I see Justin Trudeau as something of a ‘Big Brother’ figure to Jacinda in more ways than one. Not only is he older (50 years old, born 25 December 1971) than Jacinda (41 years old, born 26 July 1981) but he is also taller (1.88 m vs 1.65 m). As well, Justin is an intellectual giant compared to Jacinda, having completed a BA in English and, in a mere four additional years, a BEd. They are very demanding degrees compared to Jacinda’s paltry BA in Communication Studies. Further, aside from politics, Justin’s work experience as a part-time snowboard instructor is a far higher status role than Jacinda’s part-time job in a fish and chip shop.
Yes, where Justin goes Jacinda follows – and this is not just in the travel sense, e.g. Davos, but also in the ideological sense… also Davos, as pictured.
Therefore it is unsurprising that Justin Trudeau’s recent speech on “misinformation” and disinformation echoes Jacinda Ardern’s speeches along similar lines. Ardern’s view has manifested in the NZ Labour Government hiring a Misinformation Officer (cost to the taxpayer of about $100,000) to police communications. What makes the Labour Government think they have cornered the market on truth? I have no idea. The claim is that the role is to speak out against Covid-19 issues but already the role seems to have broadened to misinformation and disinformation generally.
Trudeau announced that the Canadian Government is investing in new tools for security agencies to fight extremism (White Supremacy, of course) and online “misinformation”. He specified that his Government was “working closely with organizations like the Canadian Security Establishment [CSE] around communications”.
Because Jacinda looks up to Justin and because Canada is slightly ahead of us on the ideological curve to dystopian governance, we can see that the next step for NZ is to adopt this narrative. Believably, on her return to NZ, Jacinda will gin up the GSB and announce similar ‘social security’ moves.
But wait! Are such moves really justified? Justin says so! I quote from his press briefing in Vancouver:
“… there is no question that the world is changing rapidly and getting more dangerous… in new ways than ever before… when we look at the prevalence of misinformation, of disinformation…”
Maybe he has a point, so let’s look at Big Brother Justin’s justification’.
Let’s take war. Ukraine and Russia have been in the news a lot recently but not so much as say, Yemen, where war has been going on for years and with many more deaths. Here is a graph of the frequency and deaths from war since WW II, (note that this would include conflicts such as the Iraq war).
I am not seeing an increase in danger; rather, I see a general downward trend.
Let’s instead have a look at ‘deaths and danger’ from disasters and catastrophes. There must be something there with contributions from ‘global warming’ and so on:
Nope – not seeing it mate. Let’s try crime… since it is difficult to parse the international rates let’s just deal with Justin’s home range (his “lived experience”), Canada:
A few bumps, mainly during Justin’s recent tenure, but generally we are still not seeing the increasing danger.
Let’s try something less easily observed but near to the hearts of people like Justin and Jacinda (2017, “capitalism has failed NZ”). Poverty can be dangerous and even lead to deaths or at least a shortened lifespan. Especially, with all these billionaires recently grabbing the money it must be worse!
A big thank you to “Statistics Canada”, the government website, for your help in this area – but I still do not see the need for increased censorship in Canada.
Just before we depart this ridiculousness we’ll come back home to “an increasingly dangerous” NZ and see if things are really getting all that much worse. If they were, then we would expect to see a significant decrease in the life expectancy of Kiwis. Note that the data are until just before Covid, but even including Covid I am pretty sure that, due to Covid mainly killing people 65+, the stats haven’t shifted much.
Life expectancy of Males and Females in New Zealand 2009 – 2019
At this point, I am starting to scratch my head as to exactly what Justin’s justification is for the censorious measures that he is bringing into place. And since the same sort of data can be obtained for and applied to New Zealand, I am wondering if any of this censorship talk of ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ is just an excuse for authoritarianism – to control the narrative and the information around it?
Here is an idea:
When the printing press was invented, there was a massive increase in the dissemination of information. It was a disruptive technology.
Bodies like the Catholic Church were huge fans of the printing press at first. This soured when Martin Luther, on October 31st 1517, pinned his 95 Theses to the church door, complaining, mostly, about the sale of indulgences to enrich the clergy. It was initially a matter of local protest, but Hans Wuft of Wittenberg saw the theses and an opportunity and printed them. Between 1517 and 1520 over 300,000 copies of Luther’s theses were published and worse – read! (They went viral!)
As a result, widely varying points of view came into the public domain. The Pope in Rome and many of the elites didn’t like what was happening and tried to control the whole matter. They tried to have the content coming off the printing presses censored, or the printing machines themselves smashed.
They weren’t the only ones. For example, on Friday, June 7, 1844, dissenters from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints published the one and only issue of an opposition newspaper they called the Nauvoo Expositor. Using inflammatory language, these dissenters voiced their discontent with the practice of plural marriage, Joseph Smith’s teachings on the nature of God from his recent King Follett sermon, and his mixing of religious and civic authority in Nauvoo. On Saturday, June 8, and the following Monday, June 10, the Nauvoo City Council convened to determine a course of action. There were multiple reasons the council felt the need to act. Most significantly, the Saints had experienced violence in Missouri and Ohio and, with tension mounting in Illinois, the council members were concerned about the Expositor’s purported potential to incite further violence against both the Saints and the owners of the press. With the sanction of the city council, Joseph Smith ordered a marshal, with the assistance of the Nauvoo Legion, to destroy the printing press. On Monday evening, June 10, the marshal and his posse of approximately 100 men removed the press, scattered the type, and burned the remaining copies of the newspaper.
If by this time anyone is getting a sense of ’internet deja vu’ then I don’t blame you as it seems like history repeating itself. For example, in 2019, at a French-language school board for southwestern Ontario, the province in which Justin Trudeau was born and where his political power base lies, as a “gesture of reconciliation” (decolonisation?) they burned books in a purge including old encyclopaedias, biographies of French explorers Jacques Cartier and Étienne Brûlé, and even French and Belgian comics, including Tintin, Asterix and Obelix (No!!!), and Lucky Luke. All 4700 were destroyed in a “flame purification” ceremony. An uncensored video for students explained the ritual: “We bury the ashes of racism, discrimination and stereotypes in the hope that we will grow up in an inclusive country where all can live in prosperity and security.”
In summary, the world has been through all this before. This is not a unique situation. It does not require censorship and we had best avoid the mistakes of the past lest this happen:
Bonus information:
