A SUPPORTER OF JACINDA ARDERN DESCRIBED JOHN KEY AS 'A REPUGNANT HUMAN BEING'

In 2016 another Prime Minister was described as 'dreadful and deformed'...

IN FEBRUARY 2016 the right wing commentator Cameron 'Whaleoil' Slater called out RNZ for comments posted on John Campbell's Checkpoint page. The issue was subsequently taken up by National Party pollster David Farrar and who blogs at KiwiBlog: 

'The comments include multiple death threats and use of the c word to one commentator saying 'They should have gassed his mother' and others liking and laughing at that.'

John Key's mother was a Jewish refugee who escaped the Holocaust in Europe. 

Farrar continued: 'I’d have sympathy for Radio NZ if the comments were only up for a few minutes or even hours as you can’t pre-vet them. But some have been up for days. If Helen Clark was still Prime Minister and a taxpayer funded media site had comments like this up about her for several days, I’d imagine there would be mass sackings at the highest level.'

The vitriolic attacks on Key reached a point where conservative commentator Matthew Hooton was moved to say, somewhat tongue in cheek, that the left was suffering from 'Key Derangement Syndrome' (KDS).

Someone who clearly suffered with KDS was Martyn Bradbury, the editor of The Daily Blog.

Yesterday he wrote that Jacinda Ardern had effectively been driven out of office:

'The intense animosity and toxic attacks on Jacinda personally that the Right have whipped up has taken its toll on one of the best Leaders Labour has had...The disgusting character assassination she has suffered at the hands of feral partisans and Qanon fanatics and racist Kiwis has been shocking and galling.'

But trying to take the moral high ground when you have feet of clay will always be problematic.  

In 2016 Bradbury wrote that John Key was 'a repugnant human being' with a 'callous nature'. And just to make sure the reader got the message, Bradbury also described Key as 'dreadful and deformed'. 

Such was the level of animosity whipped up against John Key that TV3's Patrick Gower observed that 'There is no doubt the Prime Minister is experiencing a more visceral hatred than ever before this year."

But when John Key resigned as Prime Minister in December 2016 there was no wailing and gnashing of teeth and loud complaints that he had been driven out of office by the increasing volume of abuse directed his way. 

But, of course, it has been an entirely different matter as far as Jacinda Ardern is concerned. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark has commented that 'Jacinda has faced a level of hatred and vitriol which in my experience is unprecedented in our country.' 

This is debatable. But it's certainly true that some of the very people who attacked John Key in 2016 are the very same people complaining today that Jacinda Ardern has been grossly mistreated by her political opponents.