Anyone else get a deep sense of satisfaction when bullying backfires?
Oh you’re gonna love this then.
So back in February, this famously racist old white guy wrote another one of his famously racist columns, reckoning (as racist old white men do) that all Māori should spend the national commemorative day in service to white people – who brought them civilization.
You can imagine how that went down. The website eventually removed the column:
Turns out, racist old white guy has a knighthood, and so in no time at all, filmmaker Renae Maihi kicked off a petition to have him stripped of his knighthood, for hate speech. To date, it has 73 thousand signatures and counting.
And of course, racist old white guy did as racist old white men do (particularly rich ones), and has threatened her with legal action. But racist old guy did not stop there.
Māori Professor and researcher Leonie Pihama was just one of the many well known New Zealanders who tweeted her support of Renae, tweeting the hashtag #BobJonesIsARacist.
Sure enough, lawyers were soon in touch with Ms Pihama as well – sending the following:
Grab your popcorn here’s where it gets good….
Rather than respond directly, Leonie posted the letter on her blog, and with surgical precision, outlined the age old craft of SLAPP – where rich people abuse the legal system to silence the underprivileged.
Well NZ Twitter wasn’t havin’ it… commence tweet storm:
His lawyers weren’t safe either….
And as if the hashtag weren’t enough – New Zealand turned him into his own movie genre.
And so, far from retracting the tweet – the letter resulted in two national twitter trends:
And in probably the best sum of up why this is the greatest backfire of the year:
