A trans-tasman apology
March 4th, 2008 at 10:03 am by David FarrarFor those who haven’t followed it, Australian conservative commentator Andrew Bolt blogged how he met me at the NZBR retreat. I then returned the favour.
In my comments George Darroch posted a long list of awful things Andrew has said, saying his views “border on insanity”.
The only problem, as Andrew pointed out back on both my blog and on his blog is that not a single one of the 16 comments Darroch attributed to Andrew, were made by Andrew. They were simply comments by others on his blog. Most people can tell the difference between a comment and a post.
Anyway after the publicity of being called to account on Australia’s most widely read blog, George has apologised to Andrew. Oh and then made it a Claytons apology by demanding Andrew state his opinion on the 16 statements he falsely ascribed to him. Darroch has now also blogged on the issue.
Who needs underarm bowling for a good Trans-Tasman clash 
Related posts:
- A new level of apology
- Trans-Tasman on Key and income inequality
- Trans-Tasman mobile roaming
- Trans-Tasman MP Ratings
March 4th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Wot, a left wing poster being called on the accuracy or otherwise of a statement, then choosing to attack the messenger????
Goodness gracious, whatever next? The worlds gone mad I tell you, mad!!
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Gorge has failed Internet 101.
Hey DPF, are we able to use image tags to post pictures? I got a good one that fits well to this topic.
Never mind, links are good….
http://www.cad-comic.com/comic.php?d=20080227
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 11:01 am
.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I attributed the quotes to him by accident, and withdrew as soon as I realised I had done so.
I do not believe bloggers are responsible for the thoughts of their commenters.
I would not have made my apology into an issue, but he said on my blog that he found some of the views extremely distasteful, and the opposite of what he believed. I was naturally intrigued, so I asked him which ones he disagreed with. He’s given a vague answer, saying “least 15 of those comments you ascribe to me are not ones I agree with. The first several I actually find not only wrong but offensively so.”
He _very often_ accuses Aboriginal Australia of lying about the stolen generation, calling it “celebrating a lie”, the “preposterous and obscene” myth, a “pride murdering fantasy”, a “libel on our past”, the “rescued by kindly European philanthropists generations”, and even today writes that those who tell the truth about the past are “killing black kids”.
He called those who told school kids about it “stealing children – or at least their minds” and “Red Guards” who weren’t “educating but indoctrinating – celebrating a lie” – Children can’t just know of the apology but must “celebrate” it. And they have to fly the Aboriginal flag as well, which is paying homage to an unrelated and even more divise agenda”. He very often likens others to fascists or Nazis.
Many of these ideas were repeated in the comments I quoted, which talked about lies, division, rewriting history, indoctrination, conspiracy.
I do hold him responsible for the racist hate he incites, week after week.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 11:38 am
George wrote:
And so you should have, but it would have been a little more impressive if you’d not done so like this:
My late Grandmother had two wise pieces of advice that might come in useful for those whose “primary occupation” is “correcting people on the internet”.
1) An apology is all very nice, but it would be preferable if you don’t do it again.
And
2) The only place you can have a bet both ways is at the track. Whether you like Andrew Bolt or not (and it’s painfully obvious you despise the man), he’s as entitled to fair treatment as anyone else. That includes correct attribution. You didn’t George, and is it possible he deserved an unqualified apology on that
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 11:46 am
GD why dont you front up (in a way Manne hasnt) and provide the names of the stolen?
It seems to me that a “Stolen Generation” is likely to be a significant chunk of any countries population. It should be incredibly simple to destroy Bolt with facts, if they existed. But they obviously dont.
Your entire argument hinges on the “fact” that the stolen generations exist; that children were taken from their loving parents for racist rather than welfare reasons.
Unless you can prove this (and the preeminent expert on the subject has failed to do so for years) then the accusation is a libel on the past, school teachers are indoctrinating their students and forcing them to celebrate a lie, and fear of creating a new “Stolen Generation” is leading to black children being criminally left in horrific situations that often prove fatal.
Not only that, by spreading the lie, by creating division, and by rewriting history, YOU are complicit in the harm being done to poor black children right now.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Craig Ranapia – I will never give an unqualified apology to someone who stirs racial hatred.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 11:58 am
George,
With all respect for your views and opinions, you have a bit of a credibility issue here. You have acted in a fairly reprehensible manner by ascribing views to someone without evidence or base. You then went on to give the aforementioned “clayton’s apology” for this behaviour and consequently made yourself out to be a prat!
You then say “All of the above sound perfectly compatible with your stated beliefs”. I hope you still have the receipt from the educational facility that you are studying at. You may want your money back because nowhere in the english-speaking world (ney – perhaps “english-speaking” is a little too narrow) would anyone say the above and then try to pass it off as truth. Sophistry is the word that comes to mind.
I would suggest that you apologise unreservedly (yes – without further comment) in an effort to gain back some measure of respect.
Everyone respects your right to disagree with either his views or those who post on his blog. We, in turn, reserve the right to deride when someone uses an extreme form of populist attack to express those views. Not cool, mate.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Darroch show me where Bolt is racist. Put up or shut up. Find me somewhere that he indicates he does not like black people, that he thinks they are inferior to good white people. Explain to me how Bolt’s frustration that imagined/unproven crimes of the past is preventing people helping children today simply because they are black, means that he is a racist?
Otherwise your accusation of racism is just unfounded and slanderous.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
More from Bolt the “racist” –
More proof that our fear of “stealing” children is killing those most in danger – especially Aboriginal children:
“Committee chairwoman Denzil McCotter said many of the 54 children whose cases had been reviewed by [Western Australia’s Child Death Review Committee] since its formation in 2003 would still be alive if the Government had either provided adequate support to their families or removed the children from their parents’ care when it was clear they were in danger.”
And note who is most likely to die from not being “stolen”:
“The committee found that Aboriginal infants from country WA were over-represented in the number of children who died while under the watch of the department.”
I’ll say it again: The “stolen generations” myth is killing black children.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/not_stolen_and_now_dead/
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
George: You should always give an unqualified apology to people you’ve misrepresented, even if you otherwise loathe and despise them and every other word they say. Believe you me, I’ve done it and it sucks, blows and chokes but if ethical behaviour was that easy everyone would do it all the time, right?
Let me put it this way: We all make mistakes, and I think every reasonable person knows that. The real test of character is having the integrity to own your own shit and put it right. It’s not as if the blogisphere is short of people who’d rather piss away their own credibility defending the indefensible than just saying “I got it wrong, and I’m sorry.”
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Patriotism is no longer the last vestige of the scoundrel – it’s now taunts of “racist”.
Every time someone, usually on the right, expresses reservations about the left’s approach to minority issues they’re labelled racist (and when that’s disproved, accused of “saying things that incite other people who are racists”). Yet I don’t see this sort of ad hominem attack if someone from the right debates policy dealing with a different subset of people. Suggest that beneficiaries aren’t being helped by hand-outs and the left will engage you on a policy level. Suggest that Aborigines, or Maori, or Native Americans, aren’t being helped by similar policies and they will start spitting accusations of racism.
Amongst other measures, NZ First’s immigration policy in 1996 included a tripling of the numbers of genuine refugees the country accepted each year. That was overlooked by those who shrieked “racist” because it also proposed restricting the number of immigrants making use of a NZ passport simply to further their business interests or to gain free education for their children. Some elements of the media even tried to “set me up” by discussing, behind the scenes, the sorts of slogans being hurled around by repugnant groups like the National Front and then quoting them back to me on live TV as though I’d said them myself.
As Kimble has quoted above, Bolt doesn’t advocate abandonment of Aborigines – quite the opposite. He simply dares to differ with the left’s prevailing view of what needs to be done to redress the terrible statistics. Anyone who truly has at heart the best interests of the people whose fates he’s debating deserves to be listened to respectfully and debated – vigorously, by all means – without insult. Yet Darroch and similar critics seem utterly unable to do so.
That says everything about them and nothing about Bolt.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I will not defer from calling Bolt racist. I don’t throw the word around lightly, as Rex Widerstrom alleges. I don’t use it simply because a policy or political position offends me.
I’m not an expert on Australian or Aboriginal history. I defer to experts. Bolt is the one who has refused to debate, and when shown to be wrong in debate, continues on anyway, as if anything his critics say is immaterial.
I quote, at length in order to outline the depth and breadth of the level of sustained falsehood he engages in.
Robert Manne:
“For the past five years I have been trying to engage Andrew Bolt in debate. In 2001, he agreed and then pulled out. This year, after he argued that the “left” feared debate with the “right”, I renewed the invitation.
Trying to get Andrew Bolt to agree to a debate was surreal. Before being willing to debate me Bolt demanded first either “ten” or “one hundred” or even “a few hundred” names of stolen children. I asked him for his definition of a stolen child. He refused to reply. I asked him who was to determine whether or not I had satisfied his pre-condition. Again he refused to reply. Eventually, I sent him some 250 names. After a silence, Bolt agreed to the debate.
Bolt has a Herald Sun blog-site. He appealed on it for help in discrediting my first 12 names. There was no mention of the other 230-plus. Bolt presented the results of his research assistants at last Sunday’s debate. The omissions and distortions took my breath away.
One of my names, Margaret Tucker, was raised by a loving mother, who also had to work, and by a completely devoted uncle and aunt. In her wonderful autobiography she reveals that she was with her mother when she was seized. Her mother was so distraught that she was discovered by the uncle and aunt lying in the bush “moaning and crying” like “an animal in pain”. Here is Bolt’s version: Margaret’s mother “had gone to Sydney and some auntie was looking after her-sort of”.
Another name was John Moriarty, a much-loved Northern Territory child of mixed descent whose mother was so frightened that he would be stolen that she went to foreign country, Roper River, so he could go to school. One day when she came to pick him up, John was gone. He had been sent in a truck and in a state of high terror with other children to the notorious Alice Springs half-caste institution, the Bungalow. Consider Bolt’s account. “He was sent south to go to a boarding school with, he says, aunties and uncles. Stolen? Or sent away?” Every word is invention. In each case he discussed on Sunday, Bolt’s distortions were of a similar kind. He has never mentioned the other 230 names.”
The weight of documentary evidence for the Stolen Generation is overwhelming. See, for example – http://www.themonthly.com.au/Documents/stolen.pdf
His proud denial is the propagation of a libelous racist lie.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
George,
You are missing the point. It’s not what you are saying. I can see the point in your post above. It’s how you are saying it. You can’t go making stuff up just to sensationalise your cause.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/fisking_mannes_column/
The link above takes you to a blog post in which Bolt absolutely destroys Manne, refering to the very text Darroch has quoted.
Darroch has yet to provide a single piece of proof, a single quote, which would IMPLY that Bolt is a racist. Because of this we have to deduce that Darroch himself is a racist and is engaging in projection.
Darroch hates black children and WANTS to see them abused and murdered. He looks forward to the day when the white man reigns supreme over the other lesser races.
Anyone can make shit up. How does it feel, Darroch, you dirty little racist shit, to be on the other side of baseless accusations?
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I think it is good that people are waking up to the fact that all is not what it seems on this issue.
READ THIS:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23182149-28737,00.html
The commentators on this thread above are right. READ THE ARTICLE LINKED ABOVE.
About the author: Keith Windschuttle is an Australian historian who has been fighting “postmodernism”, “deconstructionism”, “critical theory” and “revisionism” in the universities and in the history discipline for decades.
The battle here is between people who want historianship to be based on the unearthing of factual evidence by way of “boots on the ground” research. The other side wants to just make it up as they go along, as long as it suits a narrative that will undermine Western culture and tradition. Their main tactic consists of attacking and smearing their opponents as “racists”, “sexists”, “fascists” and “bigots”.
Keith Windschuttle has had it all chucked at him, again and again. Don’t give me that BULLSHIT. It shouldn’t half be obvious who we can trust.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
If Windschuttle and Bolt are right pretty strange don’t you think Kimble that Rudd is riding high on 73% according to the latest Newspoll and poor old Brendan is riding low on 7%.
It’s not a debate anyone’s still having over here, the apologies been made. This particular bit of the culture war is over.
Vote:March 4th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
George Darroch can’t help himself.
After “unreservedly” apologising for ascribing to me 16 quotes I did not make, he does it yet again, claiming I said the “stolen generations” should be called the “rescued by kindly European philanthropists generations”.
Wrong again, George. Never said that, either.
Has this bloke got a problem with facts and logic?
Seems so. For instance, he falsely accuses me above of dodging debates, yet in the same sentence admits I’ve had those very debates. He claims I should not be held “responsible for the thoughts of (my) commenters” yet says “I do hold him responsible for the racist hate he incites, week after week” – presenting as proofs the very comments I tell him are ones with which I do not agree.
Do you get the idea that this spokesman for the Young Greens will say and use anything to argue a position he holds, regardless of the truth?
As for Manne’s evidence that Darroch so blithely presents in his support, note that it’s been demolished on several occasions:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/stolen_generations_my_writers_festival_speech/
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,19710699-25717,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22920375-25717,00.html
Darroch should have known this, or at least bothered himself with checking Manne’s veracity.
Yet on Darroch blunders, even accusing me of commiting a “sustained falsehood”, without once offering proof that I have indeed lied – a defamatory charge I utterly reject.
What’s more, he accuses me of being “racist” – again a charge I utterly reject. Indeed, my many articles have made clear that one of my strongest objections to the “stolen generations” myth is that it is causing us to leave Aboriginal children in grave dangers from which we would remove them if they were of any other race. The result, as I’ve shown, has been that Aboriginal children have been left to be bashed, raped and killed. To cry for such children should not be denounced as proof of “racism”.
Here are some recent examples of this tragedy:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22909220-5000117,00.html
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/not_stolen_and_now_dead/
Now, a word of advice to Darroch. I am not the kind of person who sues for defamation. I prefer to respond to attacks like his with the facts, and rely on people to make up their own minds.
But one day Darroch will make this kind of defamatory, malicious, unrepentant, factless, manufactured, reckless, misleading and plain nasty attack on someone less phlegmatic.
That will be the day he finds himself exposed as not just bankrupt ideologically and ethically, but financially as well.
I expect a full retraction and apology from him. But then I am dealing with a member of the Young Greens…
In which case I’ll settle for this. Name just 10 of the Aboriginal children stolen just because they were black, and not because they needed help. Just 10, George.
Vote:March 5th, 2008 at 1:30 am
lloydois, your problem is that you think it is just another front in a “culture war”.
The truth is not democratic and it certainly isn’t dependent upon OPINION POLLS.
If that is the best you have got, then you fail badly.
Vote:March 5th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Your a liar, aren’t you George.
Vote:March 5th, 2008 at 10:45 am
He is a young Green, Alces. They only care about “fact” as far as they can pervert the word.
Vote: