Bluesfest Director Under Fire For Abusive Tirade Following Criticism Of Male-Dominated Lineup
He compared one woman to a Nazi and said she had "nothing meaningful to justify why you continue to breathe".
Bluesfest director Peter Noble has apologised for an abusive tirade directed at a woman who criticised the festival for a lack of female talent announced for next year’s event.
The festival in Byron Bay came under fire earlier this week after revealing a first wave lineup that contained just four musical acts featuring women. Activist group LISTEN slammed the organisers on Facebook, accusing them of showing “women and non binary musicians that they don’t deserve a spot, and if they do, they are not worth getting announced first”.
Driving home their point, LISTEN shared an image created by Instagram account Linesups Without Males and… yeah, it’s pretty bleak.
In comments beneath the Facebook post, the Bluesfest account lashed out at LISTEN, accusing the group of a “poorly researched attack”.
When one woman accused Bluesfest of being a “sausage fest”, the person controlling the Bluesfest account responded with a stream of abuse.
“Attacking events without doing any research on them and starting a media campaign based on your own isms and schisms is the sort of thing that worked well in Nazi Germany,” the account wrote.
“Find someone to attack because you have a screw loose,” it continued. “Bet you are an under or underemployed white privileged nobody with too much time on your hands. Going nowhere fast into a life of depression and loneliness due to you having nothing meaningful to justify why you continue to breathe.”
Noble has since admitted to being the one who sent the abusive message.
“After working from 5am to 11.30pm that night I exploded on someone,” he told The Herald Sun. “I shouldn’t have done it, I will contact that person and apologise … I shouldn’t have said that to that person, I know that, I was just tired of being abused. I had no right to say that to that one person. I’m ashamed of what I did.
At the same time, Noble doubled down on his Nazi analogy — which, for the record, is rarely a good move.
“It is what was done in Nazi Germany, you keep saying a bad thing about someone long enough until you polarise and pillory them until people start to act in the same manner,” he insisted.
“It’s what Trump does. It’s what Turnbull and Peter Dutton do towards the Sudanese. It’s gutter politics, really low stuff.”