Friendlyjordies Equates Triple J to the Group Behind the Rwandan Genocide

Australia may have its own mini-Logan Paul situation brewing, as backlash grows against friendlyjordies for his hot take on the #changethedate debate. In a video entitled "The Truth About #ChangeTheDate," the YouTube celebrity argued there’s no need to change the date because “no one in the country is celebrating a genocide.”

Friendlyjordies, real name Jordan Shanks, goes on to say that he’d asked “the two Aboriginal guys I know, one who didn't give a shit and the second who didn't give a shit either—he just wants the date change because his grandma feels sad about it.”

“From what I can gather, only a slim majority of you [Indigenous Australians] even want to date changed,” Shanks says in the video, citing an article from The Guardian that says only 54 percent of Indigenous Australian want a date change. “If you’re from Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, tell me if I’m that off the mark."

“Friendlyjordies is a joke," Polynesian–Aboriginal writer Enoch Mailangi told VICE.

According to Mailangi, Shanks' source for the 54 percent figure comes from an online poll run by research group McNair. “There’s no actual information on how many Indigenous people answered the poll. It could have been 10 participants for all we know,” Mailangi explained.

Former UTS Students Association Indigenous Officer, Maddy Norris, also weighed in telling VICE that Shanks is “totally insensitive and tone deaf, and shouldn't be speaking on Aboriginal issues he clearly knows nothing about.”

Early on in his 10-minute video, Shanks explains he's also been a victim of ethnic cleansing. “I’ve got Croatians and Bosnians in my family," he says. "My people endured major war crimes and a genocide in my lifetime.”

But he saves the majority of his scorn for the Australian media, particularly youth broadcaster Triple J, which this year moved its Hottest 100 Countdown from January 26. "They are such vassals of groupthink it is just pure, circumstantial luck this isn't 1994 Rwanda," friendlyjordies says, "because if it was, Triple J would just be Hutu Power FM except with more nasal pauses."

During the Rwandan Genocide, the Hutu-led government slaughtered somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic minority.

“If [friendlyjordies] really wanted to partake in any meaningful conversation surrounding this date he wouldn’t compare the genocides and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous people globally," Mailangi says. "And he'd get his facts right."

We're not going to link to Shanks' video here, but you can check it out on YouTube if you feel compelled to watch 10 minutes of Reject Shop costume changes.

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