Not one officer was in that crowd
The turn towards violence came in Melbourne at our largest gathering. The police had done a pretty fine job of protecting women with buffer zones between us and the rabid trans activists. But this gathering included competing groups of woman-hating losers: trans incels to the left of me and Nazis to the right, and here we were stuck in the middle and blamed by the media and politicians for the Nazi salute that occurred. I’ve been asked following that incident whether I have sympathies with the far right, but seriously, who does? It’s a vile ideology and frankly anyone convinced by it in 2023 is pathetic. John Pesutto, the leader of the Liberals in Victoria, repeated dangerous lies about me and suspended Moira Deeming MP from his party for her association with me.
Much liberal, very freedom of thought and utterance.
This storm gathered pace and in New Zealand it was magnified a hundredfold. There was a case brought to the high court to try to stop me entering the country and their media started a constant spew of lies, insisting I was a dangerous anti-trans Nazi. At the border I had a two-hour interrogation and search, one hotel cancelled my reservation, and in another a threatening note was slid under my door while I slept. I had been told I would be protected by the police. That couldn’t have been further from the truth.
It’s interesting (though tragically not surprising) that the news media worked up the mob by telling lies about her.
The big event, the one that has been in the news, was in Auckland, and the minute I arrived I felt rising fear. As the car pulled up I could see the thousands gathered to oppose me. My security gathered around me and we pushed through the hateful mob to the centre, where the local organisers and attendees were who had come to speak. Where were the police? Not one officer was in that crowd; not one officer was there to protect the brave women who turned up. Within seconds a man had tipped tomato soup all over my head. I continued to live-stream. But over the next few minutes the mob took on a life of its own. A frenzy grew until it was a deafening swell, a modern-day ‘Burn the witch’. Men started ripping down the barriers and charging forward. ‘The police aren’t coming,’ said my head of security. ‘We have to get you out.’ This meant placing me in the centre of my security and some stewards, women who had volunteered to help, pushed through the baying mob. As we moved, we stumbled. I knew that a body on a floor is fair game and ripe for stomping and kicking. When we eventually got to the outer edge of the park, the police did step in and helped get me to a car. They took me to the nearest police station where I was guarded for six hours before I had an escort of three officers to the airport. They didn’t leave until my plane took off.
There you have it – the police abandoned her to the screaming [yes, fascist in the literal sense] mob. It’s beyond belief.
That day I was told emphatically by each police officer and security that had I fallen I would have been killed. Women were injured that day, women who you may never hear about. You will never know their names. They didn’t get to hop on a plane and leave; they have to stay and live in a country that has told them their lives are not worth protecting.
It’s a horror.
It’s clear from the overhead footage that the police made a very conscious decision to not police the event at all. It’s clear from the shots of unmanned barriers being pushed over. It’s clear from the fact that there was no plan (let alone a contingency plan) to remove KJK from the band-stand-thing if necessary. It’s clear from the fact that there was obviously no contingency for kettling.
And so on.
They didn’t police it at all. They hung around on the periphery, perhaps to create the illusion of a police presence, perhaps for plausible deniability. It’s fooling nobody.
We know that the police were under political pressure to discriminate against the TERFs. I don’t care. The police in NZ are civilians and not subject to the whims of politicians. The buck stops with them.
I’m furious at the police. They did nothing to protect the women. Oh, they made a big deal about escorting KJK to the police car AFTER she’d been rescued by the women volunteer stewards and the security she’d paid for, when the only other people around her were members of the press. How brave.
Then they left the other women to be beaten up or killed, for all they cared.
And then they let the man who assaulted her leave the country.
If I were in NZ I’d be very scared indeed.
tigger:
Agreed. That performance of security once Kellie-Jay had escaped the violent mob was exactly that: a performance. It doesn’t make any sense from a security point of view, but it might look good on camera.
Specifically, the cameras that were manned by the press, who were (understandably in their case) not embroiled in the mob.
Those officers didn’t move to contain the violent rampage, they strutted to give the illusion that they’d been in charge all along. This seems a particularly bad move, what with the riot and the skull-cracking of a 70 year old woman and the suppression of free speech and so on. I can’t help but feel it might have worked out better for them if they’d been more conspicuously incompetent.
Fortunately, latsot, there were plenty of other cameras around which tell the truth; and the footage is being spread around the world.
The performance actually looked more as if the police were trying to create a story about arresting KJK and escorting her out of the country to make sure that she didn’t upset any more people. Given that the mob never let her speak, and inflicted dreadful violence on elderly people, that story seems to have fallen rather flat, and been quietly shelved.
What’s everybody getting so worked up about? The protesters were mostly peaceful*, so anyone criticizing them must hate the right to protest or just hate in general.
* … by 2020 CNN and MSNBC standards.
The next proper big #LetWomenSpeak event will be in Dublin on 15th. I’ll be there. I predict the policing will be very different and therefore that the ‘protesters’ will act very differently. We’ll see.
In the meantime and thereafter, there will be a #LetWomenSpeak presence at Speaker’s Corner every week until further notice.
Good.
I am ashamed of my country, ashamed of my city, and ashamed of the ‘journalists’ who rarked up the LBGTQWTF. Most of all I am ashamed of myself because of the relief I felt when I realised I was rostered to work that day.
Alison, you’re not alone with those feelings. I’m trying to redirect some of my shame and anger into writing some formal complaints. I confess in the current climate that also engenders a level of fear for my career.