The knighthood of Sir Ashley Bloomfield has something to teach us about the proper functioning of the elites in any ordered system. Our system is ordered towards evil, but it is still a somewhat ordered system. I will put forward the case that the role Bloomfield played for the regime was deserving of a knighthood, and that actors like Sir Ashley are essential to any regime maintaining order: good or evil.
The “Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit” is a reward for being a faithful servant. Often people complain that it’s not given to people who make great community contributions or those who live truly selfless lives. It’s more often used to reward public service to those who further the ends of the State. That’s exactly what a knight is: one who serves his lord (or lady, in this case).
I spoke with a doctor who studied with Bloomfield and worked at a high level in the COVID response units. He said Bloomfield was always the quiet one who sat at the back of the class, not too outspoken or ambitious. This made him the perfect Director-General of Health during this crisis. He did nothing unique, he implemented global directives and followed the “best practice” set by the public health technocracy. Local doctors and GPs were not consulted or asked about what should be done to best protect their communities – this was a political question rather than a medical one, and Bloomfield was the man for the job. When it came to New Zealand’s COVID response, he did exactly what suited the political order. He presented information day after day in a manner that allowed this Government to maintain maximum control of the population. In combination with the Government’s official propaganda units and manufactured consent from the general public via mass media, everything ran like a well-oiled war machine.
The Government was awkwardly pressured to launch a Royal Commission of Inquiry into their COVID response, but appointing friendly academics and handing out awards now will pad out any unfortunate findings. Even a rigged inquiry can find a thing or two that might look bad in the history books, as was the case with the one for the Christchurch mosque massacre.
Every democratic organisation is run by elites. Every party, bureaucracy, government, and institution. New Zealand’s egalitarianism is a clever lie, one that prevents people from seeing the truth. Forgetting this truth allows the ruling class to hide the truth about their power and motivations. Do their interests align with the common good of those they rule, and can they be held accountable if not? Elites can always insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions on the general population. When you deny the iron law of oligarchy in favour of some pure democratic or meritocratic fantasy, the elites become unaccountable.
Any ordered system needs its Bloomfields: those who will freely wield their institutional influence for purely political ends.
This is where many of our friends in the freedom movement go wrong. What happens after the people’s revolution when Jacinda Ardern and Sir Ashley have been publicly tried and hanged for crimes against humanity? Who will be our new knights and dames? This is the problem of chaotic forces, as many of the freedom movements can only be described. Would any of these people be able to create an ordered system together? Would they have Sir Ashleys in their midst who could flawlessly execute the needs of a political class? Are their media personalities disciplined enough to manufacture new rules of consent for the governed?
Those on the right need to understand and contemplate what to do with political power and whether they’d be able to put the right public servants in positions to reverse New Zealand’s decline in the future. This is why I don’t begrudge Bloomfield his knighthood at a personal level.
Every system, good or evil, requires those who are capable of faithful obedience to the Regime to carry out its political ends and maintain order.