Saturday, February 12, 2022

How tolerant of diversity are we? I mean, really?

I had to go to Wellington last Tuesday afternoon. On the way home, rather than avoid the CBD and take the most direct route onto the Hutt motorway, I decided for no particular reason to go through town. I knew about the protest convoy that had rolled into town earlier that day but assumed it would have been all over by four in the afternoon.

Ha! More fool me. I intended to drive up Molesworth St but found my way blocked by protest vehicles of all shapes and sizes, from massive trucks down to cars that looked as if they were rarely driven further than the nearest supermarket. Most were bedecked with flags - New Zealand flags, tino rangatiratanga flags and others that I didn't recognise - and slogans.

The area around Parliament was hopelessly clogged. No one was directing traffic (I didn’t see a single cop), but an escape route opened up through the bus marshalling area at the bottom of Lambton Quay and I followed a line of cars through to Thorndon Quay and the open road.

Five days later, the protesters are still there. More than 120 have been arrested for trespassing, and some illegally parked vehicles have been moved. Others have been ticketed by council parking wardens, escorted by police. But despite violent clashes with the police on Thursday, more demonstrators kept arriving yesterday and it was obvious the occupants of the protest camp on the lawn in front of Parliament were in no hurry to leave.

What the hell is going on here? Wellington district police commander Superintendent Corrie Parnell described the protest as unprecedented, and I think he’s probably right.

Admittedly there have been bigger protest rallies. I remember massive union marches to Parliament during the industrial unrest of the late 1960s and 70s – in particular, one that followed the Arbitration Court’s nil wage order in 1968. Protests against the Vietnam War, the Security Intelligence Service and the 1981 Springbok tour also attracted thousands – far more, I would guess, than we saw on Tuesday*. Students and unionists typically made up the bulk of the protesters.

But what happened in Wellington this week was different. The protesters of the 60s, 70s and 80s made their point, let off steam and drifted off to the pub. There was anger, but it was often tempered by jollity and humour, especially on those union marches. The mood this time seems darker and more febrile.

And the differences go far beyond that. The public always knew what those protests were about. It was generally clear who organised them and what they were trying to achieve, even if their objectives were sometimes fanciful.

By way of contrast, the organisers of the so-called Freedom Convoy have kept a profile so low as to be invisible.  There seems to be no official spokesman or spokeswoman. Not until today did I learn on Stuff about the identity of at least one of the key figures.

Parnell has remarked on an “absence of leadership” that made it hard for police to deal with organisers. Yet someone initiated and co-ordinated it. These things don’t happen magically and spontaneously. Who’s behind the protest, and why have they apparently been reluctant to step out from the shadows? Public understanding of the protest, and possibly even sympathy for it, might be enhanced if someone was prepared to step forward and coherently explain their purpose. It's called transparency, and its absence breeds suspicion.

Ah yes, their purpose. That’s another thing. While the protest is nominally about the unfairness of the vaccination mandate that stops the unvaxxed from participating in society, even to the point of preventing them from earning a living, the message has been blurred by a miscellany of other grievances, not all of them related: Three Waters, Donald Trump’s supposedly stolen election and Maori sovereignty, to name just three. Plus there’s a strong element of religious fervour.

If there’s a common factor, it’s resentment and distrust of what is seen as a controlling, authoritarian government.  This hostility extends to people who are seen as agents of those in power – most notably the news media. In fact it’s possible that the reason we haven’t heard much from the protest organisers is that reporters have been unwilling, or perhaps too frightened, to seek them out, preferring to get their information from official sources such as the police and politicians. The result is a one-sided view that leaves us inadequately informed about the nature of the event, and the protesters more convinced than ever that the media are aligned with the government against them.

And just as the motivation for the protest hasn’t always been obvious, so too there has been a lack of clarity about the objective – a point made by John Minto, who should know a thing or two about protests. Minto says the Freedom Convoy lacks a strategy and an objective and is therefore bound to fail. That might be an overstatement, but it’s certainly true that the public is unlikely to get behind a protest if they don’t know what its purpose is. This brings us back to the lack of a spokesman or spokeswoman to clearly articulate the protesters’ grievance(s) and objective(s).

Presumably we can assume that if nothing else, the protesters at the very least want to attract wider public support – but there again, they blew it. New Zealanders generally support the right to protest and may even take the view that the grounds of Parliament are a symbolically powerful place to do it, regardless of Trevor Mallard’s preciousness. But tolerance of the right to protest soon runs out when the protesters obstruct other New Zealanders from going about their lawful business, and it runs out even more quickly when protesters abuse people for exercising their freedom of choice by wearing a mask, or when they lose their temper with cafĂ© and shop workers who refuse to serve them because laws over which they have no control say they can’t. That’s no way to build public goodwill.

There’s a massive PR problem, right there. The majority of the protesters may be polite and non-aggressive – in fact I’m sure they are; but if a minority exhibits arrogance, irrational anger and antagonistic behaviour verging on hysteria, that becomes the defining characteristic of the event.

As I was writing this, an acquaintance who supports the protest sent me a link to a 50-minute video in which he wandered among the crowd interviewing people, apparently at random. It’s easy to dismiss the protesters as nutters, conspiracy theorists and people with an anger management problem, all of which is almost certainly true of a few; but many of the interviewees struck me as calm, articulate, intelligent and motivated by valid, deeply felt beliefs. The thought occurred to me that if the mainstream media had taken the trouble to do what the video-maker had done, the public would have a far more accurate picture of this otherwise perplexing event.

Sure, there was some wildly emotive rhetoric and hyperbole. One man referred to his grandfather who fought in the Second World War - allusions to New Zealand soldiers risking their lives for freedom seem almost obligatory in this context - and said “We’re fighting World War Three”. He was worried about the Pfizer vaccine making girls sterile. Another protester referred to MPs as "pieces of shit" and one expressed contempt for the “gutless fucking police” (exactly what he expected them to do  wasn't clear.) But others talked about losing their jobs, having to take their kids out of school, being excluded from family gatherings and being denied access to community facilities such as libraries and swimming pools. Some of it made painful listening. 

These people feel mainstream society has made them outcasts as a result of decisions sincerely made according to their conscience. We may disapprove of their beliefs, but at least we can try to understand and not reflexively condemn them as pariahs. Our attitude to the protesters may be seen as a test of our true tolerance of diversity.

Incidentally, the video I refer to was removed from YouTube hours after being posted.  The video-maker was suspended for 10 days, ostensibly for violating community standards, and put on notice that he risked being banned permanently. And we wonder why people like the Freedom Convoy protesters get paranoid about the suppression of minority views …

The novelist Lloyd Jones has no such problems getting published. In an open letter printed in the country’s biggest-selling newspaper, he expressed a coldly elitist disdain for the protesters – a rabble, he called them – and implied they were no longer New Zealanders. “Prime Minister Ardern says you are part of New Zealand,” Jones wrote. “I beg to differ. You are of New Zealand, but longer part of it.”

“How dare they?” was the tone of Jones’ polemic. It was a chilling demonstration of the ease with which people who think of themselves as liberals can morph into excuse-makers for authoritarianism and enforcers of approved orthodoxy.

This is how the marginalisation, and ultimately the persecution, of outsiders begins. We’re surely better than that.

*Paradoxically, probably the biggest protest march of all was the “Kiwis Care” march of 1981, when 22-year-old sales rep Tania Harris led 50,000 people down Queen St. I say “paradoxically” because it was more in the nature of an anti-protest protest, motivated by public anger over militant unionism. It dwarfed a union march down the same street the previous day, when bystanders booed and hissed at the 4000 marchers.

28 comments:

Madame Blavatsky said...

This is clearly primarily a protest against vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, and the medical apartheid policy that we all live under, although perhaps coloured by other sources of general discontent with government policies and the direction of the country. This Covid restriction-related motivation is likely the reason why it remains opaque and goes largely unmentioned in the corporate media. After all, being explicit about the core motivation would undermine the clearly inaccurate propaganda that says everyone is on board with the medical tyranny. It may even give others ideas, and encourage articulation of the hitherto unvoiced concerns of many. Best to not mention the reasons then, and instead distract observers with irrelevancies and broad-brush slanders.

We have all had our rights taken away, and, by a sleight of hand, they have morphed into mere contingent privileges that are granted and denied at the pleasure of the state. Even if one is currently deemed "fully vaccinated" – an ever-changing, flexible and apparently arbitrary definition – should one wish to exercise the intrinsic human right to bodily autonomy at some future date (perhaps, at mandated booster #6 or thereabouts), you will find that you are in the same second-class citizen boat as someone who has had no shots. Regardless of vaccination status, surely this situation is unacceptable to any thinking person who values personal sovereignty and their civil and human rights. It is therefore supremely ironic that the "anti-mandate" protestors (more accurately "pro-rights" protestors) are dismissed as "fascists", when it is the state who has removed our rights and imposed compliance measures in exchange for contingent privileges, all without any obvious logical or medical justification.


The political class and the protestors understand the reasons and are perfectly aware of the high stakes, while in between there are the bamboozled masses who don't investigate or think beyond what TV news tells them to think, and so perhaps don't appreciate the huge significance and what is at stake. The significance is confirmed by the adversarial approach of the police and the arrests being made, when in contrast, in comparable recent gatherings the police have expressed sympathy and made no arrests (e.g. the various Maori land occupation protests that clearly involved trespass). The difference is that mass protests against Covid restrictions obviously threatens the authority of the state, whereas the latter Maori land protests, or BLM protests, posed no threat at all (and may have even ideologically aligned with the government). We can also clearly conclude that the government cannot explain and defend the purported justifications for its draconian restrictions, because if they could present as case, they would do it. What could be simpler? The fact is that their case is non-existent, and a non-existent case is impossible to defend. Imagine if Jacinda (or any other spokesperson) was confronted with a series of questions from concerned citizens that had not been curated and pre-selected before hand. It would be carnage and brutal to watch, and the narrative would be left a smoking ruin.

So no, we are not at all "tolerant of diversity" when it comes to genuine political dissent. This Wellington protest (and indeed the wave of similar global protests that are gaining momentum daily) is unique in that, in comparison to past gatherings, it expresses dissent and so poses a genuinely serious threat to the Covid narrative (always illogical and tenuous, and currently held together with sellotape and nearing imminent collapse), and consequently a threat to the government's very authority (i.e. it is being increasingly exposed as illegitimate and losing the consent of the governed, due to its cynical deceit and the concrete consequences thereof). This is therefore a seismic event in this country's history, and it's only a start.

Ian P said...

I think people are starting to become aware and extremely nervous of the global parallels and nature of what is going on. Our freedom as human beings is at stake in these 'great reset' ideas, and this radical government's actions confirm that we are just part of this crazy plan. In spite of a muzzled media, it is obvious that other countries are following the same ideology. Our great country used to be defined by a proud and independent stance that we took on controversial issues. My greatest fear is that we no longer have politicians with the guts and true love for New Zealand to deal with this unprecedented threat. Covid is just one distraction being used by our corrupt government towards their 'final solution' as dictated by far greater forces. That's why many are fighting for our freedom and protesting in my opinion. It no longer feels like the New Zealand that we ALL built.

Andy Espersen said...

Very well said, “Unknown”. And just why should we be “tolerant of diversity” when it comes to genuine political dissent??

Karl’s important insight here is that this protest movement is not directed against any one specific issue – basically it is a general protest against the authoritarian way this government has been carrying on during year 2021 in all sort of areas. It is now ostensibly against the vaccine mandate – against the government’s Covid Narrative (always "illogical and tenuous, currently held together with sellotape and nearing imminent collapse" – I like that!).

Our non-functioning, main-media journalistic team perhaps “..........have been unwilling, or perhaps too frightened to seek out [individual protesters]” – as Karl suggests. Will they eventually come to their objective senses?

Our newly elected, arch-conservative 2023 government will hopefully put them right!!

Brendan McNeill said...

Karl

I simply want to express my personal solidarity with the protesters in Wellington; the vaccine mandates are cruel and without merit. If the vaccines actually worked, perhaps the Government could be forgiven. As it stands they are next to useless providing short term limited protection from the virus at best, and come with significant negative side effects that our government and the MSM have done their best to suppress. To their shame, the bulk of our medical profession have participated in this experiment without thought to their obligation to 'first do no harm'.

The mandates are an abrogation of the New Zealand Bill of Rights, and an unprecedented expression of arrogance from all politicians represented by the major parties, each of whom have publicly endorsed the mandates.

Your previous commentators have eloquently outlined the broader issues, and I need only to reiterate that we are at a pivotal time in the democratic history of our young nation. Liberties once lost take generations to regain. This is one battle we cannot afford to lose.


Michael Johnston said...

Thanks for the column Karl. As usual you are a voice of balance and reason, and a bastion of old journalistic values.

I attended the protest for a few hours today. From my perspective a few things in the media narrative, which you also refer to, are overblown or just wrong.

The first is the degree of disruption to the city. Traffic is flowing normally almost everywhere. Lower Molesworth St is blocked between Hill St and Lambton Quay, and that's about it. Given the size of the crowd, things are remarkably normal. It's not obvious that any businesses have their operations compromised, although I might be wrong about that.

Second, I think the main purpose of the protest is clear enough - it's against the vaccine mandate. The constellation of views you mention is also represented, although I saw no reference to Trump and no obvious 'hard right' element. If the media pundits who called the protesters 'white supremacist' are correct, all I can say is that I've never seen so many white supremacists with ta moko in one place before.

Finally, the atmosphere was not at all tense. I witnessed no aggression, physical or verbal. There was music, food, people smoking pot and women handing out chocolate to children. It was much more reminiscent of a hippie festival than a Nuremberg rally. It's been pouring with rain in Wellington today, but morale was high. People took Trevor Mallard's stunt of turning on Parliament's lawn sprinklers in their stride. They put road cones over them to stop them spraying into the air and then dug drainage ditches. Someone placed a sign dubbing the largest puddle 'Lake Mallard' and surrounded it with toy ducks.

It would take a major police action to remove them, and I doubt the police have the stomach for it. And if the politicians think these people are just going to pack up and go home, I suspect they'll be disappointed. There's clearly a strong core with little else to do, having lost their jobs and having been banned from many everyday activities. I guess when a government creates a class of people with little to lose and plenty of time on their hands, this is the kind of result to expect.

Sam said...

Thank you Karl and those who have presented these excellent comments. This page is the only sensible thing I have read on the whole fiasco.

Phil said...

If we had the same protest but a National Government the media would be in the middle of it along side the protestors. Where we are heading as a country is very disturbing.

Doug Longmire said...

Thanks for a very good article Karl.
As usual - the MSM will not report an accurate picture of what is actually happening. They will slant all reporting to support the government, and make the protestors look like a rabble.
However, I view this protest as dress rehearsal for the, what-will-be, massive protests which are inevitable if the government persists with it's repellent, racist, apartheid, He Puapua plan for Maori control of our society, and the destruction of our democracy and our nation.
This protest is just the start.

rivoniaboy said...

“How dare they?” was the tone of Jones’ polemic. It was a chilling demonstration of the ease with which people who think of themselves as liberals can morph into excuse-makers for authoritarianism and enforcers of approved orthodoxy.

"Scratch a liberal and you will find a fascist" Black Panther Slogan.

Doug Longmire said...

The video is still available on line.

Odysseus said...

I dropped off warm dry clothes and supplies to the protest this morning as many others were also doing. I was impressed by the courtesy and genuineness of the people I met. A great mix of Maori and Pakeha too - Jacinda has finally brought us together. These people have suffered a great wrong. The mandates are disproportionate, COVID is now for most people a bad flu at worst, not the Black Death. Their basic human rights have been violated and they have lost their jobs - it disgusts me that any New Zealander can support this. Where are the Rapid Antigen Tests which would allow both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated to quickly ascertain whether they are infectious? This has been a massive government failure. But Ministers are trying to divert attention from their abject failure by portraying the protestors as extremists and a threat. Nothing could be further from the truth from what I have seen.

Paul Crosswell said...

Hi Karl, the quality of critical thought and composition of those thoughts to paper by both your blog and the comments section above are beyond my ken. I read Lloyd Jones column and was disappointed with his slander of fellow kiwis. Barry Soper has been the only MSM journalist that I know of who has ignored Mallards “recommendation” that they not interview the protesters.

pdm said...

` It's called transparency, and its absence breeds suspicion.'

Karl you nailed the reason for the protest right here.

Transparency (and honesty) create trust and since the 2020 election in particular but, even before to some extent there has been a complete lack of transparency and honesty from Ardern and her ministers to the overall detriment of New Zealand and New Zealanders.

Now we have Speaker Mallard making a complete and utter idiot of himself with his grandstanding and oafish responses over the weekend. His actions reflect the complete lack of work/life experience of the current government and its administrative processes as well as that of the people advising them.

Tepee said...

I have some sympathy for the resistance to vaccine mandates and to people showing resistance to the NZ Government's high level of illiberalism. But the pols and media have the whip hand here, given they completely control the narrative. As an aside I must say that from afar I am greatly amused by interviews conducted in Lambton Quay, its blowing a gale and people are wearing masks. If nothing else I realise how effective Ardern et al have been in scaring the population to death.

transpress nz said...

The Freedom Convoy 2022 poster made the 5 points of their Mission Statement clear, of which the first was the most important: End the vaccine mandates and all covid-19 restrictions.

The now now tedious saga that began 2 years ago has run its course, and what we now have is a mutated virus that is more contagious but much less severe than the original. Unlike that one, this one affects the upper respiratory system but does not attack the lungs. There is no justification now for all the restrictions and mandates. It's basically another version of the common cold, and like that will probably always be with us. Those that catch it will trigger a natural immune system response, better than the Pfizer so-called vaccine. In Europe that who had recovered from covid were considered to have had the equivalent of a vax.

That the Ardern government refuses to acknowledge all that says a lot about how convenient it is for the purposes of controlling the people. The Mainstream Media is almost totally dominated by Leftists who side with the present government and act as its propagandists -- they do their best to undermine protestors against it, unless, of course it's a Left Wing cause. Libertarian causes are to be attacked and smeared.

Ricardo said...

This is a luxuriant exposition of left-wing hypocrisy. The protesters are in the main brown and poor. The left elite barely controls an urge to scream for Murant's Red Squad to get in there and "sort them out". Morgan Godfrey can't stop hissing at these "so called" protesters, and he hasn't even been in Wellington.

Just imagine if the cause was Maori Land Rights, Climate Change, Higher Wages...

Would Mallard have turned on the sprinklers?

Russell Parkinson said...

Interesting to see a poll in the online Herald today. Over 11,000 votes and just under 40% support for the protesters. Thats way higher than you would expect.

Russell Parkinson said...

The Herald rapidly closed off its poll on support for the protestors. In 15 minutes it went from 11,000 votes with 38% support to 17,000 votes with 49% support.

Then the Herald shut down the poll. I'm guessing the results won't be the lead story in the Herald any time soon, it just doesn't suit the narrative.

Ross said...

Karl, you must be the only person in the country who is confused about the motives for this protest. I took you as better than this.

Unknown said...

If you look at Brexit and Trump it comes down to psychological makeup: preferring continuity and order over change.
In 1986 the Burke review of immigration set out to create a "truly multi-racial society".

One result of that is a weakening of a sense of belonging.

If you go to a funeral you may dig out the ill fitting suit and arrive in the 1997 Camry, you park it by the Audi, but the class is over looked as you are family. People understand "he was a forcips birth.."

This twitter post explains where people sit
On redistribution workers & liberal graduate professionals are united. But on culture, identity & diversity they are on opposite sides. This lies at the heart of Western realignment (Not just Brexit) Hildebrandt & Jackle 2021
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1492539640145977344

Also listen to "data driven pol sci academic" Eric Kaufmann discussing national populism with Anne Applebaum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuQHrmkgHdQ&t=513s

Here Kim Hill ponders if it is "good luck or good management" that we haven't had national populism here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvTjvUUUeQs

This video contextualizes Jacinda Arderns UN speech in a NZ contest and finishes with Emanuel K___ of Research NZ on diversity post March 15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCKuaN6d-g&t=598s

Orinoco Jones said...

Regardless of what they're protesting for, or against, it's thoroughly enjoyable to see our cosseted MPs forced to confront some of the people they treat with such disdain. Jacinda has, predictably, fumbled it and looks weak. I'm disappointed to see David Seymour and Chris Luxon hiding behind the curtains. They don't have to agree with everything the protesters say to front up and show some anti-government solidarity.

Unknown said...

Natalie said

This protest has united people like no other has done in recent years. These are everyday kiwis who through their own personal medical decision did not want to participate in a worldwide experiment or people who are vaxed but do not like mandates or others who dislike the apartheid created by Jacinda. RAT's should be available for everyone over the counter like most other western countries. As vaxed or unvaxed both get covid a vaccine passport makes little sense.

What gets me is that Jacinda is so out of touch with reality that she doesn't understand that the 90% who did the right thing, 40% were mandated to do the right thing and some did that in order to pay the bills. Not only that, the kids bribed with KFC vouchers or $50 cash, the Uni students who have to get it to attend Uni or the teenagers who have to get it to play sport and be part of society. This is all intended to force and it is force people into getting vaxed. These people may not be at the protest but they are at home supporting the protest in any way they can.

Today on live stream the public was asked to put on hold food donations as they have be inundated and have too much. As per comment above Wellingtonians have offered wet weather gear, gumbboots, a shower or a bed for the night. This is the NZ I want to live in not the one were the PM says don't talk to your neighbor!!!

It is also ironic that the PM says she follows the science but never produces the science she follows for any discourse to happen.

Kit Slater said...

New Zealand has an outstanding record of minimal deaths and cases per capita, better than any other Western nation. All for minimal requirements for compliance. What death rate would these protestors consider acceptable? What damage to one of the world’s best healthcare services would they tolerate? Their individualism stands contrary to Left-wing values of communitarianism, utilitarianism and consequentialism, putting them firmly on the Right. They'll make for strange bed-fellows, indeed.

Ian P said...

A very wise and wonderful woman that we knew many years ago used to say that if everybody in the world did nothing else but look after their neighbour, the world would be a far better place. Nobody's perfect but I feel that was a philosophy that many Kiwis followed unconsciously. It's sort of like really 'being kind', but now we are divided, and good basic human relationships have suffered in the process. Let's get back to where we were, and doing things the Kiwi way.

Unknown said...

Jacinda Ardern on the Black Lives Matter protest "I absolutely understand the sentiment behind them, what they are standing for and what they are standing against," she said.
Jacinda Ardern on the Parliament protest, it looks like "an imported protest"
So a march that is a copy cat protest from the US has her empathy but New Zealanders who are directly impacted by her governments policies are simply mimicking events from overseas.

When she was talking about how business couldn't operate, people movements were restricted and people were unable to go about their daily lives I thought she was referring to her own policies, not the protest.

Mrs Sparks said...

The protest is clearly about vaccine mandates. For those living under this two class system we have lost jobs, the ability to study, to participate in sports even outdoors, to go to restaurants, to go to events. We have been banished and shamed daily in the newspapers and defamed and given no voice. The protest isn't about religious fervour or three waters. It's about discrimination, and totalitarianism, and the bill of rights. It's most importantly about the right to choose what goes into your body not the state. There is a clear message but not through the media. Join the Convoy22 facebook page. The message couldn't be clearer. It's about love and unity and not dividing NZ. It is not the great unwashed it is all classes of people. This is the biggest overreach of the state nz and the world has ever seen. It is deeply wrong. I"m not an anti vaxxer. I have all my normal vaccines. This is an experimental technology and I chose to wait especially for my teenage boys who are at a higher risk of myocarditis.

Karl du Fresne said...

The phrase "the great unwashed", which I used in another post, was meant ironically.

Trev1 said...

The mandates contravene international human rights law under the UN Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (2005). Section 6 of the Declaration makes clear that medical interventions can only be carried out with prior, free and informed consent and that consent can be withdrawn at any time, for any reason "without disadvantage or prejudice". The mandates are coercive and punitive, causing people to lose their jobs and social freedoms. They have made a large number of New Zealanders second class citizens as Ardern enthusiastically anticipated in a widely circulated television interview ("two classes of people, yep, yep"). The Human Rights Commissioner should know this stuff but we haven't heard a peep out of him for weeks. These mandates need to be challenged in the courts. They are illegal and ethically bankrupt.