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Today is a FREE taste of an Insight Politics article by writer Stephen Berry
Freedom Fighters Dehumanised by Hateful Government Smears
“Rivers of Filth.”
When Covid 19 first arrived on New Zealand’s shores in March 2020, few scientific experts could accurately predict its impact. In many instances they were prophesying deaths in numbers that are now laughable. I didn’t know much better and was willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt, as were the overwhelming majority of terrified New Zealanders. This Labour Government did, until the arrival of Delta then Omicron, a world-leading job at minimising infections and deaths.
While still living in New Zealand until the temporary opening of the travel bubble with Australia in April 2021 I had formed the impression that New Zealand and Australia alike were fortunate to remain relatively untouched by the virus while it overwhelmed nearly every other country in the world in multiple waves. However, the Labour Government refuses to exploit New Zealand’s uniquely advantageous geographical isolation to observe and improve upon the tactics of the rest of the world.
New Zealand’s unemployment levels are artificially low due to historically high inflation and the number of public servants. Only those earning the minimum wage will receive a pay rise that keeps up with inflation this year, due to government diktat, while simultaneously facing the threat of 30% income tax on part of that increased income. Housing has never been more unaffordable despite net immigration dropping 92% from 2020 to 2021. A party that jeered at National for deficit-spending through the Christchurch earthquake and Global Financial Crisis has borrowed and spent more money than any government before. The Labour Government has wreaked this fiscal vandalism despite being too incompetent to spend the money it allocated to its big ticket promises.
In the previous century, incompetent and corrupt totalitarian regimes had to resort to the same survival tactics whenever they grew too large. The sixth Labour Government probably isn’t going to engage in genocide but is adept at the use of other tools: dishonesty, bribery of the press, demonising alternative opinions and research, dehumanising their political opponents and full-frontal attacks.
This Labour Government and those who support it, are becoming increasingly nasty as they become ever more unable to justify the devastation their policies are causing hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders.
The actual number of protestors on the lawn of Parliament isn’t relevant. The few thousand there on any one day are not necessarily the exact same individuals who are there a few days later.
In any case, the sheer weight of numbers doesn’t define the righteousness of your cause. Just a few years ago, a national anti-climate change protest lasting one day, organised by ignorant truants and their manipulative Marxist teachers, did not lead to an infallible government climate policy.
Unfortunately, democracy is a political system that functions primarily on the number of people who hold and support particular opinions.
Only the most deluded and insane would categorically deny that there are some miscreants participating in the anti-vaccine mandate protest outside Parliament. They are though, just a tiny fraction of those participating. Ardern dismisses the entire group as a small minority on the basis that 95% of New Zealand adults have had at least two doses of the Covid vaccine. Yet she will not even listen to the protestors claiming it’s due to the actions of a microscopic minority that organisers have gone to great pains to distance themselves from.
Jacinda Ardern’s Government is not alone in its determination to ignore the protest as irrelevant, disgusting or both. Virtually every MP has done the same, though ACT’s David Seymour and Nicole McKee at least met with the protest organisers to tell them ACT would ignore them for similar reasons.
How sad that on such a unique occasion in which New Zealanders actually organise against their government to defend individual freedom, the best they can hope for is help from Brian Tamaki or Winston Peters.
Over 2600 valuable workers from the health and education sectors, the police, military and corrections departments, have lost their jobs after refusing to comply with the vaccine mandate. Those who have had their careers destroyed and lives ruined for declining the vaccine, are painted as a threat to the survival of the country during the pandemic, while also being prepared as scapegoats should the public health system fail to manage a rise in hospital admissions. Given that the government doesn’t know why the extra billions in dollars it allocated to the mental health system are not being spent, they are being mischievous in blaming a supposed tiny minority of citizens for potential insufficient hospital capacity.
The $55 million handed out to various mainstream media companies through the odiously titled Public Interest Broadcasting Fund is also having a similar influence as we’ve seen attempted by anti-freedom governments of the past.
TV reporter Patrick Gower has stated: “There is absolutely no need for dialogue. I saw a sign there yesterday comparing the Prime Minister to the person who committed March 15. We don’t need dialogue with these people in my view. No need for dialogue. Cops should have been in there ages ago.”
Ironic, given Gower was falling over himself to engage in dialogue with Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern whom he had described as “white supremacist trash”. Then when they made him look like an idiot on national television, he asked for a second chance!
The rhetoric from members of the government has also become so extreme and hateful. They’re the last people who should be legislating ‘you’ll know it when you see it’ hate speech laws.
Pompous nincompoop Grant Robertson, the abusive torturer Speaker Trevor Mallard and vicious, venomous dwarf Michael Wood will not be criticised or condemned by the Prime Minister for their behaviour. Wood has referred to the protestors as “a river of filth”.
This dehumanisation of the freedom-fighting protestors is on a scale rarely seen in our parliament except perhaps when Labour MPs referred to immigrants as a tap that should be turned down.
By her refusal to admonish such rhetoric, Ardern brands her political leadership as that of a sinking ship.
During the previous Labour Government, broadcaster Lindsay Perigo referred to Prime Minister Helen Clark as an “evil bitch”. Jacinda Ardern is widely seen as Clark’s successor as Labour leader, the MP for Mt Albert.
Ardern’s dismissive ignorance of the suffering inflicted by her government makes her a suitable candidate to assume Clark’s other ‘honorific’.
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