Labour MP guns for NBR’s Hooton

Soon after the January 9 shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, Labour MP Clare Curran drew a line between the attack - which left six people dead - and “the increasing frenzy of the right-wing politics of hate” stirred up by Sarah Palin.

“We have it here, admittedly in a less frenzied form, but here nevertheless,” Ms Curran wrote on her party’s Red Alert blog, citing beneficiary bashing as an example.

In his January 21 print edition column, NBR’s Matthew Hooton praised Red Alert as a relatively open forum and “far better than National’s equivalent, which quickly degenerated into a competition among backbenchers for who could write the most obsequious ode to John Key.”

Mr Hooton also noted Ms Curran’s business background (she founded her own PR company) and the usefulness (“if genuine”) of the Dunedin South MP’s OpenLabour initiative for more open policy development. She will be a major figure in the party for years to come, he wrote.

But in this instance, Ms Curran had “just followed the talking points of the far left in the US” over the Arizona shootings, and gone on to suggest that the same politics of hate were being practised by the right in New Zealand.

Left wing politics of hate
Mr Hooton said this claim was gross hypocrisy for someone who stood under the banner of Helen Clark – a leader who called Don Brash “cancerous”, taxi drivers “rapists” and West Coasters “feral”. Her deputy, Michael Cullen, labelled John Key a “scumbag” and a “rich prick”.

And, while “Mrs Palin is undoubtedly a moron,” Mr Hooton wrote, attacking her right to say moronic things revealed that Ms Curran and her fellow travellers continue to have “a fundamental problem with the basic concepts of personal responsibility and free speech.” He concluded:

[Ms Curran's] forgotten Noam Chomsky’s famous dictum: If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Stalin and Hitler were in favour of freedom of speech for views they liked. If you’re in favour of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favour of freedom of speech precisely for the views you despise.”

After two years in opposition, Labour and its friends appear to remain ignorant of basic democratic principles. For that reason they deserve to be crushed by Mr Key and his allies in November.

Hooton in the crosshairs
Ms Curran immediately hit RedAlert, where she penned a post saying that while she did not want to attack Mr Hooton back, it was “reprehensible, dishonest and downright wrong to use the defence of free speech to excuse dog whistle politics that incite hate, distrust, division and blame within society.”

It is not the first time someone affiliated with National has used a Hitler analogy against her, Ms Curran said.

She objects.

And, like Mrs Palin, realises the publicity value of throwing a few fighting words back at her opponent.