So this. Ending material deprivation in society fixes so much.

Your regular reminder that the “free speech movement” isn’t about free speech. It’s about dodging the consequences of crude, hateful and venal kōrero: while trying to police what others can say. It’s not freedom, it’s control of the public square.

Can almost smell the Reichstag fire from thousands of miles away www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09...

Look at this, wow. Literally interrupted her being interviewed. Also, love the flop 👏👏👏 youtu.be/4WQcFmIV61g

This post that a friend of my partner's shared on FB potentially explains the Kristin Chenoweth thing, and is frightening.

UC-Berkeley gives Trump administration 160 names “related” to anti-semitism, mostly for voicing support for Palestinians. Judith Butler is among them, she calls this “McCarthyism” UC Berkeley gives Trump administration 160 names in antisemitism probe www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

I just wrote a response to the FSU on my personal blog. Please share and repost - I am proud of my words here. constellation-of-rights.ghost.io/words-are-vi...

If someone is advocating for "debate" as the underpinning for democratic society, but doing it entirely in service of a political movement that is in the process of destroying rule based democratic order, then they're not *really* advocating for debate. It is a cover. A lie.

This piece from FSU NZ claiming “words are not violence” is dangerously naïve. Words don’t just “hurt feelings”—they create environments. They recruit. They dehumanise. www.fsu.nz/blog/words-a...

I just wish Free Speech Union Council Member Jordan Williams would have a word with Taxpayers Union CEO Jordan Williams about how important it is that people learn to live with offence and that penalising people just for what they say is against everything that makes us free, etc, etc ...

Remember when Beck said "we're certainly not going to launch weapons or anything that damages the environment or goes and hurts people"? Yeah, right. Defence chiefs told top US space commander NZ could help by rapidly launching satellites www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

As a scholar of violence and nonviolence I am used to thinking broadly about what constitutes violence beyond what is considered a standard definition. But this is whack, filming the state being violent is an act of resistance, not violence.

Dashed off a quick submission on the Electoral Amendment Bill, an appalling piece of legislation which is removing the right of prisoners to vote, and moving enrolment earlier to disenfranchise marginalised people who are likely to vote against the current govt. Appalling. Closes lunch time today.

Was great to present on this panel and talk about some of the secrecy we have seen here in aotearoa with possible changes to the terrorism suppression act and the proscription of terrorists.

Uk continues to struggle to be a state with sensible democratic freedoms.

Got a response to my OIA about initial 'targeted' consultation about amendments to the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. Includes who was consulted, the emails they recieved, but denies copies of their responses. drive.google.com/drive/folder...

"Benjamin Doyle’s resignation forces the question: whose Parliament is this? If it cannot hold Māori, takatāpui, rainbow, and diverse communities safely, then it fails – Te Tiriti, Parliament and the kaupapa of MMP." waateanews.com/2025/09/06/b... #nzpol

Excited that our Marsden team's chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Field Research, Being There: Relationships and reciprocity in research with activist groups, is out: www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edi...

If we demilitarise and use nonviolent means to do the same tasks - search and rescue, coastguard, peace-keeping, disaster recovery - it will be substantially cheaper to get the same non-shooty results. According to rnz it costs $30,000 per hour to keep these choppers in the air.

They cut the humanities and social sciences to redirect the money to 'real science', and then cut the fund anyway so we were all worse off.

This gets progressively funnier with every use of the term "floppy".

The hateful bullies have succeeded in hounding them out. Green MP Benjamin Doyle resigns from Parliament www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

UK: Florida? Hold my beer.

My mother always told me that if I was feeling bad about myself, I should go help somebody. I’ll have to tell her about these findings.

Let's compromise and place him exactly halfway

Talking about this lovely chap a little (in the context of the fsu) when I give a lecture to @maxsoar.bsky.social pcom students.

This is how dictatorships behave

Soz Australia, but you probably made him a nazi at least as much as us: www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/3...

#NZPol Thankful that Newsroom exists. newsroom.co.nz/2025/09/02/a...

If you are attacking an Indigenous site and people it's not only opposition to immigration that is driving you. It's also an act intended to advance a political, ideological cause that causes serious harm. There are specific laws for that. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Franks Ogilvie are so far into giving law firms a bad name that other law firms are calling them out via sending out letters to relevant clients which basically say "Please don't associate us with this slop...": www.teaonews.co.nz/2025/09/01/t...

When I was working on my masters in 2017 I started using endnote to manage my references and reading and developed about 300 citations. During my PhD it crossed over 3000. A couple of days ago as my post-doc nears an end it crossed over 6,000. The accumulation of 'knowledge' is a weird thing.

Imagine being stuck behind one of the 9 windows that this authoritarian style imagery is now covering up. "Can I be first for a while? Little sun?"

Like all extensions of police powers this one will be overwhelmingly used against particular communities. It's not surprising that the case that they are complaining about is Tamiefuna rather than Smith - surveillance and policing is racialised. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

It is deeply frustrating to see the Ministries for Women and Pacific Peoples positioned as expendable. Equity ministries exist because the system does not treat us equally. Calling their erasure “efficiency” is structural misogyny and racism #nzpol www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Anyone looking for an explanation of Trump's application of the police state to cities in America right now, this article by Evan Sorg is one of the best things I have ever read. It's about Trump 1, but it explains Trump 2, Los Angeles, Washington etc so well. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Interesting reporting by @samsachdeva.bsky.social on Parliament's rush to further criminalise protesting outside people's houses, and some of the process and right to protest concerns that this raises: newsroom.co.nz/2025/08/25/p...

I had a professor of Jewish Studies at UChicago who made the administration very angry because every year he made a proposal for the university to create an on-campus memorial to the worldwide victims of the UChicago economics department.

Sanjana continues to call out the pond scum where the rest of us fear to tread.

I'm seeing a lot of people posting about this bill in terms of a critique of Stephenson (who gives solid a-hole vibes), but it is an implementation of all of the legally-required Ministry of Health review recommendations. www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

New: The Sovereign Files 📂 I recently started posting some case profiles as an online archive: It’s a living project, documenting how sovereignist ideas have played out in NZ since the 90's. 👨‍⚖️⚖️ www.unmaskingextremism.com/media-hub/th...

I see Shane Jones is telegraphing the same 'Great Replacement' narrative, & lie Christchurch terrorist used to justify massacre of 51 Muslims in March 2019. This is not political debate. This is violent extremist rhetoric fuelling racism, endangering communities, & ripping apart social cohesion.

Currently (re)writing about sabotage in settler-colonial contexts, so this is very interesting.

Between Arps getting legal aid to oppose a restraining order, [name suppressed] being on full pay for 5 years while awaiting trial, and a man who promoted the great replacement being a press secretary for govt ministers, a lot of tax payer money has gone to far-right activists in recent times

Yesterday, New Zealand Police revealed they didn't start investigating the espionage soldier until after March 15. Several anti-fascist researchers reported his online activity to the New Zealand Defence Force prior to the Christchurch massacre. 🧵 bsky.app/profile/marc...

🔥 Breaking news 🔥 Rach & Tāmati have chosen to leave the coal bucket after an incredible 23 days. For over 3 wks they occupied a bucket on the Stockton Mine aerial ropeway, preventing use of the aerial ropeway to transport coal out of #BathurstResources Stockton mine. @a22network.bsky.social

Great looking article on the radicalisation (but nonviolence) of the German climate movement: www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....

The commitment and logistics of this astound me, as someone who has participated in occupations of coal mines which lasted a few hours: www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3607...

All good. Awesome. Fine. Yup. www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360...