ANTISOCIAL MEDIA
Stemming the tide of online abuse
Politicians have come to the defence of Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman after Act leader David Seymour called her a “menace to freedom in this country”.
Seymour was speaking to MediaWorks radio host Sean Plunket on Thursday about the issue of freedom of speech in relation to the Christchurch Call summit.
Plunket suggested figures such as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Ghahraman subscribed to the notion that speech could create mass murderers and therefore needed to be controlled.
Seymour then referred to “mass murderers” in history such as Mao Zedong, Stalin and Hitler using the suppression of free expression to gain power before saying, “I don’t know if she understands what she is saying but Golriz Ghahraman is a real menace to freedom in this country”.
The Act Party then tweeted it with a link to the interview.
The exchange set off a firestorm on Twitter, with Seymour branded a bully, among other things.
Ghahraman responded on Twitter, saying Seymour was dogwhistling to racists.
“The same racists who were just caught talking about how to kill me,” she tweeted.
“Otherwise why not mention that the Justice Minister and PM are also leading on hate speech reform? This is dangerous and dirty. This is not NZ.”
She referenced a leaked group chat that emerged this week of a closed Facebook group discussing white supremacy and joking about how to lynch her.
National Party heavyweight Judith Collins then stepped in, calling for a “timeout”.
“Please don’t refer to Golriz in this way. I do not agree with almost anything she says but she is a person and it does not assist political debate to dehumanise her like that,” the National MP tweeted.
Among those who thanked Collins for her remarks were Green MPs Chloe Swarbrick and Julie Anne Genter, who on Thursday called some motorists “fascists” for opposing transport infrastructure.