What you are seeing is a media-induced trick. A lizard has crawled out of rural New Zealand angry at vaccine mandates. This lizard was promptly amplified by the NZ Herald into Godzilla, poised to destroy all that is good and holy! But it is just a lizard. If the media’s Godzilla was a real threat, the Herald would refer to it as only a lizard. They want you to think the protests are effective because they don’t want you to consider other ways to express displeasure with the regime.

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Nathan Smith is a former business journalist and columnist at the NBR. He also worked as the chief editor at the New Zealand Initiative policy think tank. He is now a freelance writer and copy editor.