Last week I said that New Zealand was a quasi-Police state.
Sadly, this week it has become one.
We have seen the passage of an egregious and shabby piece of legislation that has allowed warrantless searches and unprecedented spying and control of us all.
In this episode I explain how we slipped from a vibrant democracy to a petty dictatorship, with a failed economy.
It all started with a clever manipulation, then an illegal lockdown, the development of a snitch culture, and an empowered police force and we all prostrated ourselves before the Prime Minister and thanked her for saving us all ever so much.
A clever manipulation
I have been looking at the psychology of communication.
How messages are presented and interpreted.
Particularly with regards to the Chinese virus crisis.
Effective communication is a connection between people that allows for the exchange of thoughts, feelings, and ideas, and leads to mutual understanding.
This exchange is evidenced when a speaker sends a message to which a listener or viewer responds. It seems simple, but it isn’t.
People tend to take the communication process for granted. We generally figure that the communication between two or more people is no big deal. It just works.
Jacinda Ardern has an often mocked degree in communications from Waikato University.
And it really helped her take advantage of the crisis.
Every message consists of content and feeling. The content is what the message is about based on the words used. The feeling connected to the content is expressed through nonverbal cues—body language, gestures, facial expression, tone of voice, inflection, and voice volume.
Jacinda Ardern is very, very good making the words match what her body is saying. Despite her lazy diction and poor elocution she still manages to get the message across.
Whenever there are discrepancies between a message’s content and feeling, confusion is created for the listener—especially if the content and feeling seem to contradict each other.
This is Simon Bridges’ problem. He is a poor communicator. His words do not match his body language or his intonation. It sounds and looks insincere and inauthentic. That is because it is. He’s a fake.
But, So is Ardern , but she’s better at faking it, so she makes it while Bridges doesn’t.
All news sells, but bad news sells best. The virus crisis has lots of bad news for canny politicians to milk.
The saying in the media is “If it bleeds it leads”
So with regard to the pandemic Ardern sold us the really, really, bad news…
Then told us she was going to save us all from it.
She scared everyone so we’d all be thankful.
It was a clever manipulation.
And here is how she did it.
Initially she was telling us that everything was fine.
She thought everything was good because the Ministry of Health said on the 24th of January that the risk of catching the Chinese virus was very low. Look it up, I did, and that’s what they said.
On the 25th of February she made a state visit to Fiji, flying the Air Force 757 up there and then she went to Australia so she could insult Scott Morrison complete with the back drop of the Opera House as she stood at Kirribilli House.
Italy was already in lockdown, people were already dying outside of China, and our Prime minister was gallivanting about the Pacific.
But then something changed. And so did the messaging.
Ardern had to frighten us in order to get us to meekly comply with what we now know was an illegal lockdown.
So out came the frighteners.
She started claiming that tens of thousands would die.
Note she said tens of thousands WILL die.
This was just three days after stating that rumours of a lockdown were false. And she is announcing that contrary to her earlier assertions, that they were now going to lock us all down.
So she frightened us.
What did she use to make this claim?
Well, three reports, two from the University of Otago and one from a Professor Physics, one Shaun Hendy. You may remember this tool. He was the one who used buses and trains for a year to travel the country instead of flying.
But here is the kicker, every single one of those models was based on the now thoroughly discredited models of the most wrong predictor of pandemic death tolls in the world, Neil Ferguson from Imperial College.
Most Western countries used that flawed model, and it has been described as worse than Sim City but without the cute graphics.
A flawed model that produced more flawed models, all of which said that 80,000 people would die from the Chinese virus in New Zealand.
Big scary numbers. Big scary numbers well communicated by someone skilled at fooling everyone.
80,000 WILL die…unless you do what we say.
And fool you she did. Everyone complied, because you were scared into it.
It was a cynical and clever manipulation, and we all fell for it.
You don’t hear much now from Neil Ferguson, the useful idiot has served his purpose, but those reports and models the prime minister used still stand. They shouldn’t.
They are all inconvenient lies that hoodwinked a country.
She knowingly and cynically used Ferguson and Hendry and Siouxsie Wiles then and they aren’t convenient anymore.
Once we were frightened into compliance the hard part was done. The next six weeks simply cemented into everyone’s minds the next step of the messaging and brain-washing, that we went hard and early, and therefore Jacinda Ardern saved us all from the scary virus.
We complied, they illegally locked us down, every other voice was shut down and the media never questioned it at all, such was the strength of the propaganda.
The big lie is a propaganda technique, famously explained by Joseph Goebbels, when he said
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. “
Most people stop the quote there, but what Goebbels said next explains precisely what happened over 8 weeks in New Zealand.
“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.
It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Now that you can see it, you can see the big lie, and the next big lie was that we went “hard and early”.
But did we?
Did we really go hard and early?
Well, no.
I prepared a timeline to find out if we really did go “hard and early”.
It turns out we didn’t do either.
As I mentioned earlier on the 24th of January both the Ministry of Health and Jacinda Ardern said that the risk of catching the Chinese virus was very low.
On the 27th of January Ministry of Health staff were meeting travelers from China.
Were there any tests? No. Were any put in quarantine? No.
So what were these Health wallahs doing? Well, Handing out pamphlets. I dare say most ended up in the bins 30 metres further down the concourse.
On January 31st Donald Trump banned all foreign nationals who had travelled in Mainland China within 14 days from entering the United States.
What did we do? Nothing is what. All our media joined in with the Democrats in calling Trump a racist.
Yet three days later, on the 2nd of February, New Zealand joined the US and Australia in banning foreign nationals who had traveled thru China. But it was called a temporary ban.
Anyone else was free to enter. Importantly there were still three flights a day landing at Auckland airport from China.
WHO had declared the Chinese virus was a “public health emergency of international concern”
On the 2nd of February people started dying outside of China.
And on the 8th of February two Kiwis aboard the Diamond Princess came down with the virus as the cruise industry began to get hit.
On the 17th of February the first person outside of Asia died in France.
And on the 19th Iran’s first patient was notified.
By February 22 Italy had quarantine 50,000 in Lombardy.
But despite all of that, on the 25th of February, Ardern made a state visit to Fiji, flying the Air Force 757 up there and then she then she went to Australia so she could insult Scott Morrisson complete with the back drop of the Opera House as she stood at Kirribilli House.
All good. Nothing to see here. Slim chance of catching the virus.
But Italy was already in lockdown, people were already dying outside of China, and our Prime minister was gallivanting about the Pacific.
Three days later we had our first case and it was still February. Like most cases to come this case was from someone with international travel and from Iran.
Only after this case was notified were visitors arriving from Iran banned. Everyone else could sail through the border.
But the proverbial horse had already bolted, through the barely secured barn door.
On February 28 the Ministry of Health staff began meeting direct flights landing at New Zealand airports from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand.
Still only giving out pamphlets, still no testing, still no quarantine requirements.
And the general public started to react, flooding shops and stripping shelves bare. But the government was still saying there was nothing to see here.
On March 1 the first death in Australia occurred. Our borders with Australia were still wide open.
On March 2 someone presented a petition to parliament demanding the borders be closed. It was ignored.
Two days later Jacinda Ardern stated at a press conference that the chances of catching the Wu Flu from asymptomatic people were very, very low.
We had little to no testing at this stage and neither did the world. So it was impossible for her to even make that claim.
Yet make it she did. In other words don’t panic, just like Corporal Jones from Dad’s Army.
Still not hard and certainly not early.
For the next four days we had a new case every day. On March 6 the Ministry of Health presented a report recommending we close our borders and quarantine arrivals.
It was ignored.
The government opted for a second option, asking travelers to “self-isolate”.
They were relying on trust. It certainly wasn’t hard, nor early.
On March 8, Italy locked down 16 million people.
And on March 11 WHO declared a global pandemic.
On March 13 Donald Trump banned travel from Europe. Our borders were still wide open. No quarantine, no testing, just pamphlets.
That was the same day that Auckland Council shut down Pasifika, and the same day the Prime Minister said that Christchurch commemorations would still go ahead on March 15.
We had by this time 5 days with no new cases. A strange silence in reporting that still shows up on the charts as a large flat line.
The next day all hell would break loose. The Christchurch City cancelled Ardern’s hugfest. The sixth case was also notified and the government implemented the second option asking for all who entered the country to self isolate. Cruise ships were told to sling their hooks.
But what did self-isolation entail? Certainly not a government supervised quarantine. It was simply a promise from the traveler that they would “self-isolate”
On March 15 the Ruby Princess cluster in Napier began, so the cruise ship ban was late and soft rather than hard and early.
We had two new cases. The words the Prime Minister used now changed and geard the first use of the words “hard and early”.
If only it were true. Our borders were still open and there were no quarantines in place.
On March 16 Ardern got stroppy as the forlorn hope that visitors would self-isolate was obvious to even Blind Freddy.
She declared that any foreigners who refused to sel-isolate would be deported. It didn’t matter that she lacked the legal framework to say it.
She just said it anyway.
St Patrick’s Day saw the start of another large cluster in Matamata. All cases are people who have traveled overseas. How could they have brought this back if we went hard and early?
On March 19, nearly a month after her trip around the Pacific Ardern finally closed the borders to all foreign nationals.
Then on March 19, as people were ransacking supermarkets and people were preparing for lockdown, the Prime Minister made a public statement that rumour of a lockdown were fake news.
Listen
There you have it, Ardern declared that the government, and her were the single source of truth.
No one else, just them. Not media, just Ardern and Ashley Bloomfield.
Trust us we tell the truth, there is no lock down planned.
Except they were lying.
Because just two days later the Prime Minister interrupted television broadcasts, purloined the airwaves and told use all that there was a new four level alert system and that we were at level two.
She told us tens of thousands WILL die.
She asked that older folks stay at home. Asked that non-essential travel cease and to get ready for an escalation. She frightened everyone into complying by stating that tens of thousands will die.
She also told us that because she had a plan we would be saved, but we had to do as we were told. Hard and early was used often.
Two days later the total cases passe 100. And just two days after Level two we were now at Level three. With a promise to go to full alert level four in 48 hours.
A state of emergency was declared one month to the day since Ardern was gallivanting around the Pacific.
And the next day were were in lockdown.
But it wasn’t until April 9 we had full border control with strict quarantine. Which was also all Illegal.
Hard and Early was nothing but a slogan, from someone who was cynically exploiting fear in order to illegally control the population.
Her slogans were effective whilst at the same time being a lie.
We didn’t go hard nor did we go early.
But what was to come next was far more sinister as New Zealand slipped into totalitarianism in the space of a few short weeks.
Well done New Zealand, we are now a Police state
Let me explain how we got there.
Firstly the government had to decide that they wanted to control us. Then they had to decide how they were going to do it.
They came to the decision to control us rather slowly as I’ve just outlined.
That happened some time in March.
Once that happened we were delivered a world class display of propaganda that would have made Joseph Goebbels blush.
They told the big lie and convinced us that we were going to die unless we did as we were told.
The lie was so big and so scary that it worked. New Zealand was locked down, and the Police despite a legal opinion from Crown Law that said the lockdown was illegal aided and abetted the government.
They knew on March 28, just three days after the lock down begun, that the actions of the government were illegal.
They had a decision to make, they could uphold the rule of law and tell the government they couldn’t do what was asked of them.
Or, tug their forelocks and do the bidding of their political masters.
They chose the latter.
At that point, just three days into the lockdown, New Zealand became an illegal Police state.
Essentially the government had performed a coup and the majority of the public got on their knees and praised Jacinda Ardern for saving them.
Kiwis surrendered their hard won freedoms in a matter of days, out of fear, based on a big lie, that tens of thousands WILL die.
And meekly, we complied.
Now comes the really sinister part.
Any good police state requires a bunch of brown shirts. We had that bunch of brown shirts, except they wore blue and had “Police” on their cars.
To make the brown shirts more effective though, you need to turn citizens against each other.
And that is precisely what the Prime Minister and her Police, now comfortable in their new jackboots did.
They established a snitch line, they promoted it.
The Prime Minister, who perhaps should now have the title Chancellor, or maybe Gauleiter, even encouraged the media to snitch on businesses.
There she was demanding the details of stroppy business owners bucking her illegal edicts.
The snitch line was inundated as Kiwis turned their backs on a lifetime of loathing snitches and joyfully turned on their fellow citizens who dared to enjoy freedom or wanting to make a living.
The media gleefully reported on the jack-booted Police shutting down businesses. They too are now part of the arms of the state, good little propagandists that they.
The next step goes further. Like the Nazis in Germany and Austria the state now wants to know where you are going and who you are seeing.
And the shopkeepers of New Zealand are complying. Recording names and addresses and cellphones.
At the same time, realising that they were rumbled as to the illegality of lockdown, and despite the assurances of our new Reich Attorney General, the Heinrich Himmler of the Labour party, David Parker, that everything was pretty legal and there were no gaps in the law, they rushed legislation through parliament in a bit over 24 hours to legalise that which was illegal.
They gave their new Reich Police, with the shiny jack boots, the ability to kick in any door in the land without having to trifle with a warrant.
The transformation from a good little democracy to a fully fledged Police state with supernumerary powers
And the vast majority of people thanked the Blessed Jacinda Ardern, who must now surely be close to being beatified.
All our freedoms gone, all now controlled by a Politburo, and enforced by Police with more powers than they’d ever had before and assisted by a citizen army of snitches.
It sounds melodramatic, but that is what has happened.
We were let down by Police, let down each other and our opposition said they tried to help them do it but they were rejected.
Well that’s alright then!
What’s next?
Well if history serves us well in knowing what happened before then we are but a very short step from having to sew yellow marker on our clothes.
And that is precisely what is going to happen, except they will call it an app, and the dopey and stunned citizenry will comply with that too.
Do you trust the government to not use that power against you once they work out how bloody convenient is for monitoring you all?
Not bloody likely.
Do you trust to relinquish their new found powers once this virus is sorted?
Not bloody likely.
And do you trust Gauleiter Ardern to give us back our freedoms that we once had without a single bit of the new powers retained, just in case.
Not bloody likely.
And where were those soldiers of the left who bravely fought the excesses of the John Key government and their extended spying powers that are now being used by Gauleiter Ardern?
No. Where. To. Be. Seen. Silence, except for the sound of crickets chirping.
Where was the Human Rights Commission?
More crickets.
Where were the people opposing these excesses?
Well, that’s easy, cowering at home under a quarantine when we didn’t even quarantine new arrivals into the country.
We quivered in fear, and lost our country.
I am disgusted.
Jacinda Ardern isn’t a hero. She is a shabby little dictator with poor elocution drunk on the power she gave herself.
She’s every bit the same and much, much worse than John Key.
But don’t worry lieblings, she will save us from the next catastrophe, one she created to continue Goebbels cycle of control.
You see they will be the only ones who can save us from the economic disaster that has befallen us because of the original disaster which as you’ve been told, was that nasty virus.
Can you see it now? Have I made the case?
God Defend New Zealand because there is no one left to do that anymore.
Summary
They keep saying these are unprecedented times. But they are wrong.
We have seen all this before.
In Russia the starving masses, destitute and war weary threw off the shackles of Imperial Russia and killed the Czar, ushering in a new period of citizen control.
The crisis was used to usurp and then replace the unfettered power of the Czar with that of the Politburo.
Lenin gave way to Stalin and brutality stalked their land for 70 years until glasnost. The Iron Curtain fell but not before millions died.
In 1933 The Germans, shell shocked from the dual pains of crushing reparations from WWI and the great Depression, voted in a failed artist from Austria who then used the democracy of the Weimar Republic to pervert then subvert the rule of law to gain great power.
Another series of crisis were used to empower the ruling party. First the financial pressures of reparations and the depression, then the appalling victimisation of Jews and finally a massive war that destroyed the country and millions of its citizens.
And so here we are fighting another war. A silent virus that kills. Governments around the world subjugated their citizens, locked them down, told them to comply and none more so than here.
Jacinda Ardern, a woman who has never had a real job, used a crisis to wipe the failed history of her past three years.
No one cares now that the 100,000 houses or the train to the airport never materialised.
No one sure as hell cares about child poverty anymore.
And no one cares about climate change either.
She saved us and that’s all that matters.
But just like Germany in 1933 we are now going to have a depression.
Another crisis to milk.
And Just like 1933 we have an empowered Police force that chose the government over the rule of law.
And we’ve developed a snitch culture ratting out the non-compliant.
Next we will have the modern equivalent of a yellow star with a contact tracing app.
And it is all for our own good don’t we see.
I can’t wait until they sell us a ticket to a new state provided housing development.
Run along now, catch the Freedom Express, there is a NZ on Air funded band awaiting us at the station, and a nice hot shower to wash the travel weariness from our tired downtrodden bodies.
Work Sets You Free remember.
