Defending my song

1. It contained no references to the vaccines or vaccine mandates. Not even a single line of the lyric referenced that. I said that the Government used our Covid stats to paper over racial issues in verse 2 (which many people would agree with), and I established in the first verse that I was for Indigenous rights. ‘They’re building apartments On Indigenous gravesites While the rave sites Keep on killing kids with phoney drugs ‘Cause the bath salts are cheap.’ ‘We’re safer from Covid Than the rest of the planet So we fan attention away from our racial woes, As we laugh at the States.’ This suggests an awareness that we have racial issues, and one foolish choice of words in my Facebook posts shouldn’t have resulted in this sort of scrutiny. People simply chose to cast me as a villain, but I’m significantly more nuanced than that. We do need to preserve Pākehā identity: if my folk song binge proves anything, it’s that white people don’t know our own history, and that is genuinely dangerous. That lack of knowledge is why people buy into the US-inflected alt-right. I’m actually quite anti-American, despite my love of their music and movies. I spent most of 2020 raving about US Cultural Imperialism: it’s one of my favourite topics. My view: one has to know their enemy before one can deconstruct them, and that understanding Pākehā’s book that I used to have brilliantly encapsulates the point of my teaching NZ history via Facebook.
   

2. A student protest getting out-of-hand (the plot from my film) has nothing to do with Parliament. I think that the real world news suggested there was a swell of discontent, but I didn’t reference any religious extremists or anti-vax ideas in my script. It’s about greenies, and obviously modelled on the School Strike 4 Climate and other climate activists. I met several during my travels as an activist (including my shrink!), plus I have my own real-life political activism experience to draw from.
   

3. I also came out clearly in support of migrant rights in the lyrics: ‘We’re scapegoating migrants For structural issues, And our tissues keep on weeping for the royal fam, While our Government waits.’ Here’s my take: if Metiria used Don’s song for her maiden speech, I’d be cool with Greens people using my songs.
   

4. As for the verse which people got shirty about: if my double-take didn’t make it clear that I thought the white supremacists are silly, then stuff the lot of you. ‘They silence reporters Via public relations, While the nation’s inching closer to a civil war Over White vs. Right.’ As I clearly established that I thought building apartments on Indigenous gravesites was a bad idea in the earlier verse, it should be obvious which side I meant was in the right (the ‘right’ actually being the lyric). And as for bare necessities and the working class – again, it’s all these people projecting that I’m a foreigner who have misinterpreted me. I actually grew up in a working-class neighbourhood, and I’m living in one right now too. It’s mostly brown people. I’m not the one with the privilege: that’s my critics. This is why it’s nice to have friends like Tom Petterson, who also thinks identity politics is bullshit, and often writes about that from a socialist perspective.
   

5. 'who'll put up a fight' - so what? It's a socialist anthem, and I'm sure we all learned the Russian Revolution at school. Society is violent. Oppression is violence too. 👍
   

6. I’d like to take this moment to ask my critics to reflect on the prejudices which they brought to my songs and my art: those evil ideas weren’t my intention, but you lot projected them onto me, so I’ll use a Bible quote: “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” .. any takers?