I wonder if the woke-friendly executives at Kiwibank ran due diligence on Shaneel Lal before naming him their Young New Zealander of the Year.
If they had, they must have seen the stream of obscene invective he has unleashed on Twitter against anyone who isn’t on board with his polarising agenda.
“Go f**k yourself you stupid asshole” was a typical example – this in January last year in response to a tweeter who mildly rebuked him and his supporters for their aggression toward anyone who disagrees with them. Lal obligingly confirmed her point.
Perhaps Kiwibank did see it and decided to give him the award anyway. Nothing would surprise me.
By conferring the honour on him, the government-owned bank is presenting this divisive figure as a model to young New Zealanders. That’s the extent to which corporate New Zealand has been captured by identity politics cultists.
Lal is fond of the phrase “F**k you”. He has directed it at capitalists (all capitalists, by implication – so including Kiwibank), the New Zealand Herald, cis men and apparently anyone with a police officer in the family.
He seems incapable of civil dialogue. I think he’s seriously disturbed.
He has described the Herald as a “racist, homophobic, classist piece of shit”. That was in 2021, after the paper published something he didn’t like.
Bizarrely, the Herald has rewarded him for his abuse by publishing his almost incoherent columns, including one in which he whipped up hysteria against Posie Parker.
Call it corporate masochism – a phenomenon of wokery in which companies debase themselves by pandering to extremists who hate them. I wonder, did the Herald think before publishing Lal’s rant on the morning of Parker’s abandoned Albert Park rally? It was a call to arms that came close to incitement.
Lal says he doesn’t want to be tolerated or accepted. We are left to conclude that he's happier seeing himself as an oppressed outsider.
He says he doesn’t want to be hated either, yet he seems to revel in identifying himself as hated. It’s how he defines himself. If he were genuinely concerned about countering hate, he wouldn't be so busy stoking the fires of the culture wars.
In any case, do people really hate him? I doubt that most New Zealanders give him a thought. They have more pressing things to worry about.
That must be Lal’s worst nightmare, because I suspect that what he wants above all else is attention. And the way to ensure that is by constantly and noisily playing the victim card.
Lal is obsessed with his sexual identity and the special status he thinks that confers on him – an impression the media reinforce by acting as his promotion agents.
He seems to assume the world shares his fascination, but he’s wrong. Probably 99.9 percent of New Zealanders regard Lal’s sexuality as entirely his own business and are happy for him to live as he chooses.
They don’t hate him or want to do him harm. They just wish he’d shut up.
