Groupthinker Ghahraman

By Olivia Pierson
First published on Insight@theBFD 23/04/2020

In an article which one of my readers recently drew to my attention, Green MP Golriz Ghahraman wrote an essay titled Freedom of Speech and Its Limits where she makes the case for why more hate speech laws should be introduced in New Zealand.

Because Ms. Ghahraman lays out the common arguments in favour of this cause as clearly as her abilities allow, it’s worth a read to see the one-track groove of thought those who advance this cause are stuck in. The obsession with minority groups is paramount: gender, sexual, ethnic, racial and religious (except for Christian). They view society through groupthink lenses to pass themselves off as the bold “defenders of minorities” in the eyes of other groupthinkers, which reminds me of a notable quote by philosopher/novelist Ayn Rand:

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

Groupthinker Ghahraman uses the Christchurch massacre as the central example of just how damaging the individual right of free speech can be in her mind.
 
This one-year-old New Zealand tragedy which, even as it took place in real time, many predicted instantly the degree to which it would be milked in the most opportunistic manner by our current government. 

Ghahraman did not disappoint on this score anymore than did Prime Minister Ardern. From the act of one single tragedy, long standing gun laws were swiftly turned on their head, free speech was put on notice by the Justice Minister and police have made a disturbing habit out of visiting the homes of social media users who express views which they find to be a bit objectionable (conservative). Legal gun owners with objectionable views were raided by armed police.  And those are just the things we know about.

In her 2,600 word essay about the limits of free-speech in NZ, it took Ghahraman only three paragraphs to get to the Christchurch terrorism incident:

“Since the Christchurch terrorist attacks, many New Zealanders have started to wonder what sort of country they truly live in and to ask themselves some difficult questions. Are we, in fact, a country filled with equality, fairness and unity, or is there a problem with hate, violence and racism that needs work? Part of the challenge in coming to terms with the attacks will be to acknowledge that hate speech can lead to extremism and violence – that how we speak can have impacts in real life. This will in turn require us to define the right to freedom of speech and where its protections and limitations lie in a truly free and equal society.”

But groupthinker Ghahraman was wrong about New Zealanders.  The massacre did not make them start to wonder what sort of country they truly lived in, since the terrorist was an interloper from Australia. What they did wonder was just how a troubled young non-NZ citizen such as Tarrant got to spend an hour in the company of police for his gun license interview without giving off a single clue or cause for suspicion of what he was in fact; a cold-blooded killer with a malicious plot fomenting in his mind.
 
This momentary police inattentiveness explains why they are now cracking down so hard on gun owners and social media users with anti-Islam views, not because these citizens are any kind of imminent threat to other New Zealanders, but because this time the police royally screwed up – and maybe Tarrant was uncommonly gifted in the art of stealthy deceit. 

Ghahraman writes:  

“It is increasingly clear, following the Christchurch mosque attacks, that unregulated online platforms are hosting dangerous white supremacist content. Online hate is causing real world violence and our laws don’t have the tools to respond effectively.”

Through the paragraphs of her essay, one can almost feel the gleeful frisson which Ghahraman must’ve felt as news came through on March 15th 2019 that the terrorist was a white male with a gun club membership, plus an online manifesto.

She then goes further down this conspiratorial road of white supremacists lurking under every rock by citing a shooting during Passover, April 2019, in Poway, Las Vegas, killing 1 person and injuring 3, and a shooting in El Paso, Texas, on August 3rd 2019, killing 22 people and injuring 24; both murderers claimed they had been inspired by the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Tarrant’s manifesto, which is banned in New Zealand only. 

I have no doubt that these sub-human killers may have been inspired by Tarrant, but alarmingly, Ghahraman commits an unforgivable blank-out by ignoring the 259 people killed and the 500 others injured in the massive Easter Sunday massacre in Sri Lanka on April 21st 2019, just one month after the Christchurch tragedy and within the same week of the Passover shooting Ghahraman cites in her essay.

Why did Ghahraman blank-out this massacre of massacres, which the Islamic State quickly took responsibility for?

The answer lies in the fact that, most awkwardly for our government, this massacre was yet another incident of Islamic jihad committed against Christians – and both Ghahraman and Prime Minister Ardern were neck-deep in loudly pushing the “They Are Us” empathy-with-Muslims campaign, all the while encouraging New Zealand women to cover their heads with hijabs in solidarity with the adherents of a particularly violent and female-oppressing ideology.
 
Which brings me to another unconscionable omission in Ghahraman’s essay about hate speech. 

The brutality and violence of Islam is prescribed in a well known ancient manifesto bursting with hate speech, i.e., actual incitements to violence – that is the Koran itself. This 7th-century manifesto openly calls for the murder of non-Muslims (infidels) and has not been banned in New Zealand.
 
Neither is there a ban in New Zealand on the fifteen issues of the Islamic State’s official recruitment tool, Dabiq magazine, an impeccably edited, glossily photographed, online publication still used to inspire young jihadis around the world to commit acts of terror wherever they are – and they do, as they did in Sri Lanka in the Easter Sunday massacre. Dabiq is currently available for free download in New Zealand – heck, you don’t even have to download it to view it. 

​But nary a word is ever spoken or written by the Iranian-born Ghahraman on this Islamic evil – she is solely focused on shutting down the free speech of the group called “white supremacists” – which has become a leftist euphemism for Christians or conservative-minded folks who seek to uphold traditional Western values, gifted to us by our magnificent colonial ancestors.
 
Ghahraman begins winding up her essay with these words:
 
“Everyone, every person of every race, gender and religion, has a huge interest in ensuring harmful and abusive content is appropriately regulated.”

Okey-dokey Wokey. Regulations be damned. All Jews outside of Germany still have to live with Mein Kampf being sold in bookstores and made freely available in libraries, and I don’t hear them constantly lamenting the fact – and they practically invented evocative Lamentations.
 
What is of huge interest to most of us, is to see our individual freedoms and equality before the law be kept intact as our forefathers intended, not be overridden by the woke groupthink of Ghahraman and her uncomely clan of ahistoric diversity worriers. They are the most toxic pedlars of harmful, abusive content into New Zealand’s cultural and political landscapes, and their shameless use of the Christchurch massacre to try to squelch our individual rights is well and truly obvious. 

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer"