Willy Jackson throws mud

 

I was contacted on Friday by TV3 about a beat-up they’d organised to raise the profile of new Labour Party candidate and Professional Maori, Willy Jackson.

He was whinging about a pamphlet (below) dropped in thousands of letterboxes over the last two years advertising a book called One Treaty, One Nation. About the flyer TV3 says “Labour's Willie Jackson is not happy with its message.”

I guess he wouldn’t be. Because, you see, it is people like him who it targets.

Specifically, the book, and the flyer, calls for an end to race-based privilege. So as a man who’s made a substantial career out of his race, I can see why Jackson would be unhappy. He is virtually a posterboy for race-based privilege, so why would he agree with good folk who want it gone?

The flyer, says the unhappy Jackson, is

“a load of nonsense - racist rhetoric again and so similar to the Pauline Hansen One Nation rubbish that's coming out of Australia," he says.

Upping the rhetoric, TV3 gives the story the headline “1Law4All Party makes push to abolish Waitangi Tribunal,” and says the flyer drop is a sign

A political movement labelled by some as driven by extreme right-wing racism is upping the ante ahead of this year's election.

Actually, neither Jackson nor TV3 News are correct, not that either would care about that.

The flyer in a nutshell advertises a book and a campaign (no, TV3 “journalists,” not a party) that call for the law to be colour-blind, arguing that the modern wilful misinterpretation of Te Tiriti has perverted law, justice and government, and given a pretext for beneficiaries of government largesse like Willy Jackson to suck off the taxpayer’s tit to the detriment of everyone – including those he so sorely exploits by claiming to represent.

That is a million miles from the anti-Asian, anti-migrant, economic nationalism of Pauline Hanson, which is more like Trump than it is about truth.

And rather than coming from a political party disestablished two years ago, the flyers emanate from a publisher promoting a book published two years ago which have been slowly delivered to letterboxes around the country ever since (so hardly anything at all to do with this year’s election then, which is what I would have said if I had returned the journalist’s call, and if they were actually concerned with truth instead of promoting Jackson’s new party head of this year’s election).

And why were they telephoning me about all this? Because I have a chapter in that book.

And FWIW, while I don’t agree with everything in the book, if I had smelt a whiff of racism or Hansonism from the other authors I would have withdrawn, and had negotiated that right with the publisher.

Because unlike the actually racist Jackson, who has made a substantial career out of his barnyard form of collectivism, I do find both repellent.

[Cartoon by Nick Kim]

NB: This is the flyer complained about:

.