Collins puts Nats on slippery slope
It is hard to know which of these facts is more alarming – that Judith Collins tweeted a link to a fake news site to her 14,000 followers believing the story was true, or that she did so deliberately while knowing that it was made up. National leader Simon Bridges is clearly not too hung up about it – in an interview with Stuff yesterday he reiterated that it was hardly a hanging offence.
Bridges also said that he set high standards for his caucus and when asked if Collins had fallen short of them, his answer was ‘‘no’’.
To recap: Collins tweeted a link to a story claiming that the French Government had voted against having an age of consent in France, making it ‘‘the latest nation to give into pressure from an international network of liberal activists determined to normalise paedophilia and decriminalise sex with children across the world’’.
Collins also tagged in Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, which was clearly a clumsy attempt to link the Ardern Government to the so-called worldwide conspiracy
In fact, France has just passed a law that made it far easier to charge adults who had sex with children under 15 with rape. It has strengthened its consent laws, not weakened them.
However, there has been a furore among feminist activists that the law omitted the inclusion of a statutory age of consent, despite initial promises that it would be included. Bridges says it was that concern Collins was plugging into when she tweeted the link to her followers and to Ardern. He won’t condemn Collins because she feels strongly about the issue and he sympathises with that.
On one level, it is easy to understand Bridges’ position. Collins’ feelings about the child sex abuse issue would probably be shared by many activists here as well.
Those concerns have been widely covered on other news sites including – as Bridges has repeatedly pointed out – the highly respected Guardian.
But those weren’t the links that Collins tweeted. The story she tweeted was from a website that is notorious for peddling conspiracy theories and junk news. Its story was angled on a vast Leftwing conspiracy to normalise child rape. And Collins deliberately tagged in the prime minister. Which means she must have known what she was doing.
Either Collins believed in the vast Left-wing conspiracy to normalise child rape – which is scary. Or she didn’t believe it but tweeted it anyway because she knew some of the people who read her tweets would have no problem believing it was true.
Collins is an iconoclast who delights in political mischief-making. She inspires great loyalty from some of the National grass roots. But she can also be polarising, even among the party faithful, let alone the wider public.
In the latest TVNZ poll, she is fourth most popular politician in the preferred prime minister rankings.
She also happens to be one of Parliament’s shrewdest MPs, and is streets ahead of her colleagues in understanding the power of social media, where she has a large and loyal following.
So her words and actions as a strong female politician carry power.
That this doesn’t worry Simon Bridges should be the real concern because it’s a slippery slope when politicians start blurring fact with fake news.
We’ve been mercifully spared such toxic politics here in New Zealand.
Sure, our politicians spin – but spin is the art of making the facts suit your argument. Fake news bolsters arguments with lies and misinformation.
And once we’re on that slope it will be impossible to get off.
Collins is an iconoclast who delights in political mischiefmaking. She inspires great loyalty from some of the National grass roots. But she can also be polarising.