Stupid or deceitful?

The Herald reports:

The Green Party has lodged a formal complaint against the Sensible Sentencing Trust (SST), accusing the lobby group of impersonating the party with its latest election attack ads. …

The party said the SST was a Taxpayers’ Union “astroturf group” – that is, a fake grassroots organisation supporting the same cause.

I don’t know whether to conclude whether Chloe is stupid, ignorant or just deceitful?

The SST was established in 2001 – 12 years before the Taxpayers’ Union. Now Chloe was only seven years old at the time, so maybe she missed the huge impact they had on law and order issues back then.

And here’s what Wikipedia says about their support:

Membership quickly grew to 135,000 by 2002. In addition, the Trust attracted 3,000 donors and chapters were established across New Zealand. …

By 2009, McVicar claimed that the Trust had over 150,000 members

The left hate grassroots activism on the right. They always claim it is fake and astroturf to the point that the term has become as meaningless as claims of genocide. The reality is that pretty much every group they hate such as Taxpayers’ Union, Free Speech Union, Hobson’s Pledge, Sensible Sentencing Trust, Groundswell etc has a supporter list bigger than the combined membership of Labour and the Greens.