It’s the oldest and lamest sort of political trolling available: Check which terrible things your political opponents have condemned Find something else terrible that’s happened that they haven’t mentioned Disingenuously suggest that that means they support the terrible thing in (2). You’d think it was beneath any media organisation portraying itself as a serious news […]

It’s the oldest and lamest sort of political trolling available:

Check which terrible things your political opponents have condemned Find something else terrible that’s happened that they haven’t mentioned Disingenuously suggest that that means they support the terrible thing in (2).

You’d think it was beneath any media organisation portraying itself as a serious news site. But the ABC actually just published such a piece of trolling by Ted Lapkin from the extreme right IPA, under the outrageously dishonest headline Greens’ conspiracy of silence:



Check out the sinister shot of Bob Brown, shamelessly not commenting specifically on absolutely every individual horrible thing that happens around the world.

It gets stupider and more repulsive:

Based on the Greens’ own moralising rhetoric, one might naturally expect Senator Bob Brown to issue a scathing condemnation of this uniquely gruesome murder. One might think that such self-proclaimed beacons of Greens humanitarianism as Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne or Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon would be organising a sit-in before the Syrian embassy in Canberra. But despite news of Hamza Ali al-Khateeb’s slaying featuring in all major Australian media outlets, a Factiva search of statements and news articles reveals that the Greens have been entirely mum on the topic. In recent days there have been press releases on party’s website that assail the live cattle export trade. There have been statements that bag “big tobacco” on the topic of plain cigarette packaging. But there’s been nary a word about a 13-year-old child who was tortured to death by the henchmen of a brutal despot.

Well, Lapkin might be relieved to know that as it happens Bob Brown did condemn the murder – but even if he hadn’t, so what?

Does every Greens media release need to include a catalogue of contempt (on pain of another condemnathon)?

Do I need to go and dig out all the brutal child murders by tyrannical regimes that have happened since Ted Lapkin started getting his pieces published at The Drum and on which he has never commented?

As one of the commenters to that thread points out:

Hey Ted. No mention of the 95 democracy protestors missing in Bahrain. Or protestor Jawwad al-Shamlan who was found dead with gunshot wounds to the stomach. Oh – thats right – Bahrain is home to the US Fifth Fleet and has the US’s largest military base in the region. I think you will find that the Greens support the struggle for democracy in all countries in the middle-east including those that are US allies.

As another remarks:

And yet, despite your disgust at what has happened to this poor boy. you have no hesitation in using his body as a soap box for your anti Greens rant. Don’t forget to wipe your shoes off on your way out.

Why was this stupid piece of vicious, indefensible polemic published by the ABC? Was this really the best contribution the rightwingers could manage? Is that really all they’ve got? Did it not occur to them how feral the smear was as they were hunting for the dodgy shot of Bob Brown?

What an embarrassment for everyone concerned.

UPDATE: Ted responds in the comments:

Even more embarrassing is your failure to recognise that the torture-murder and genital mutilation of a 13 year old boy is in a barbaric class of its own… And I unapologetically hold the view that a crime so extraordinarily heinous deserves condemnation that is extraordinarily harsh.

Point missed, I think.

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