COMMENTARY: By Martyn Bradbury, editor of The Daily Blog
If there was one good outcome of the very one sided Fire & Fury, it’s that they have highlighted that these feral Qanon anti-vax lunatics have been outed for trying to hide their shared mental illness when running for everything from local council to school boards.
- Minister seeks urgent advice as white supremacist stands for school board
- Mayoral hopeful spread false medical claims, lied about Emmy Award
- Nelson council candidates’ links to disinformation and conspiracy
- Health NZ rejects vaccine claims by former pharmacist standing for council
- Council candidate has one-third stake in conspiracy theorist’s new media company
Let’s be very clear what the issue here actually is and why the media are doing their job by telling us.
These feral anti-vax lunatics have every right to run in our democracy, just as they have every right to protest.
That they are running for local body elections isn’t the problem because every citizen has the right to democratic participation, just as they have the right to protest.
That they are standing isn’t the issue, the fact they are trying to hide their true intentions and their real beliefs IS the problem and it’s a big problem!
If you honestly believe that this government has committed crimes against humanity and needs to be arrested and hung at some weird bastardisation of the Nuremberg rallies, you should stand on that platform and tell us all your policy platform regarding that — and the rest of us can make a decision on how disconnected from reality you are.
Hiding your true intentions to insert yourself into the local structures of power so you can damage that system is not good faith democracy, it’s a dark and dangerous manipulation of our collective apathy.
Toxic polarisation
Outing these fanatics isn’t a rightwing or leftwing thing, this is toxic polarisation by people who have a completely different reality to the rest of us and see engagement as a means to disrupt and amputate our democracy for the most conspiracy driven of beliefs.
As a nation we have sacrificed for our democracy, as a people we collectively suffered under covid. Our forebears did not spill blood and we did not in solidarity accept covid sacrifice just so people who are one step above flat-earthers could take over our local systems of democracy.
They need to be outed and all good people of conscience should vote in any way that ensures they don’t win.
Fire and Fury by Paula Penfold. Video: The Stuff Circuit
Let me be clear.
I don’t care that these lunatics are running, I do care that they are being deceptive about their true intentions and intend to wreck our democracy from the inside for their demented conspiracies.
Voters need to know who they are and need to know their deceptiveness and voters can make up their own mind, because purposely misleading the public about your true intentions isn’t democracy — that’s a coup d’état.
Martyn Bradbury is the editor and publisher of The Daily Blog. This commentary was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished here with permission.
