CANCELLING KURT TAOGAGA

Kurt Taogaga has been condemned by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for views he no longer holds.

IT SEEMS TO ME that Kurt Taogaga has had a raw deal from a Labour Party he has loyally supported and served for several years. I think he could of found better things to do with his time than work for a politically bankrupt party like Labour but, hey, that's his prerogative.

Coming in at number 68 on the Labour Party candidate list and all ready to fight his election campaign, Taogaga was suddenly chopped off at the knees after some anti-Islamic sentiments he expressed in 2013 came to light. I don't know how they were unearthed but columnist Chris Trotter speculates it might of been the result of the opposition trawling through his tweets on the off-chance of finding something potentially embarrassing. Then again, it might of simply been the work of someone slaving over a hot laptop in their bedroom. Regardless, the subsequent embarrassing information was then forwarded to the media, in this case TV3's Newshub, who duly broadcast Taogaga's seven-year old transgression.

Taogaga's crime was to express his support for an anti-Islamic diatribe written by former NZ First MP Richard Prosser. But, as Chris Trotter also says, the context is important. But an under-resourced media intent on pursuing another 'Gotcha' moment , were never going to do 'due diligence' on the tweets and so Taogaga found himself being judged and sentenced in the space of one news item.

Prosser, in attacking the extremist Wahhabi Islam, chose to argue that men who 'looked Muslim' or who were from a Muslim country and aged 19 to 35 had to be banned from Western airlines. Prosser tubthumped that he would not tolerate his children's freedoms being threatened by 'a sorry pack of misogynist troglodytes from Wogistan.'

Taogaga, 29 years of age at the time, expressed his support for Prosser's article, tweeting that 'we need to see Islam for what it is.'Obviously  Taogaga's view of Islam at the time had been coloured by the acts of terrorism being conducted by extremist jihad groups.

Even though Taogaga was a member of the Labour Party at the time and, indeed, was a Labour Party candidate in 2017, it is only now that he is being called out for those views. In the intervening seven years, Taogaga says that he has made a 'positive effort' to educate himself about Islam and the views he expressed then are no longer his views today. Fair enough.

But, despite being a Jacinda Artdern loyalist, his beloved leader gave him the flick. After commenting on Newshub that although she had been unaware of the comments, she was 'happy to reflect on a column from, again, seven years ago, and take any steps that might be required as a result in terms of making sure our candidates are familiar with the values we hold as a party.'

That subsequent reflection resulted in Taogaga being cancelled from the Labour Party list - without the right of reply. 

We live in days when those who say something unpopular or breach the prevailing 'consensus' risk being boycotted or harassed in the social media. They are 'cancelled.' The irony is no one is ever going to win an argument this way. All cancel culture does is invite an intolerance that encourages the kind of invective and bullying that you can see on Twitter or Facebook almost everyday. Meanwhile the same old people are performing the same old outrages in the name of the capitalism. Do you think there's something wrong with this picture?

Taogaga has been the victim of a 'cancel culture' where anyone with unpopular views risks becoming a 'unperson'. In George Orwell's 1984 an unperson is someone who is 'vapourised' - completely erased from society. The modern definition is 'an individual who usually for political or ideological reasons is removed completely from recognition or consideration' (Merriam-Webster)

You might be a visiting 'alt right' speaker. You might be a feminist who has different views on transgender politics. You might even be noted philosopher Pete Singer who had a speaking engagement cancelled at Sky City purely on the basis of views he expressed on voluntary euthanasia in one article.His 1975 book Animal Liberation has been credited by many as triggering the modern animal rights movement. But even Singer's international reputation wasn't enough to prevent him being 'cancelled'.

We have reached a point where some think they can simply erase views that they don't like - and the people who hold them. In Kurt Taogaga's case he has found himself being deleted for views that he no longer holds. Just as disturbingly, no one from within the Labour Party has chosen to speak up for Taogaga. The silence has been deafening.