APEC footage and “The Right’s” response

Just a little clarification first of all.

I put “The Right” in quotation marks because the political identity of those running apologia for state-sponsored violence at APEC is some what ambiguous (many a paleo-conservative wouldn’t consider down playing state violence particularly conservative but instead quite radical.) I’ve got conservative friends that within the current political climate, label themselves “left”, because they see the “left” as a less radical departure from their own traditional norms than that enacted by Howard’s pet culture warriors in the popular press.

Basically when I rarely use the term “Right”, take it to mean something like extreme-conservative culture warrior; the likes of Keith Windschuttle, Alan Jones, Tim Blair et. al.

So what have they been saying so far?

Let’s take a look at Andrew Bolt on Insiders;

“BARRIE CASSIDY: By talking up the potential for violence and so on, did that in fact have an impact and actually scared people off? So you didn’t get the response we got at the G20?

LENORE TAYLOR: I guess we won’t know whether that scared people off or whether they never intended to come in the first place. But the bottom line was that the demonstration was by in large peaceful, by and large just people just exercising their right to express a view.

ANDREW BOLT: I expect the latter is true. I think a lot of parents would have stopped their kids from going. It’s interesting that, despite what you’ve just said, the Stop Bush Coalition were estimating 20,000 to come. The police say 3000 turned up. I do think a lot of people were turned doff. Maybe it was the rain falling on a climate change protest that stopped them. I thought that was a great symbol for APEC, you know, go and talk about the Sydney Declaration to stop global warming and they dress up in their raincoats.”

(Insiders, 2007)

So the topic of violence at the APEC protests gets raised and Andrew quickly (and seamlessly) segues to spin about the weather and global warming (which is about climate, not weather per se). Not so much an apologia as a red herring by way of premature induction.

Tim Blair has enacted pretty much the same stunt, referring to his own premature induction about global warming here. Odd that the thrust of Tim’s piece is about ignoring violence (specifically a dart attack and subsequent violence directed at police – which you can read more about here and here), yet Tim has utterly failed to cover the Police violence himself.

At least Andy Pandy didn’t make the same hypocritical mistake of pointing to another’s evasion.

While on the topic of Andrew and Tim’s sympathetic views, I’ve harped on about the mere linking between their works not being group-think per se, rather that group think requires that their shared prejudice allows fallacies to go unchallenged. The hasty induction inherent in their shared (and cross pollinated) weather=climate meme is a formal logical fallacy. This is group think people.

I guess one also has reason to suspect that their mutual (albeit Andrew’s being more artful) use of red herrings to dodge a tough topic could be another example of group think. It’s probably not the case though, rather being a shared rhetorical style.

In any case, it is clear that the truths that they evade aren’t high on their list of priorities, which given their mutual past demonisation of protesters is somewhat disingenuous.

Both the police and the public quite obviously have a responsibility to obey the law, but the police also have the (obvious) responsibility to enforce it as well as the civic responsibility to not abuse powers given them by violating the public that their authority ultimately stems from. Unavoidably, the police have a higher standard for their conduct to match their greater powers (e.g. state endorsed use of force).

Still, I can almost sympathise with Bolt and Blair; they have cornered themselves into an apparently indefensible position on this issue. That’s an “almost”. Bolt and Blair are paid journos/opinionists. Their evasion of the topic of police violence, which in the past they have both attempted defend, is cowardly and weak.

They should either make serious qualifications, recant or have the (admittedly chauvinistic) dignity to defend their position whilst going down with the ship (like Andrew did when he defended the fraudulent ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’). A bit like the way “Mighty Matt” has been trying to run apologia for the police violence at APEC over at An Onymous Lefty.

Maybe “Mighty Matt” took Tim literally when he said ‘No sitting on the fence‘, instead of seeing Tim’s piece for the inane and evasive time wasting that it is. A mock interview with a fence? We have a heap of world leaders in Sydney, we have allegations of violent protesters and a violent police state mentality and Tim writes a mock interview with a fence!

Tim, better to go down with the ship like “Mighty Matt” (or Howard for that matter) than to jump the shark.

So let’s all have a look at some of the police violence that Tim and Andrew have evaded discussing (thanks go to Jeremy for finding and posting the first two of these to YouTube).

Police officer beating up a defenseless man who is immobilised by other police officers, while all police officers in attendance fail to stop and/or arrest their rough-handed colleague.

Innocent photographer who tried doing her job by photographing an arrested protester, is unnecessarily thrown to the ground by police. Apparently it’s not the police’s fault, John Howard claims her experience is the fault of violent protesters. Violence against women, Australia says “yes”?

Man arrested for jaywalking in front of a motorcade, then manhandled in front of his young son after being charged. The kid has since lost his respect for the police (who can blame him).

Now I’m just waiting for Miranda Devine to get back on-message and bang on about how good a police state would be like she used to, instead of getting angry that one of her friends has been arrested (nice observation Ninglun).

I wonder what Piers and Janet have been saying.

~ Bruce