From the Department of ‘‘OMG A BOGAN FROM ALTONA AND A N***A! ABORT!!!!’’:
There’s a lotta haters out there these days. As if the censorship of Australia’s leading climate change scientist Andrew Bolt and the hounding of the Honourable Member for Dobell weren’t bad enough, now the entrepreneurial Ben Polis has witnessed his Freedom of Speech come under savage attack by the politically-correct brigade. As Craig Thomson once memorably said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
Update : The Herald Sun can has moar words of wisdom from Ben. (Q. Isn’t this just what all rich wankers think?)
He may be free to say what he wants but that doesn’t mean other people want to be associated with him.
Oh I think Ben’s painfully aware of that fact. Still, I’m curious as to the precise contents of his Facebook blah; most corporate/state media sauces are quite coy about it. Presumably, this may have something to do with the following:
‘News Ltd website breached race law’, Ben Butler, The Age, March 29, 2012:
Polis appears to have been crushed by the Melbourne establishment and the process has looked like a Soviet era show trial. From what I’ve read most of what he wrote is true. Like the case above of the four Aboriginal kids killed in the accident. They may be unpleasant, but the facts of the case are largely correct. Why does it matter so much that one person calls some convicted criminals “scum”? Is our society so fragile that just saying a word will cause it to collapse? You think they’re victims, I think they’re crims, so what?
Why is a blog on an anarchist website siding with the establishment? Anarchists should fight at all times for true freedom of speech and opinion. We don’t fight for freedom of speech to talk about the weather. We fight for it so difficult and unpopular opinions and ideas can be expressed because we know that the process leads to better outcomes than suppression.
G’day bill,
I think you may be exaggerating a little.
To begin with, Ben has not been crushed. Secondly, he was part of the Melbourne establishment. Thirdly, yes, he has been subject to Trial by Media, but this is hardly equivalent to a Stalinist purge.
But let’s assume you’re being allegorical.
In reality, at the time he made these remarks Ben was CEO of Energy Watch, a large and established business. Energy Watch was in turn the Joint Major Sponsor of Melbourne Football Club, in a deal worth several million dollars. Perhaps it’s escaped your notice, but Melbourne Football Club is actually a pillar of the Melbourne Establishment, and has been since its own establishment in the late 1850s. Further, being a rich businessman like Ben is hardly qualifies you for inclusion as a marginalised or powerless individual.
As for what Ben apparently wrote on his Facebook Wall… presumably, at some stage, someone will publish a more complete collection of Ben’s wisdom. Now, you may agree with Ben that it’s appropriate to be ungrateful to David Jones when, after subscribing to their feed, instead of receiving images of Miranda Kerr you receive images of “ethnic women in wedding dresses”, that the suburb of Rosebud is such a shithole that not even Aborigines want to vacation among its White trash residents, that the 56 customers who joined EnergyWatch on Christmas Day are most likely Jews or Muslims who don’t have a life or a loving family, that the only discernible contribution young Asian women make to Australian society is the payment of insurance premiums, that escaping the Docklands means escaping wog marriages with fat brides and men in white shoes, that if your Chinese maid disturbs your sleep she should understand that it’s only to clean your room and not to bring you take-away food, that feeling sorry for the Labor-voting inbred peasants who reside in Frankston is fitting on the one occasion you travel through it on your way to Portsea, that Liam Jurrah had ringworm when he joined Melbourne but that these were mistaken for tattoos and that he had never visited a doctor…
…but then, that’s your problem.
In addition, you must agree with some or all of the following:
Joolya is a “peasant” who should be thanked for the carbon tax because it scared Australians about rising energy prices, thus creating more business for EnergyWatch;
Melbourne Victory — one of the teams EnergyWatch sponsored — is “fucking useless” and hopefully Harry Kewell’s career will turn into a “train wreck” because that would also be good for EnergyWatch;
promotional models are “sluts” who should be “slapped around”;
“fat people should have no rights just like a woman”;
setting up a business in Darwin is wrogn because it’s bad to “help Aboriginals” and;
“other comments too offensive to publish”.
Really?
Fair enough.
(I’m not gonna comment on the case of the four children who died in the car accident in 2008 as I think comment is superfluous.)
In summary, Ben posted stoopid on Facebook. His stoopid received widespread publicity, as a result of which he was subject to public criticism and ridicule. Subsequently, several sporting clubs sponsored by his company ended their contracts.
So: I think you’re confusing Ben’s right to stoopid — and the right of others to reject his stoopid — with an attack on Freedom of Speech (and Soviet show trials).
Finally, by commenting on The Strange Case of Ben Polis I’m not “siding with the establishment”, I’m offering an opinion, and in a humourous fashion.
None of this is rocket science.
I think that bill[sic] is just confused because of all the hallmarks that this case bears in common with the Moscow Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Facebook Page Trial, one of the most famous show trials of the mid ’30s. I can see how one would become confused.
Bill’s Uncle, Harpal Brar, disputes that.
Odd – again – that you write about such-and-such a ‘law’ (the congealed witterings of the parasite-political class).
So the guy’s a dick: he’s not advocating killing children (like the writers of “King’s Torah”), and he’s clearly trying to get the ‘banned in Boston’ effect on a fairly pedestrian career as a sucker at the tax-tit (anybody in the media knows that the mainswamp relies heavily on tax-funded “Brought to you by .gov” advertising: online ‘assets’ are an attempt to ameliorate that reliance).
You’re falling into the standard leftist (and definitely NOT anarchist) trope: that you can force people to abandon their hatreds by curtailing their speech. That’s just idiotic.
Call him a fucking retard, and you get kudos from me – but celebrate the fact that some bunch of tax-funded badged-and-armed dills might drag him in front of a tax-funded robed septagenarian for ‘judgment’ in a 16th century theatrical set-piece… well, there you become a willing cog in the machinery of tyranny. A ‘Good German’ – like the folks who think that because it was ‘legal’ to incarcerate people in Burma for mentioning Aung San Syu Kyii, anyone so incarcerated deserved it.
As the clever anarchist Noam Chomsky once observed: “if we don’t believe in freedom of speech for those whose ideas we abhor, we don’t really believe in it at all”. I’m paraphrasing from memory, but that’s what he would have said if he was me.
@Kratoklastes:
I don’t follow. What law are you referring to? The Racial Discrimination Act? Why is it odd to acknowledge the existence of a piece of legislation and its effects?
Re Polis. Are you seriously suggesting he’s deliberately made these comments as part of a publicity ploy? Is the chief source of income for EnergyWatch the Federal government or consumers? I thought it was the latter. If so, I don’t see how what you’re suggesting makes any sense. In fact, in either case it’s perplexing to me.
Re anarchism, hatred and leftist tropes. No, I don’t think so. That is, the source of people’s passions, their evolution, the ways in which they’re expressed and the ways in which these expressions may be controlled by others is hardly the subject of unanimous agreement; further, an understanding of human psychology transcends such simple dichotomies.
The rest of your comment is just silly.
I don’t trust you Kratoklastes. I don’t trust anybody who uses the faux-latin poseur term “premia” instead of the accepted plural “premiums”.
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Australia has “Freedom of Speech” when did this happen?
But then again do some think it is ok to attack others with hatred rants even those it is against the law?
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