Jacinda Ardern follows her mentor Helen Clark in more than just alarming dentistry: like Clark, and indeed predecessor David Lange, Ardern is determined to turn New Zealand into the world’s leading suppository of bad ideas. Having “led the world” on nuclear disarmament (spoiler: it didn’t), NZ Labor tells anyone who listens (an increasingly small number) that it led the world in Covid management (I don’t even need to post a spoiler alert on that one) and gun control (just pay no attention to all the shootings in Auckland).
Ardern, thoroughly lost in her onanistic delusions, now wants to convince the world that New Zealand is leading the way in eradicating free speech.
For once, she’s actually right.
As with many dangerous progressive ambitions, this one began with the noblest of intentions. The crazed massacre of 51 people in two Christchurch mosques streamed live on the internet by the gunman on March 15, 2019 prompted Ardern to find ways to stop terrorists exploiting the internet.
More accurately, it prompted Ardern to find ways to exploit tragedy in order to impose all-encompassing state control on free expression. Unsurprisingly, not just increasingly authoritarian governments, but Big Tech oligarchs jumped on the bandwagon.
What may have seem a plausible excuse to those frightened out of rational thought by terrorism was exposed for what it really was, during the Covid pandemic.
Under the guise of fighting the pandemic, the tech giants have launched a dangerous war on heterodoxy that preferences the views of the progressive elite. Seriously credentialled medical academics from leading universities were shut out of the debate over the wisdom of lockdowns and the safety of vaccines by algorithms that bar them from contributing to online discussion or buried their opinions so far down the search engine you’d have to scroll for 50 years to find them.
This attack on free scientific debate trespassed upon the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. In Victoria, patient records were seized from surgeries without a warrant. Kangaroo courts banned experienced doctors from practising for diverging from the official Covid line.
Every small, illiberal step established a staging post for new assaults on freedoms we’d foolishly imagined were sacrosanct in a liberal democracy such as ours.
Ardern’s own language gives away the game: she explicitly dubs free speech “a weapon of war”. That she sees open debate as a “war” says everything about her authoritarian mindset.
Agree with the government and Big Tech or you’re literally an enemy of the state.
Ardern hides behind a fatuous cloak of sanctimony, wringing her hands that, “How do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble?”
In other words, Ardern is prepared to trample, not just the law (New Zealand’s own Bill of Rights, for example, which supposedly guarantees the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference and the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form) but moral debate. In her view, anyone who disagrees is not just wrong, but an enemy on a par with an invading army.
Claims as far-reaching as these demand debate. Ardern, however, hubristically insists there should be none. Perhaps this is because she is convinced her conclusions on climate change are beyond doubt. More likely, she fears their inability to stand up to scrutiny. Why else would she fear debate?
The Australian
This is always the reason authoritarians fear debate. “When you tear out a man’s tongue,” as George R. R. Martin writes, or indeed when you take down his YouTube video, “You’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
Jacinda Ardern is clearly very, very afraid of what a great many people might say. This is why she goes to such lengths to keep public appearances under wraps — and why she wants to silence everyone who might criticise her on the internet.