PUBLIC BOOK BURNINGS, ANYONE?

Author and columnist Olivia Pierson finds her book being banned by an online retailer, merely for expressing views that some people didn't like...

I DON'T AGREE WITH Olivia Pierson's views on Nanaia Mahuta and her moko kauae  but neither do I want to see her prevented from expressing her views. As I've written on several occasions before - to the point of boredom - you either have freedom of speech or you don't. There isn't a half-way house where 'unacceptable' viewpoints can be filtered out by a self-appointed group of arbiters and the 'offenders' sent into exile, never to be heard from again. Well, you could have  such a Half Way House but you would find it occupied by cancel culture fetishists like Golriz Ghahraman  and Morgan Godfery.

Pierson, who is of a libertarian persuasion and thus vehemently opposed to my own socialist politics,  tweeted that 'facial tattoos are not exactly a polished, civilised presentation for a foreign diplomat in the 21st century. Fffs! Jacinda has gone full wokelette on stilts'.

To put it mildly, there's a certain amount of cultural unawareness in evidence here  but if Pierson wants to display her cultural unawareness in public, then she should be freely entitled to do so. But, apparently, there are some people who disagree with socialist icon Rosa Luxemburg who wrote over a century ago that 'freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently'.

Pierson may of half-expected a liberal lynch mob to heap opprobrium on her but she might not have expected that a campaign would also be launched to have her removed as a columnist for the conservative  website BFD. The editor, Juana Atkins, politely told Pierson's accusers  to 'f**k off'. She wrote this week:

'...starting late Monday night and then continuing on all Tuesday morning I was sent a number of e-mails by members of a Twitter lynch mob. They disagreed with an opinion expressed on Twitter by one of our Insight Politics columnists and expected me as The BFD editor to cancel them.

I will not be cancelling our columnist nor any of our other writers for holding an opinion that someone else disagrees with. If people disagree then they should use their free speech to present a coherent opposing argument, not just be lazy and smear a writer as ‘racist’ or some other nasty insult. Demanding that someone lose their job for expressing a simple opinion is in my book the lowest of the low and should be treated with the contempt it deserves.'

But the Twitter lynch mob got a better  reception from on line book retailer Mighty Ape. After being made aware of Pierson's comments on Twitter, it promptly  withdrew from sale her book Western Values Defended: A Primer.  Pierson's critics  tweeted that Mighty Ape had demonstrated 'awesome leadership'  although its only a few short steps from this example of 'awesome leadership' to public book burnings...