ten rhetoric toxic and dishonest and, to some extent, it works at the only polls that really count. Ditto for Tony Abbott -- whose agenda beyond "ditch the bitch" is a trumped up budget crisis not even right-wing economists believe.
The question is what happens next. Because I'm very far from convinced the Internet Mana party really has anything going on beyond "fuck John Key," and it's perfectly legitimate to expect more.
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I suspect this discussion has been had before somewhere, but if so, I haven’t read it. There is a fair question about Godwinning/Godlosing: at what point does a comparison to Hitler/Nazism or even fascism become legitimate? When Harry Windsor dressed up in SS gear, a forum discussing that couldn’t really make sense without mentioning Nazis. So there must be some threshhold.
I am of course not saying that this is it, nor suggesting that the Nazi connotations inferred from the IMP clip are legitimate.
There’s an old video I have promoting United World Colleges (the link I share with David Cunliffe), which ends with a College choir singing the end of Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, and an African student thrusting his fist in the air, shouting “Amandla”: the choir responds with similar raised fists and “Awethu”. It was a rallying cry against apartheid back in the day, but I would have to explain that to our applicants, who have for a long while all been born after the end of apartheid, because otherwise the end of the video looks like it’s saying “come to one of our colleges and we will convert you to fascism”. Context and history (and meaning) make all the difference.
So, I can entirely understand how people see the IMP clip and get to fascism. They won’t have been to Home Brew or @Peace or even Hip Hop concerts, and therefore have no idea of the context or history of the chant or the hand in the air, and up till now noone’s done a very good job of telling them.
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This story has been another successful distraction engineered by the usual cabal of Ede, Hooten, Farrar and associates. How many times do these clowns need to wail ‘look over there’ before credulous churnalists stop doing their bidding? Where’s the pride?
Danyl reminds us what we missed in the meantime:
Labour announced their health policy today, and the Greens launched a huge transport policy …
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FVEY – the title is a contraction of “Five Eyes”
I might be the only one who didn't know this, but I thought FVEY was a bizarre title for an album until a rogue Wikipedia link led me to discover that Five Eyes (and its military abbreviation FVEY) is the name of an intelligence alliance of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and NZ. So fitting right in with Shihad's targets of rage.
I got a clatter of responses back on Twitter to the effect that they weren’t really independent, because they had, well, views.
Independent is not the same as neutral!
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"and, apparently, never having been to a hip hop show before"
this! If any young people followed the boring old news media... they'd have their suspicions confirmed -that "old" people really are quite weird
Had the pleasure of hearing the Shihad album last night - wow its amazing and simply brutal... I've never been a fan of their output but this ones going into the collection for sure.
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Fuck John Key? No, thanks!
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The nazi stuff fits with the earlier smear about Dotcom owning a book. Expect more between now and the election.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
The question is what happens next. Because I’m very far from convinced the Internet Mana party really has anything going on beyond “fuck John Key,” and it’s perfectly legitimate to expect more.
Their policy page is actually quite good -- not least because it's a small miracle of good political copywriting. Other parties could take a lesson there.
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OK so two things here. One, is it good for the Internet Party? Almost certainly. Nothing makes you the man more than having a bunch of establishment wrinklies declaring war on the young people at your gig.
Second is Danyl at the dimpost’s ‘scare the middle-class horses’/distraction from real issues hypothesis. That is worth a bit more thinking about.
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Hebe, in reply to
I also suspect that this brouhaha is quite helpful to IMP, in that no one they are likely courting is going to be offended or upset, and some people will go Wow, a party that comes out and says Fuck John Key is for me.
What I thoughted.
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Sacha, in reply to
Because I’m very far from convinced the Internet Mana party really has anything going on beyond “fuck John Key,” and it’s perfectly legitimate to expect more
oh, puhleese. Internet Party policy forum. Mana policy statements. Yep, nothing to see there..
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James Hart, in reply to
credulous churnalists
I love this turn of phrase, bravo!
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Now Labour are using it politically on Twitter
"chrishipkins: Finally had a chance to see the Dotcom video everyone's talking about. It's alarming. No place for that kind of thuggery in NZ politics"
"chrishipkins: Getting a bunch of people drunk and getting them to chant abuse isn't political leadership. It's thuggery and megalomania intertwined."
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Sacha, in reply to
getting them to chant abuse
cos they'd never do it on their own.
someone think of their pure innocent souls! -
Russell Brown, in reply to
Now Labour are using it politically on Twitter
Head-desk.
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bob daktari, in reply to
Does the Labour party have a comms team? A strategic team? Anyone with a clue...
they really don't want to win do they? -
Bart Janssen, in reply to
warp ten rhetoric
Unlike for example the right honourable Mr Joyce in full "I see nothing mode"
Do I like politics consisting of a bunch of kids (god I'm old) shouting their dislike of the PM, and lets just for a second do them the courtesy of considering their dislike to be genuine, in rude terms? No I think we could do better with political debate.
But National has hung it's hat on being John Key's party and make a very very big deal of him being such a nice man him all having "drug 'imself up from 'umble beginnings". Not exactly in the deep end of the intellectual political debate pool either really.
You're right we should expect more from our representatives. Perhaps National could start by bringing some serious thinking to the hustings. So far though the prize for that race has to go to The Greens whose commitment to evidence-based policy is refreshing, if not complete.
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