The Far Left’s Pyrrhic Victory

New Zealand’s Far Left thugs are cheering and slapping each other on the back after successfully denying Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux a stage in front of 600 people in Auckland on Friday night. Threats of violence, intimidation and harassment of venues made it effectively impossible for the pair of celebrity YouTube commentators to say what they had to say to the now disappointed audience. This is what we should get used to hearing more about: what I call the ‘thugs’ veto’.

Yes, you may think you have the right to free speech, the right to political expression, or the right to peaceful assembly, but keep dreaming. Violent leftists need merely need to threaten a protest, boycott or worse, and your rights will evaporate like a morning mist in the withering heat of self-righteous activists who deem everyone who disagrees with them “racist”, “fascist” and “nazi”. The perceived pure evil inherent in disagreeing with a leftist justifies whatever lawless and uncivilised response they may — and will — roll out.

Southern and Molyneux went live on New Zealand television on Friday afternoon to discuss their failed event. I was one of the promoters of their Australia and New Zealand tour, and a cancelled event is indeed a tragedy for a tour. But my greater mission isn’t to sell tickets, nor is Lauren and Stefan’s.  What all of us aim to prompt are national conversations about important public issues.

In this regard, the thugs failed. Yes, they stopped a private gathering and foiled the hopes of an audience that paid $80-plus per head to attend, but they couldn’t silence the message. Thanks to Lauren and Stefan’s television appearance they reached a bigger and much wider audience. They spread the message of sensible immigration priorities and the need for serious, civil debate on other important issues and they did it for free.

In New Zealand especially, the media have given Southern & Molyneux wall to wall, prime-time coverage since Auckland City Mayor Phil Goff appointed himself the sole arbiter of which political opinions should be allowed a platform in his city. Needless to say, the former red-ragging radical, a man who once threw red paint over Kiwi troops, made it clear the visiting speakers were not welcome in his city. That other New Zealanders wanted to hear them didn’t enter into his calculations.

Elect a leftoid to supervise parking fines, fill potholes and get dog dirt picked up and he’ll just naturally assume policing what others can see and hear is part of his mandate.

Are the Far Left activists really so stupid that they don’t realise how much free publicity their poisonous bile and harassment actually gives the ideas they’re trying to veto? It must be millions of dollars worth of free marketing they have given those whose opinions they strive so hard to silence. Speaking personally, I don’t care about a cancelled event — even one I am promoting — anywhere near as much as I care about the future of Western democracy. So I truly thank the Far Left here and now for doing so much to increase awareness of the dangers we are facing, the debates we’re having (and not having) and the articulate individuals, like Lauren and Stefan, who run around their ideological opponents in the contest of ideas.

What else can you do when you’re so thoroughly trounced except vilify and marginalise your opponents with irrelevant insults slurs? It’s not like they can actually argue the merits of their positions that immigration should be unlimited, or that Western culture faces no real threat from extreme “multiculturalism” such as is observable in England, Sweden, Germany, France and so many other locations.

The gift of the Far Left is that they always go too far. Their power-hungry preference for authoritarian control over what the majority say, think, do and pay is a bottomless pit, an insatiable vortex of irrational anger, hate and violence that is becoming increasingly obvious even to the stirring masses. I cannot begin to count the people who have contacted me to say they had never heard of Lauren and Stefan before the violent leftists started their tantrums. Now they want to pursue the discussion the Far Left doesn’t want anyone to have.

So keep it up, you Far Left fascists. The louder you scream, the more you attack and disrupt, the more corrupt governments and their politicised police forces are revealed as slaves of the mob, the more you boost the profile and ideas of those you would blindfold and put against a wall given half a chance.

In case you haven’t noticed, those tactics played a huge part in getting Donald Trump elected by an electorate sick and tired of being told how and what to think. Thanks for giving a steroidal boost to the same sentiment in our part of the world.