Send lawyers, guns and money, the great Zevon sang, with a follow-up note as to why. In Australia these days, it appears to be just lawyers.
Independent MP Alex Greenwich is suing NSW One Nation Leader Mark Latham for a nasty tweet, and has made separate complaints regarding vilification and using a carriage service to harass or offend. Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi is suing One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson for a tweet, in which La Hanson suggested that Faruqi go back to the country from whence she emigrated if she believed Australia to be so hopelessly racist and colonialist, as she had expressed on Queen Elizabeth II’s demise.
Now the right is in on the act, with expelled Liberal MLC Moira Deeming launching a defamation suit against the leader of the party she’s trying to stay in, and a complaint from David Flint for Australians for Constitutional Monarchy about the ABC’s pre-coverage of the coronation of King Charles III, which featured a panel consisting of monarchists, republicans and sui generis Stan Grant, with the chat fairly heavily slanted to the anti-monarchist side.
Finally, Climate 200 has got in on the act. The group designed to demonstrate that addressing climate change is everyone’s business, raise money on that basis and inter alia win blue-ribbon seats has now decided that money raised for this purpose should be spent on helping a gay politician put a single anti-gay insult into the courts.
So what’s going on?
The short answer is that on both the cultural left and cultural right, belief in a pluralist public sphere as the place to thrash out differences — with the attendant risk of insult, hurt and offence — is collapsing, and people are defaulting to law as a way of conducting basic political contestations between different parties (understood in a general sense).
Doubtless, there’s a fundraising aspect to all this; nothing like a court case to turn a vague set of affiliations into a cause. But the fact court cases have to be used as a way of drumming up money and interest, if that’s what’s being done, is itself a measure of how little faith there is in the capacity of ideas and beliefs to motivate political action. It is part of the larger process by which the public sphere is being hollowed out as an autonomous zone of action, and the state being invited in to run it.
Greenwich’s libel suit against Latham looks ridiculous. Should it get to court — and I can’t see Latham apologising, even if there is more chance of a Greenwich win than I’m assuming — there will be a parade of witnesses saying they’re an average, reasonable person, they find male homosexual activity disgusting, and they think less of a person for engaging in it.
The court case itself will have people queuing up at 3am for a seat in something resembling Pasolini filming a Joe Orton play. Humiliating now? The tweet itself is already fading, while Latham’s cancellation by the right remains.
That’s not because he said something politically incorrect, but because he made visible a feature of everyday life that none of us want to think about. Latham’s the scapegoat, loaded up with all our secret knowledge of romance — that we give roses to mask the filth of it all, gay and straight — and sent into the wilderness.
Greenwich is now on course to either: 1) get an unlikely apology from Latham; 2) have to back down and give Latham a free speech win, thus getting Latham back into the game; or 3) go to trial and be cross-examined about his sexual practices with his partner.
The glittering career of the man who stabilised the independent political dominance of central Sydney would dissolve in a welter of ridicule. He’d be the punchline to a joke for evermore. People who supported him politically would find it impossible not to laugh at it. Is it too much to ask of gay men in public life that they have a working knowledge of the life and times of St Oscar Wilde?
The truth is that it’s necessary for the health of protest and vigorous political activity from the left that both Greenwich and Faruqi lose their cases and lose them badly and humiliatingly. How are we to target — in a political sense — right-wing climate-denialist MPs, wage-thieving corporate figures and others for action if victory by Greenwich and Faruqi sets the bar of “harassment” so low that any form of directed action counts as harassment?
Were someone to make a Twitter call for a protest at an MP’s office, would that then count as harassment? If the staff inside, mild-mannered volunteers doing a few hours, are suddenly besieged by a crowd with some fairly lively, not always respectful types, could they claim that the organisers are guilty of harassment by a carriage service?
Do a strike and a picket line count as harassment? They haven’t for decades, because we had specific laws treating them as protected actions. But before those were introduced — and they have been virtually abolished in this country — such action was subject to the common law, which did not recognise protected collectivities.
The more that the cultural left relies on this framework, the more it materially constitutes the public sphere as a space of relations between individuals that are contractual in nature. Yes, beneath these processes is our old friend neoliberalism (actually something deeper than that), encompassing the culture so totally that it now expresses itself from the left.
These are disastrous moves. Greenwich, Climate 200 and Faruqi are acting like entitled elitists or pursuing a blinkered strategy, or both. Climate 200, designed to tell everyone that it could support action on climate change without having to sign on for the Greens’ kooky cultural policies, has now told them that not only is there a set of social and cultural policies you must subscribe to, but that we’ll use the money you donated to save the planet for your grandchildren so that a Sydney grandee can sue a has-been for a bad pub joke. What strategic genius!
That they are joined by the right is small consolation. But it’s not no consolation. For some time now, the cultural right has been getting its sooky-woo on about slights and insults and going to lawfare, and it’s glorious to watch. Remember the right’s chest-beating stuff about snowflakes, toughening up and all the rest? That was then, in the Trump-Boris-ScoMo years. Now they’ve screwed up everywhere, destroyed their own parties, and lost the support of their own class base. So it’s time to play the victim. Pawww Bill Leak’s heart gave out because the nasty weft pweeple did an 18C on him. Decades of cocaine use making it as hard as a hockey puck had nothing to do with it.
Pawwww Bawwy Humphwies, who never insulted anyone, cwied hisself to sleep because the Melbourne Comedy Festival lived up to its reputation of being the most joyless organisation since Lufthansa.
On and on it went, a product of a changed need in the News Corpse/Sky as dark AF bunkers. Their audience numbers are so low that they have to hold on to those they have, who are the hardcore resentful, who want to feel put upon and victimised. The youngish people who work at such organisations are pretty much doing the cultural equivalent of adult nappy-changing, over and over, with the hope that the papers and the channels — cut to the bone — can somehow remain financially viable.
That someone like Deeming would sue her own party leader, rather than simply organise against it, is a measure of how comprehensively this logic is spread (and also that possibly, Deeming herself is really, really stupid, just dumb).
The complaint against the ABC’s teeth-grindingly irritating coronation pre-coverage — itself a sign of left weakness, the republicans such a pathetic non-movement they have to piggyback on ABC coverage to make a point — is in the same spirit. The ACM knows it’s going to lose. The panel had multiple viewpoints. It was one way to fill the lead-up hours. But ACM can play the victim again and raise a bit more cash.
This collapse to lawfare is the sign of two elite formations coming to the end of their command of the public debate. It doesn’t mean one should never go to court in a fight within an organisation — the “rational” Greens in the Victorian party may soon have to — but it does mean that the pursuit of individual public legal action is a good sign that your politics is breaking up, and that, by said actions, you are hurrying it on to that collapse.
Beneath the surface of these deadened culture wars, a new and more inchoate politics is moving around the politics of inequality and exclusion and the failure to address either. Whoever can start to tap into that, and organise it to represent itself, will reap the rewards. As regards those activists who support our decadent elites, pursuing their own interests, well, the shit is going to hit the fans.
Err, the obvious answer is to play the ball not the man ? Target them for being “climate-denialist” or “wage-thieving” rather than where they were born or how they choose to enjoy themselves in private ?
I agree they’re petty lawfare, but there’s a giant false equivalence here between attacking someone because of what they think/said/did vs attacking someone because of some immutable personal attribute.
Right, so Greenwich being Teh Gayzzzz – aaaarrrggghhhh!!! Teh Shock, Smithy, Teh Horrorz, O noes, how outcasty and victimy and politically subversive Our Alex is, coz, y’know, he likes Teh Boyz!!!! – qualifies him for Extra Special Protected Politician Status, does it? Well, how about we do a Victimhood Audit, eh?
Alex Greenwich MP is, literally, hereditary royalty (like King Charles). He’s a Sydney Grammar alumni (fees $36k/year base), a successful businessman, and a long-time sponsored darling of the Sydney political/cultural progressive Establishment. He’s on at least $160K-odd a year, plus all the usual freebies and allowances, and doubtless he’s already lined up for all sorts of sinecures for when he chooses to wander off, bored and/sated, with being a mere state-level crossbench politician. He’s fifteen years younger than me and already he’ll never have to work another day in his life. Good for him, he’s earned it. At a personal level, he’s articulate, smart, charming and handsome, and, as far as I know, in robust health and always has been. He’s in a stable, loving and loved, decade-long marriage, now publicly declarable and widely-celebrated here too, no thanks in small part to his doubtless hugely-satisfying activist work. He won, to the betterment of us all, making him a rare Oz politician already: a successful progressive-reformist one. He is also as a result that even rarer still Oz politician: one who is, with a tiny, widely-ridiculed and politically-powerless exception of voters (most of whom keep quiet about their ambivalence towards him/his lifestyle these days), respected and admired – even adored – across the whole of Australian public life. He’s a regular media platformee, invited to any party in Sydney that anyone goes to, and in this tacky exchange with Latham – which Our Alex tackily started – he’s been backed right across the Oz political spectrum from the Rev Fred Nile to, I dunno, Rainbow McRainy-Trans-Luvvy-Rainbow-Fluffer, the Official Rainbow Spokesman for Rainbows, Unicorn Farts & Alphabets.
Explain to me, DrSmithy: on what planet, anywhere in Known Contemporary Australian Existence, does Alex Greenwich MP qualify as a victim of anything but (temporarily) his own b*tchy manners…and then his reactionary, hubristic over-reach? On what planet is he entitled to our enthusiastic support – inc. being fiscally-prioritised over saving the planet – in pursuing expensive, time-consuming and court-clogging legal protection? Which, as the writer points out, will ultimately blow back most of all on powerless, obscure, genuinely vulnerable Australians who will never come close to being able to afford lawyers of his (and Faruqi’s and Flint’s and Deeming’s) ilk, and whose only real chance at fairness and civic inclusion is – or used to be – a genuinely progressive, material-political/economic reform program?
At what point does a mere ‘immutable personal attribute’ cease to be a legitimate excuse for being a precious, privileged, narcissistic, grandstanding w**ker? Asking for a poor, powerless, but equally gay, friend.
Uh huh.
The point of Latham’s comment was, “you’re disgusting because you’re gay”. Your “gay friend” should be able to explain to you why it’s not OK for people to say that. He may even be able to explain to you why having a legal avenue when, for example, a random politician says that to him, is a good thing.
Substitute in “black” for “gay” if you’re still struggling.
Then compare and contrast with Rundle’s numerous false equivalences that follow.
Latham’s comment was no such simplistic thing as ‘you’re disgusting coz you’re gay’. It was first and foremost – very probably overwhelmingly – an instinctive (and typically Latham aggressive/boorish) riposte to being called ‘a disgusting human being’ by Greenwich first, wholly unprovoked. I know you soft pap progs think that being soft pap progs makes you morally unimpeachable, and thus renders any boorish act of your own (especially towards relative conservatives) totally justified, but actually damning someone’s human being (ie personage, no less) as ‘disgusting’ – for the immoral high crime of accepting an invitation to give a speech to a community group in an obscure suburban church – is nasty, rude, and gutter-entering. It was cr*p behaviour – oh no, Smithy, a gay lefty (not just Tim Wilson!) can be rude and boorish and unnecessarily b*tchy, too, who knew??!? – and the fact that Latham’s in return was even cr*pper doesn’t disguise that first truth. Greenwich started this utterly boring and contrived exchange b/w two largely sideshow-irrelevant but still very privileged political players. Boo hoo, he didn’t like getting a bit of his own back plus interest, and waaah-waaah now he’s wasting public air time, goodwill and other people’s CC action donations/resources having a little me-me-me legal sooky-wook about it, half-assedly disguised as LGBTQAI+ lofty activism.
By all means swallow it whole if you like, Smithy. I don’t. Mind you, I do find it amusing – and poignantly anachronistic – that you soft pap progs still seem to regard mere gayness as something incredibly…oh, I dunno, politically exceptionalist? Special? Subversive?! Still?’!?!?! I mean, it’s just so…squirmily tweedly-dee, mate. It’s like you’re an undergrad at big city uni, in from the sticks for all of three months and already itching to get home to ‘shock’ dear ol’ hillbilly mum n’ dad back in Sh*tsville with your casually-dropped racey tales about your first gay friend!!
You big smoke sophisticate you, Doc Smithy! Chortle.
Yes it was.
Well, we can agree it was “instinctive”.
However, Greenwich actually called Latham “a disgusting human being” after LGB protestors were attacked at a an event he was speaking at.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/two-arrested-after-hundreds-turn-on-lgbtq-protesters-outside-mark-latham-event-20230322-p5cu6b.html
Readers can draw their own conclusions as to whether Latham’s attitudes toward non-heterosexuals and the kind of people who show up to his gigs are linked.
The point is that if you lower the bar on what harassment is, legit political activity becomes included. If a green/progressive lawsuit can establish that a single tweet is harassment, does it not make it more arguable that ‘protest at senator x’s office, he’s a climate denialist, bring noisemakers’ could constitute harassment and targeting? Wouldnt it be easier for someone to argue to a judge that it does? And harder to assert that it does not? Who decides what a legit purpose of such activity is, and what isn’t? What about jokes, ridicule and insults directed at someone like Latham? Can he then claim harassment, if people circulate funny/abusive memes about him? Should the left be using the word ‘harassment’ about 1 or 2 speech acts?
Clearly you forget that acts of intimidation, abuse and harassment of the morally-irredeemable socially conservative right by the morally-unimpeachable socially progressive left are, by categorical definition, no such things at all.
That’s three contestable generalisations in one sentence. I occasionally read the Daily Mail to get my regular fix of B listers wearing revealing clothes. At least in that dugout the socially conservative right are unimpeachable and the left irredeemable, etc etc exact opposite of aforesaid. The Spectator has less figure-hugging splendour but is pretty down on what they define as left too. Both journals have a bigger voyeurship than Crikey. The fact that Crikey appears to support one or other flavour of left is utterly unremarkable let alone worthy of criticism.
Obviously “the left” get an easy ride in Crikey
yes but it’s not rly about this or that meeja organ’s bias. of course each culture warzz side has its friendzones… it’s about which way the leveraging of institutionalised/State sanctioning power is trending re: the pursuit of purely narcissistic/individualistic/personal grievances using non-private litigation mechanisms. AHRC, criminal laws, even ‘fair go’ defacto ‘State cancellation’ such as sacking from APS jobs, expelling from parties, Senate committee grillings, enquiries into ABC programming etc…none of these were ever supposed to be (mis) used by elites to settle petty personal scores and gripes. they were – are – supposed to be how those of us who can never afford to sue can at least have a shot as recourse for genuine injustice.
let Greenwich and Latham sue each other until they run out of loot, for all I care. but the cynical debasement of the more egalitarian avenues – so hard-won, ffs – can only hurt, as rundle points out, the powerless and vulnerable. also, as rundle acutely and (afaik) notes, such erosion is a wilful and deliberate and desired (and omnipartisan) element of how neoliberal class war fulfills thatcher’s ‘no society’ program.
the rich, always stealing the good stuff the not-rich work hard to put in place. chrs HtW, your pts are well made/taken
True Jack; but irrelevant. Irrelevant too is Greenwich’s rather Tory background.
It is the comment that is being reacted to that actually matters. Latham called him disgusting, then described/accused? a sex act with a level of fantastical and inaccurate detail.
That is not defamation or harassment , and as Rundle points out it lowers the bar.
Latham called him ‘disgusting’ (+ tacky detail) in response to Greenwich calling Latham ‘disgusting’ first. It takes a certain moral mindset to isolate a two-way, dynamic exchange like you’re trying to, Rainbow Lozza: a moral framework/worldview that genuinely thinks one can fling at one’s moral Others, with moral impunity, the kind of insults one bristles at instantly (and to a legalistic victimhood extreme!), when one cops ’em back. It is to me…inexplicable. It seems to me unfathomably double-standarding; dysfunctionally, almost sociopathically, narcissistic. As if only ‘Teh Peeplez Like Us’ have Teh Feelzzzz. Can you not see that, RL? Do you not empathise that Mark Latham – his friends, his family, his kids, his supporters, those who invited him to speak at their church – might object to him being publicly called ‘a disgusting human being’, no less than Greenwich (and ditto et al) did? Rightfully so? That is the disconnect here that I truly struggle with, when it comes to the relentlessly self-centred moral framework of so much of so-called ‘victimhood/identity politics’. This apparent inability to accept that what hurts you…hurts others, no less, when you do it to them.
PS: Oh, and have you ever had anal sex? Latham’s tacky tweet was wrong in multiple ways but from personal experience covering all (ahem) ‘points of view & contingencies’ one can assure you that ‘inaccuracy of detail’ wasn’t one of ’em. **it, as they say, (sometimes) happens. (Again: apologies all. These things are, of course, best left strictly for the intimate privacy of one’s bedroom. Or the SOP shadows, the mardi gras all-nighter, or the footy change room spa, etc etc.)
Are we done here yet, Alex & Rainbow Co? One fervently, fervently…hopes so!
Umm Jack I think we are in furious agreement. He definitely shouldn’t litigate. For the reasons you have mentioned.
More than anything, The Greens, bless ‘em, and so-called progressives such as G’Wich are the only things we have left (the Vic Socialists or the Socialist Alliance are too small) that come close to caring about class. I’m Alex’s case, that class would be privileged gay guys with glass jaws. It brings tears to my eyes that they are worried about a goddam tweet or making sure that gender identities are forcibly ‘recognised’ (as the Vic greens are self destructively doing).
I don’t give a shit about Greenwich’s moral framework any more than I do Latham’s. As far as class goes, I’d probably sympathise more with Latham’s (as your above biography of Greenwich suggests Jack).
I don’t care about either of their hurt feelings, cause neither of them represent the growing underclass of unfortunates (local and global) who pave the golden road for the rest of us. It’s a distraction from what’s actually happening. The planet is burning and the rich get richer.
yep we are definitely in furious agreement. solidarity comrade
You have it back to front.
Greenwich called Latham “a disgusting human being” because he spoke to a xtian group which had invited him to their church to so do.
In reply, Latham accurately described an activity which the general public is required to “celebrate, affirm and support” – no matter the various views, opinions & beliefs prevalent in society – see the upcoming Israel Folau doco.
Due to some personal hang-up, Greenwich claimed to find this prosaic description upsetting.
The pile-on from the usual suspects showed how much his personal opinions/beliefs matter to the alphabet brigade and their confused enablers.
He lost a megapaying career on the strength of his belief that “Drunks, Homosexuals, Adulterers, Liars, Fornicators, Thieves, Atheists, Idolaters. HELL AWAITS YOU. REPENT! ONLY JESUS SAVES”
Oddly, only one of the seven groups mentioned objected and brought on the bien pissant thought police.
But it’s not just “a tweet”. It’s a tweet denigrating someone based on their sexuality (and by extension everyone similar).
So it does not follow that this would make any form of criticism or comment harassment.
‘You’re a disgusting human being, George Pell, because you preside over a church that harbours pedofiles.’
‘You’re a disgusting human being, Scott Morrison, because you lead a party that bullies refugees.’
‘You’re a disgusting human being, Gina Rinehardt, because you run a company that ruthlessly exploits traditional Indigenous land stewards.’
‘You’re a disgusting human being, Katherine Deves, because you think that gender affirmation hormonal and surgical therapy in minors is child abuse and mutilation.’
‘You’re a disgusting human being, Mark Latham, because you gave a speech at a suburban church to people whose opinions about parenting I disagree with.’
‘You’re a disgusting human being, Alex Greenwich, because you engage in a sexual practise that can sometimes get faeces on your penis.’*
It’s a perfect illustration – witlessly stark enough to be a mea culpa, really, Doc – of how narcissistically siloed and stupendously morally arrogant the soft pap prog ‘left’ has become, that you could seriously think that a test case finding that last hypothetical tweet sanctionable abuse/harassment would not have sobering implications regarding all the others.
You’re not a lefty, Doc. Your political tribe is ‘petulant teenager’. Me me me me, MY moral values and MY worldview presumptions are all that count, me me me me me me me me me me!!!
* For all you ickily-squeamish (but prurient, you all went googling to get the exact quote, didn’t you) Crikerians: as a social conservative, I agree wholeheartedly that this degree of explicitness is tacky, invasive and morally undecorous. Sorry, genuinely. But that’s the level of po-facedly vindictive moralising exactitude the LGBTQAI+ community can now look forward to from Latham’s lawyers, over the course of Greenwich’s various legal-procedural tanties. Oh, and any enthusiastic cis/straight anal play partakers will have to cop it too, of course. (More than a few of our upstandingly god-fearing contraception-averse, one understands!).
Crikey, Doc, isn’t it fun and sexy and a real barrel of mystery outcome prizes when we invite lawyers and Big State bureaucrats into our bedrooms. As if Priests weren’t mood-killer enough…
‘You’re a disgusting human being, Alex Greenwich, because you’re a man who engages in a sexual practise with another man that can sometimes get faeces on your penis (ie: gay).’
Fixed that for you.
as apparently usual the mods require us conservatives to fight with one hand tied back, so my longer response will have wait/may not get up.
your tweak makes absolutely zero difference to my point. zilch. unless you insist on fetishising one’s sexual identity and/or practice as somehow qualitatively different to, and to be prioritised over, any other ID/practice component of one’s identity. which would of course be a fair functional definition of ‘sexual narcissism’ – a tedious and embarrassingly anachronistic human characteristic c. 2023 Oz, Doc…though one not wholly unknown to at least some members of our most esteemed rainbow communities, one respectfully suggests. chrs.
Because your point is wrong.
yeah killer argument.
let’s just move on, anonymous person, we really do just occupy different moral and intellectual universes. we’ll both no doubt survive!
all the best.
“…so there!“, thumb back in mouth, sucking furiously.
Yes, but denigration is not harassment. ‘all fundamentalist christians are idiots’. There ya go. You want that to be actionable? Are we all going to be in court for ever?
But that’s not the same thing.
It’s wild how confused you are about this. Just wild.
What’s wild is how many people think (or are pretending to think) a graphic description of anal sex is not only really relevant, but the main issue.
Who made it the ‘main issue’?
But that “immutable personal attribute” is all predicated on “what they think/said/did”.
It has to be. Because the alternative is that a person has to rely on scientific proof of the “immutable personal attribute” and why would ever want to go there?
Even your use of “immutable” has religious / modernist connotations. Ironically hardcore secularists have embraced the same certainty about all things as their religious counterparts in these culture wars.
In this post-modernist age we can all be or believe whatever we want. That is essential to all our freedoms.
This is why these attacks on free speech and expression are so counterproductive and dangerous. We need to be able to be and therefore “think/say/do” whatever want as long as it doesn’t cause significant harm to others. Offence is not significant harm. And we cannot reinforce the notion that an appropriate response to offence is self-harm.
The whole narrative around this is completely misguided, counterproductive, divisive and dangerous.
spot on. the automatic causal linking of offence to self-harm is agency-destroying infantilisation at best. at worst it’s the deliberate, passive-aggressive exploitation of the vulnerable as a rhetorical weapon for cynical purposes.
Isn’t the litigation industry now just another arm of the public relations industry? In a tough attention economy, it’s all about mobilising easily distracted eyeballs around the litigants’ names. But I agree with you, Guy. Greenwich and Faruqi should have just let it go. By running court actions they just give the likes of Latham and Hanson exactly what they’re seeking. You don’t win these battles in court. You slug it out in public.
Alternatively you could behave as a mature adult and ignore the Lathams etc. instead of giving them oxygen.
Yes, Moira is dumb as and I’d reckon the only thing she knows about Oscar Wilde is that he wasn’t straight. Therefore she has no chance of being educated by one of his best quotes: “Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.”
Good to see that Grundle has finally disinterred his old radical, or at least reconnected its latte life support, after years of trying/pretending to believe that the Left (for want of a more convenient term) was “just going through a phase” as the very hungry caterpillar began spinning a cocoon of insanity aka “…the Greens’ kooky cultural policies.” which are doing far more damage to real progressives hopes than anything the moribund Right could manage.
More power to you – less havering and waffling, more clarity is the only way forward.
Indeed. Adam Bandt should every day remind himself that it’s the economy, stupid. Climate change is easily included under that parasol.
Bit of misinformation is this piece. Clinate200’s agenda includes the promotion of greater integrity in politics. It’s been very clear about that. Presumably that’s the reason it has offered its support to Greenwich as a platform for promoting donations.
So it endorses Greenwich’s initial unprovoked labelling of Latham as ‘a disgusting human being’ as an act of enhanced political integrity does it, Woke Woman?
You’d have to ask it. I have made a presumption… which may be correct or incorrect.
https://www.climate200.com.au/lp/alex-greenwich
Yes, fair enough.
Wasn’t “unprovoked”. Was a reaction to a violent crowd at one of Latham’s gee-up gigs where he tried to play the victim.
Oh please. The violent crowd was in response to a group of physically bolshie activists who travelled a long way out of their way to impose themselves bodily and deliberately into someone else’s space, with the express purpose of creating a reaction.
That’s what a material protest is, Smithy. A deliberation provocation. Fair enough. But really, spare us the tediously contrived ‘who, poor widdle innocent us?’ b/s.
LOL. Convenient how they’re suddenly not “soft pap progs”.
Handy to know you are not only OK with insulting people because of their non-heterosexuality, but assaulting them as well.
Can’t say I’m surprised.
Damn right, they are NOT ‘soft pap progs’, pal. Why not, e-invisible man? Coz they aren’t sitting around on their comfortable middle-class backsides in front of a computer ‘DrSmithy’, pretending to be lefties by posting anonymous dreck online.
Re: the usual absurd and offensive strawman verballing: GFY, idiot.