by Christopher Ruthe
This was written as a riposte to an article in The NZ Listener — but it refused to publish it.
The Latest Myth[1] The Race Relations Commissioner decreed in your magazine, twice, that the British colonialisation of New Zealand was a holocaust[2]. Meng Foon categorically stated that he was comfortable with equating the NZ Maori experience with the holocaust. Asked “are you comfortable with that?” he said, “Yeah.” He went on to double down on that. (Listener 12-12-2020 p.34)
I write on behalf of my Jewish ancestors. Why does NZ’s leading race relations/human rights ‘expert’ dismiss the Holocaust as nothing worse than British colonialization? By denigrating the Holocaust as nothing more than British colonialism ‘writ large’ Commissioner Foon simply resonates with implicit anti Semitism: “Those fucking Jews, they were treated no worse than Maori!”
The word Holocaust describes the specific Nazi policy — the extermination of a race. This happened in NZ? According to Mr Foon it did. He has created a new anti-semitic myth, “Jews as exaggerators”. His reinterpretation of history will now be on the record for future generations of New Zealanders. The holocaust is merely British colonization.
So, I dare speak on behalf of relatives and the 6 million Jews (along with homosexuals, Roma, the mentally disabled, etc.) who were exterminated in the greatest outrage in human history. Their memory is excoriated[3] by the NZ Race Relations Commissioner.
Why did the Race Relations Commissioner, a supposed expert in what words are inappropriate and amount to being hate speech and being racially biased write something totally offensive to Jews? And those who had their families exterminated? Too insignificant, it would appear, compared to the political demands. He agrees with a rewriting of history. He is obviously of the view there was ethnic cleansing in NZ, without a shred of evidence to support such a disturbing claim. And your magazine was happy to broadcast this perception without any chance to try and clarify what really happened in the Holocaust.
[1] “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and repeated.” John F. Kennedy
[2] Holocaust has a specific meaning. It does not refer to ‘progroms’ or other types of “ethnic cleansing”, all of which are reprehensible.
This is a short synopsis of the origin and derivation of the word. “Holocaust”. If your magazine wants further elucidation on this matter please get back to me.
“Human history has few tragedies that rival the magnitude and moral bankruptcy of the Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
In Berlin on January 20, 1942, Hitler held a conference, noting no country wanted to accept Jews. The mass murder was the “final solution” to the so-called Jewish question. The deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race was given a name, “genocide,”.
How did this most infamous of genocides become known as the Holocaust?
The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation ʿolah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God. This word was chosen because in the ultimate manifestation of the Nazi killing program—the extermination camps—the bodies of the victims were consumed whole in crematoria and open fires.”
[3] If you excoriate someone, you let that person know that you really, really disagree with them. This verb goes beyond mere criticism; it implies anger, a harsh and insulting tone, and even a scathing attack.
It would be ironic if Mr Foon, appointed by Andrew Little in July 2019, is the first person charged under his and Jacinda’s intended hate speech laws. —Eds
spanishbride said:
May I republish this article on The BFD?
Waikanae watcher said:
Absolutely.
spanishbride said:
Thank you very much.
spanishbride said:
Are you able to provide a link to the article? I have been unable to verify the quoted text.
Waikanae watcher said:
Christopher Ruthe says “I only have the printed copy of the Listener if that is what you are referring to.”
spanishbride said:
Hi, Christopher, would you mind contacting me via e-mail? I will then be able to explain what I am looking for and why. Thanks so much sb at thebfd.co.nz
spanishbride said:
The article is now live on The BFD.https://thebfd.co.nz/2021/01/02/a-relations-commissioner-completely-unfit-for-purpose/
John Vickerman said:
All credit to Waikanae Watch for publishing the letter from Christopher Ruthe which The Listener, if it had any ethical and non-politically correct sense, would have published, but seemingly chose not to. Also, one wonders what checking procedures The Listener has because the date Christopher referred to in his letter was wrong – the date given in The Listener footer should have been 19 December not 12 December. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate reading many good articles in The Listener – but on this occasion Listener got several things badly screwed up.
The article the Listener referred to was to a large extent based on Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s maiden speech in parliament calling on the Crown to apologise for genocide against Maori. Pardon? Ah, yes, I momentarily forgot that members’ don’t interrupt and let the new member say what they feel obliged to. Genocide? It was most unfortunate for Meng Foon to be pressured into saying what he did in Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s wake (in spite of having been a Mayor of Gisborne for nearly two decades where territorial authorities get away with all sorts of things that parliamentary government could not possibly contemplate).
Christopher Ruthe with sparing words, simply and eloquently spoke on behalf of his ancestors’ with no embellishment – the hard cold truth. I cannot imagine former Race Relations Conciliators’ saying what Meng Foon did. Definitely not Joris de Bres, and most likely not Susan Devoy. The Listener article showed a photo of Meng Foon at Makara school in the 1970 rugby team. At that time and earlier, Makara school was designated a ‘model school’. I knew someone else from that school around the same time who subsequently did exemplary public service work. For a Race Relations Conciliator who has not yet understood the difference between what happened in NZ in the 1860’s, in particular, and the industrial extermination of Jewish people in Europe in the 1940’s, shows an appalling lack of understanding of world history. Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Meng Foon, get real. ‘Autre temps, autre moeurs’. In talking about genocide where is the reference to Te Rauparaha at Wairau and Kaipoi and what happened to Ngati Ira, and Ngati Hei by Te Awara, and Nga Puhi when they got a monopoly on muskets, to just scratch the surface? As an engineer, I have long stood in admiration of Tītokowaru for his military genius (not the social customs which in the end made him a social outcast of his time). Having walked around remnants of his crumbling fortifications after 150 years have readily appreciated the frustration of the ruthless English influence at the time. They had tons of shell and grape (grape a predessor of shrapnel) which had worked well everywhere else in the world but they did not know about rua and flax. To equate this with what Jews faced in the 1940’s is absurd. Why were Tamaki Makarau Maori such a key supplier of food in trade at the same time? Genocide?
What Jewish people (along with homosexuals, Roma, the mentally disabled, etc as Christopher Ruthe pointed out) faced at the same time in Europe was very different – they had no choice – nowhere to escape and any attempt to do so was hopeless – were even forced to walk down steps naked to a chamber where they would be industrially gassed to death for the convenience of the Third Reich – a fully designed and highly developed killing process, particularly Auschwitz II–Birkenau using Zyklon B manufactured by IG Farbenindustrie AG, a massive German conglomerate of the time.
The situation in NZ was very different and it was the best part of 100 years earlier. Of those with a controlling influence in NZ at the time, there were both good and bad people on both sides. ‘Genocide’ is a very specific extreme word. Learn what it means before throwing it around and provide a more evidence including corroboration (an increasingly rare act it seems these days) that it did in fact occur with views from both sides. Ignorance of history is no excuse for a Race Relations Conciliator. Thank you Christopher Ruthe, for daring to speak on behalf of your relatives.
John Vickerman
adolffinkensen said:
In fact, there was a vast holocaust practiced against Maori. It was the genocide carried out against Southern tribes by Hongi Hika and Nga Puhi, in which over thirty percent of the Maori population were slaughtered. Reinhard Heidrich was nowhere near as efficient.
Someone should equip your moon-faced idiot with these facts and remind him it was his British ‘oppressors’ who put a stop to it.
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Ben said:
Chill out, he hates whites way more
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