The New Yorker tries to understand why Kiwis turned so viciously on Jacinda Ardern…
…I think the nation is still reeling at the naked hatred so many Kiwis have shown with disgusting glee at Jacinda standing down.
The feral excitement by the new redneck Kiwi at celebrating Jacinda in a wood chipper is gasp inducing is it not?
…the radioactive bile that has been vomited up on her has been a shameful low in public debate.
There were many legitimate reasons to disagree with the Prime Minister, this blog did so on many occasions, but there is a difference between reasonable difference and that hate speech she and her family have been buried under.
There is an enormous distance between being critical and abusive. The easily triggered woke have lowered that threshold to such ridiculously subjective levels the outrage olympics that follow seem embarrassingly trite while at the other end of the spectrum, the feral antivaxxer Qanon race baiting redneck confederacy that endlessly threatens violence and sexual assault are as common as hashtags.
We burnt out a good person as our Leader and part of that burn out was the feral manner in which debate via social media has deformed into a battlefield of spiteful threats and abuse.
Cheering the destruction of your enemy because your abuse has worn them down is a shallow victory for the cruel.
Many of the swing voters who are 50+ white tertiary educated and female will have seen the tsunami of social media vilification from the Right and I don’t believe they will want to reward that type of malice.
A new feral redneck Kiwi has been born of the post Covid spite and they revel in their animosity like book burners dancing manically in front of the library bonfire.
A Prime Minister who reset leadership dynamics while juggling national emergencies with an emotional intelligence that will echo down the corridors of history.
Jacinda’s personal legacy will be a never ending security detail decades after she leaves Office because of fears some feral lunatic will attack her or her family.
Let that sink in.
She deserves the success of her book and documentary, the screams of feral outrage from her mutant detractors only adds to the ambience.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
I wish Jacinda success with her book sales but like many will always be disappointed in the outcomes of her government.
Handed an unprecedented majority the Labour Party failed to execute. Forgetting Light Rail and Kiwibuild her failure to move the dial in child poverty still rankles.
Has. Jacinda. Adern. Renounced. Roger. Douglas’s. Neoliberalism? Even once has she said anything about neoliberalism? Ever?
I’d love to love Adern. What’s not to love? She’s adorable, isn’t she? The hair, the beaming smile etc. But what about that bitter taste I get in the back of my mind that causes that kind of pull-focus as seen in horror films where the main character has a sudden horrible realisation. The background pulls back while the talent in the foreground pulls forward? ( It’s a clever gimmick where the camera pulls out on lens focus as the camera itself drives forward on a set of sliders mounted on a dolly rig. )
Adern, surely must realise that we’ve all had enough of liars. We’ve all been to Swindle Town and back.
Jacinda Adern? This is my direct request to you. Drag roger and his neoliberalism out into the bright, sunny light of day and murder the fucker. Sadly, metaphorically of course. @ Adern. You will know as much as anyone about the crime scene that’s AO/NZ’s politic and its economy and now you have one last chance to come clean.
This stinks of roger but can YOU smell him adern?
rnz.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/thedetail/564850/nowhere-to-go-for-more-than-100-000-kiwis-the-worsening-reality-of-homelessness
So does this.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/564156/youth-led-hikoi-highlights-auckland-homelessness-crisis-says-advocate
No one said you had to like her. The point of the article is to question that hatred directed at her.
I said before she got elected that she would never do anything about neoliberalism but was pleasantly surprised by her decision making ability in a crisis – maybe because she didn’t have time to consult the famously cowardly Labour caucus but also because she was emotionally connected (a rare thing in a politician).
I pretty much think that no politician will ever get rid of neoliberalism unless we create a movement to force them to do it – so we should like, stop moaning and get on with it.
According to polls, isn’t Jacinda still polling highest in terms of preferred prime minister ratings?
Obviously her decision making was just way too sensible for the minority of people who are bonkers…those minority of people who think highly of Putin, because he bombed Ukraine to quell the nazi threat, that was never proven to exist…those minority of people who think highly of Trump, because he bombed Iran to quell the nuclear threat, that was never proven to exist.
Go well JKLA, your steadfastness encouraged many during our nations dark days. It took you to kick off the abuse in care inquirey…something that head in the sand National, would have been too afraid to address, depite all their law and order toughness rhetoric that’s caused a doubling in meth use – yeah right.
Stupidity is more dangerous than ideologies.
On April 9th 1945 pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken out of his cell, stripped naked, and hanged to death in a manner designed to cause the utmost suffering.
Sympathetic guards at Flossenburg Concentration Camp had smuggled out his writings amongst which he had theorised that stupidity is more dangerous than ideologies.
In summary, people who believe in an ideology are receptive to facts and can change their minds but stupidity cannot recognise facts and results in a mindset that cannot be altered.
Thus we have Nazis and modern Zionists who believe that their survival depends on using bogus, racial theories to exterminate groups of people.
We have the anti-vaccination groups and climate change deniers, who explicitly deny proven, scientific fact.
We have people terrified of migrants, who have passed stringent health and character tests before they can settle here.
We have the idiocy of a nation which lost wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam imagining it can bomb its way to peace. In the process wasting billions in taxpayers money and raising the world price of oil.
It echoes Voltaire’s ‘ People who believe absurdities commit atrocities’.
The people who hate Jacinda Ardern do so because they can no longer burn witches, or stone ‘adulterous women’ to death.
No doubt there’s a book waiting to be written about how the hatred was manufactured. A book that will tell us something about how the far right operates and coordinates globally. But that’s only part of it – because it will also tell us something about ourselves. In particular it will show us that Michael King was wrong when he optimistically declared in the last chapter of his History of NZ that we are “good-hearted, practical, commonsensical and tolerant” people.
Tragically Michael King has also proven to be wrong when he stated:
” For me, then, to be a Pakeha on the cusp of the 21st century; is not to be European. it is not to be alien in my own country. It is to be a non-Maori New Zealander who is aware and proud of my antecedents, but who identifies as intimately with this land and as strongly as any Maori. It is to be, as I have already argued, another kind of indigenous New Zealander.”
Pakeha have been relegated to visitors.
Allow me to give my side of this story. Like most Lefties, I relished the fact that Jacinda became our PM. And I was more than happy with how she was leading the country leading up to Covid. Then Covid hit. Then Covid hit. At the start of Covid, at a mini family gathering, I, like everyone else was more than happy that Jacinda was in charge. Happy, reassured, confident that we had the right person to lead us through this uncertain time.
Now, fast forward a year or so, to whenever the Big V’s were rolled out. I refused the Big V. Now, I was on the outside of both my family and New Zealand society in general. This was a time for treading carefully, a time of both alienation but awakening at the same time. A time that in one particular way – awakening to the true reality of the world – I am eternally grateful for. As for Jacinda, I will never forget her stark turnaround from preaching togetherness to happily sowing division. Still, my story is not about her, my story is offering a sliver of a glimpse of what somebody on the other side of this affair, experienced.
Michael King is right, we, like most people, are “good-hearted, practical, commonsensical and tolerant”….but what he didn’t account for in his declaration, was a world gripped in fear! Fear is a monumental game changer, thus a dynamic that we all should be forever wary of.
She allowed you a choice and announced the reasons for and against .Her job was to protect the majority and not the 2% that will always be outside for their own reasons .The end result was the right result and it was not Jacinda who spread the division it was the 2% who could not accept the result of their choice that did that and still are .My daughter works in the health system and she could not work out why some in that profession thought it was ok to be allowed to come to work with a virus that was killing world wide and spread it to every other nurse or patient in the hospital .Also how would it be right for a teacher to willingly spread the virus to every kid so they could take it home .As for lock downs we did very well here and the only real lock down was at the border .We were free to walk around the neighbour hood in our bubble where as in the uk my nephew was house bound for 18 months with two other people .Only one of the 3 was allowed to leave home to get food and other house needs the others were inside the whole time .Yes you feel agreaved but her job was to do the best for NZ as a nation not just a small % which is what we have now .I have no doubt had the current dictators been in government the out come would have been worse for us all and the protection afforded us by the vaccination may well have save one or both of us .We had a nurse living next door who chose the same path as yourself and she is no longer with us .
Its my story Gordon, a story of my experience, a story that rarely gets told whenever this topic is raised. Have at me as you may, I am simply grateful that it got aired.
We may disagree on many things A O, but not on this one. You are not alone with your story.
She was the promise of something different..but, when it came down to it, it was more of the same. I don’t think it was hate from most. I think it was disappointment. IMO
A lot of disappointment at how Labour fizzled but there is also a lot of crazy hate. Crazy, crazy hate. Directed at her, also at Clark. Must be truely awful, terrifying.
Well said Kim she had the opportunity to show how a Labour government could change people’s lives for the good but wasted it. She cancelled the future search for gas before ensuring there was sufficient alternative to fill the gap which lead to increase power price which hurt the poor both as workers or consumers.
Few could look back on her 6 years in power and say they were better of for it
‘She was the promise of something different..but, when it came down to it, it was more of the same. I don’t think it was hate from most. I think it was disappointment. IMO’
All true Kim, I agree with you, but should people make death threats, call people scum because they disappoint you? I work in secondary education, people disappoint me every day. Should I abuse them because they do not come up to my expectations?
It seems to me these hatreds go beyond political disagreements. They are alien to a decent society.
You also are also right Stevie no one in power deserves to be put down or personally abused for doing what they believe in but many on this site do it on a daily basis when calling out the government . Most of those in parliament whatever their political perspective could earn more in public business without the consequences of public scrutiny. With the added fear of losing their job every 3 years
I don’t pretend to know everyones mind so I usually just give my personal opinion. I have no hate for Jacinda.. or Clark for that matter. I just morn for what might have been.
the 30000 deaths that never happened what a sick thing to mourn .
Again with the moronic comment Gordon? You are so use to barking at every car you can’t see that my post has no hate for her. Take your meds.
Remember Jacinda had two handbrakes in her time .
First Winston Peters who still continues to be one .
Second a world wide pandemic which stopped the whole world in its tracks .
But NZ still ran a good economy and built homes for people and had a long term plan to continue to do so along with other stuff like the sunken Ferries .
Now we have no plan .
Again I will go in and bat for Jacinda Ardern. The ‘hate trolls’ are still behaving like the ‘simpletons’ they are and I can only imagine their gender and breeding! There is never going to be an excuse for the abuse Jacinda suffered after doing so much for so many of us who did appreciate her. She will go down in history when the likes of John WHO? Christopher WHO? Simon WHO? et al have long been forgotten. Sadly our lovely NZ is now riddled with smug, sorted, GREEDY people who have no idea whatsoever how the other half survive and wouldn’t give a damn anyway!
I agree ,those greedy people did very well under Jacinda and have quickly forgotten the over 6% growth in that time and the mountains of money made building homes and free training of record numbers of trades people .Just training those young people would have been a money grab for some wealthy people along the way .Now that is all gone and we are sliding down the cliff faster than our navy is sinking its ships .
The memoir is published, another take published. In a decade or two it will be the stuff of history. Will political historians look kindly on JA? What will they say about the six years of Labour majority?
What I can recall is her projectory. Ambitious, intelligent and capable but perhaps not far from the truth to say a somewhat reluctant PM, thrust into the limelight after taking the leadership reigns in the led up to the election and in the top job soon after Labour did surprisingly well and cobbled together a coalition. Yes, she stamped her own on the leadership but no doubt had influencers, both in social and economic policy.
And lets be honest, what followed during her leadership would have tested any leader. It came as no surprise she wanted out, imv exaccerbated by the negative views of those who began to hate her and by those who had grown tired of Labour – some uncharted headwinds for sure but also some major disappointments, not to mention what a good many saw as a less than transparent social agenda.
Well said Bozo.
Well said Bozo, Ardern was an outstanding PM.
Jacinda Ardern’s place in NZ history books is already written. She is one of the three most revered PMs this country has ever had, right next to Norm Kirk and Michael Joseph Savage. After the destruction of caring NZ by the two ACT governments under Lange and Bolger, followed by the non-event governments of Clarke and Key, in all four cases where the Finance Minister was the leading figure, Ardern brought a different type of government back to NZ, a caring one. That caring was based on one overriding premise: doing the right thing for the most people possible. Her book highlights those instances where she did just that. Thus, despite the fact of missed opportunities, Ardern deserves her place in history. She was brought down by the 2%. The antivaxxer brigade, the fear mongering over Three Waters, and the lazy ineffectual NZ media. In any other country, she would have won a third and fourth term of government, but not in the face of the Great Kiwi Clobbering Machine and the NZ Tall Poppy Syndrome. Sadly, both these self destructive urges of the Kiwi population prematurely ended Ardern’s premiership and left us with the chaotic mess we now endure.
It must be really tough surviving with all that money.
So much for the homeless and the hungry.
Which has increased 10 fold under National Bob troll.