West Tigers second-rower Josh Aloiai speaks out about his brother Ethan Aloiai's controversial video on the Black Lives Matter movement.
Ethan Aloiai, a brother of the NRL star, posted a video at the beginning of June talking about how his presence at the BLM rally in Auckland was misinterpreted. Ethan was at the rally wearing a MAGA hat ( Make America great again, a slogan associated with US President Donald Trump), which was stolen and burned. Ethan then took to Facebook with an eight-minute video which he called the BLM movement "toxic and dangerous."
The video has received over 6500 comments and over 900 shares including death threats to him and his family.
Josh Aloiai has broken his silence on the video surrounding his whāna, saying to PMN News that "I made it really known to him, I wasn't happy about the video, I wasn't happy about the approach he took to get his message across."
Aloiai acknowledges his brother's message telling PMN, "adding violence to more violence to prove a point is not going to do anything for u, but how he went about showing that message was obviously not good."
The league star's brother has since shared an apology Josh says is sincere. However, he knows that there are still going to be many people unhappy with the video and his standpoint on the topical matter.
"Ethan has made a mistake. He's a good guy. He's one of my best friends as well as my brother, so I'm not appreciating all these people getting violent and sending death threats," Aloiai told PMN news.