Something must be in the water, because even professional shit-stirrer Alan Jones has urged Sydney’s anti-lockdown protesters not to gather again this weekend.
It really was a case of The Worst Person You Know Making A Great Point, albeit only for a split-second before Jones returned to his usual antics.
“At no stage have I ever condoned anything that is illegal, and certainly not illegal protest,” Jones said on his self-titled Sky News TV show on Monday night.
“Let me say this clearly. If, as is the case, the Police Commissioner of NSW […] is telling people this weekend not to protest, which presumably, according to the language means any such protest would be illegal, then there must be no illegal protest. It’s that simple.
“I repeat, if the police commissioner is saying don’t, and what’s more anyone defying him will be met with the full force of the law, then my simple statement is you don’t break the law, you don’t provoke the police and you don’t protest.”
Look, it’s not the most damning condemnation of the unsafe and unauthorised protests, but Jones has a huge platform and a lot of people take his word as gospel, so it’s still good to hear something from him nonetheless.
The bad news is that Jones then went on to compare the anti-lockdown demonstrations to last year’s Black Lives Matter protests and the climate justice rallies from this year.
However this is a really shitty and inaccurate comparison for a few reasons.
Firstly, those other protests occurred when there were far fewer daily cases and no lockdown restrictions.
Secondly, masks were mandatory at those protests and marshals handed out spare masks and sanitiser the whole time. The anti-lockdown protest, on the other hand, had hardly any masks but heaps of COVID conspiracy t-shirts and *checks notes* a fucken fire twirler.
Then there’s the fact that we’re currently dealing with the highly-infectious Delta strain, making this outbreak much more severe than previous ones.
Finally, those other protests from last year ultimately had police approval.
Anyway, it’s probably a good thing that Jones was able to muster some sort of condemnation against those anti-lockdown gronks who protested over the weekend. It’s just a pity he had to slam Black Lives Matter protesters in the process.
