Questioning a claim? Watch out, you racist!

Pushing highly controversial political viewpoints on public servants through training workshops delivered to government departments…

What’s not to like?!?!

An FSU supporter who works as a public servant raised some giant red flags with us last week. 🚩

She shared her account of training that was delivered by expensive consultants to staff in her government department with blatant racial bias and an atmosphere of stifling ideological conformity.

She witnessed sweeping utopian claims focused on ethnic groups made without evidence, and claims that other ethnic groups are apparently the sole cause of today’s major societal ills. But the worst part? She wasn't free to question it.

She writes:

“There is no room for different views, they don't even recognise that the views they are teaching are just that - political views. Or at least it is basically assumed that 'we're all left wing here'."

Try challenging such orthodoxy and questioning how these consultants arrived at their conclusions? Watch out! Delightful terms like ‘racist’ could well be fired your way.

“I have worked under different governments and have never considered writing to anyone before. I take it seriously that public servants should remain neutral so they can effectively work for any government, so I try to leave my personal politics at the door...” 

But who can you appeal to? This content isn’t a grassroots shift in culture as much as a top-down directive. As our insider points out:

“Unfortunately since this is all coming from up the line, I don’t see anyone I can speak to about this within the ministry.” 

“...The atmosphere is stifling.”

Recently, Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche said in a Q+A interview that "We [the Public Service] are not as politicised as some would have you believe. In fact, I think we’re very neutral, as we should be - constitutionally that’s an important article for New Zealand. So, it’s something that we have to remain alert to, but I don’t see any particular examples of it at all."

But, as this supporter's story shows, this has not been our experience. We contacted Sir Brian Roche expressing this, and inviting him to be a guest at an event we'll host exploring principles of free speech and political neutrality as they relate to the public service. Watch this space.

We must remember that free speech is crucial for error correction, as it allows bad ideas to be challenged and better ones to emerge. When people aren't allowed to ask questions it can get us in some dangerous situations. 

Does the predicament above ring any bells? In the United Kingdom, grooming gangs (a tame name for what is in reality the rape, kidnapping, extortion, trafficking and sometimes murder of underage girls by organised criminal networks) has grown in scale over the past few decades to the point where upwards of a quarter of a million girls and young women are believed to have been affected. If there was ever an issue in Britain that needed to be brought into the light, this is it.

But what have the authorities done about it? Why has so little media coverage been dedicated to this national scandal?

Well, when a high proportion of the offenders are males of Pakistani Muslim heritage (up to four times more likely to be reported to Police for such offending), the cultural pressure to avoid being perceived as racist or ‘Islamophobic’ for simply asking questions muzzles the entire inquiry and national debate.

It isn't just one type of male committing these crimes, all sorts of ethnicities are involved, but because one particularly sensitive group is prominent in this criminal activity, no one is willing to talk about any aspect of the grooming gangs.

All victims therefore are denied justice and all perpetrators- regardless of colour and religion - go largely unpunished.

Rather than be truly sensitive to the needs of some of society’s most vulnerable – in this case thousands of typically working-class white girls – those in positions at the top who could do something substantial to stop this shocking human rights abuse instead choose to grovel to an insidious racial over-sensitivity for fear of being labelled something pejorative.

Those lower down the hierarchy who try to raise the alarm get squashed or marginalised for "causing trouble".

Are there particular aggravating attitudes within a particular subculture contributing to the exploitation of underage girls as described above?

This is precisely the problem: who can say when so few prominent people seem prepared to even acknowledge the extent of the crimes or the potential motivations of the offenders involved?

Making matters worse, fictional Netflix programs like Adolescence, are seized upon by the UK prime minister, TV presenters and newspaper columnists as supposed evidence that the problem facing modern British society is actually working-class white boys from loving two-parent homes.

All it takes to cultivate the murderous misogynistic white rage lurking just below the pimply surface of young white teens, or so we’re led to believe, is unsupervised time on a smart phone and a father who works long hours.

Aside from the obvious breaches of non-partisan public service - the approach which all government departments are supposed to uphold in NZ - what concerns us here is the inability for sceptics and dissenters to robustly question or criticise what they’re being fed.

What are the unvarnished facts? How can we be sure of our claims about society? Are our policies and strategies evidence-based?

Free speech is the primary method for digging over, exposing, and testing the most cherished beliefs and claims we all hold. None should be immune to challenge.

Everyone should be free to have a go.

Free speech is, put simply, a tried and true method for error correction.

Now let’s show leaders in the UK – and our own here in NZ – what a culture of speaking up looks like in a liberal democracy.

Remember, our objection isn't simply about the training being conducted, but the serious inability to question or challenge the ideas presented if participants disagree with them.

Courage has a ripple effect. The story above was shared by a supporter who got in touch after we'd told another story about partisan training conducted within a government department.

Speaking out can be tough when the culture around us says it's unacceptable. But that's where we come in. Signing up as a member of the Free Speech Union ensures someone's in your corner. Who else will defend your voice? 📢

Join the Union today.

Nick Hanne | Education Partnerships Manager