Keith Melville

I couldn’t agree more with Mawera Karetai on her lengthy explanation in Wednesday’s Beacon, for what is meant by her term – manufactured outrage –and how it poses a threat to our fragile democracy.

She says as we draw closer to the general election, social media posts are being filled with claims designed to inflame rather than inform.

I well remember being crucified in such a post running up to the local body elections last year when I wrote an opinion piece outlining my opposition to Māori wards.

The main point of my argument was that the Māori ward concept undermined democratic ideals such as one-person-one-vote and fair representation for all.

That drew a claim that I was repeating a far-right catchcry and was spreading misinformation.

As an old-fashioned liberal who believes hard-won democratic values, including freedom of speech and the right to vote, deserve protection against the extremes of left and right, I was stunned to find myself associated with the far right – Nazis and their fellow travellers, whose common characteristic is violence against their enemies, real or imagined.

The person who manufactured the outrage against me was Dr Karetai.

At the time, Dr Karetai also wrongly and nonsensically claimed that I was saying Māori wards would give Māori voters two votes, one on the general roll and one on the Māori roll.

Aside from Dr Karetai forgetting about how she once manufactured some outrage herself, I fully agree with her when she describes it as “the deliberate engineering of emotional responses, particularly anger and fear, to drive political behaviour”.