Posted on 11/27/2021 1:24:33 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
… As New Zealand shifts to a policy of “living with the virus,” residents accustomed to living virtually Covid-free for most of the pandemic are being confronted by rising case numbers and widening vaccine mandates. Opposition to vaccination as well as frustration with ongoing pandemic restrictions is fueling a small but vocal protest movement inspired in part by American politics.
In a working paper published in November, a team of researchers in New Zealand said there had been a “sharp increase in the popularity and intensity” of disinformation around Covid-19 since August.
The researchers said the disinformation was “being used as a kind of Trojan horse” to coax New Zealanders from vaccine hesitancy to vaccine resistance, and then to the embrace of far-right ideologies like white supremacy and extreme misogyny. Some of the most extreme content, they said, comes from overseas, particularly Australia and the United States.
At anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests in cities like Wellington and Christchurch, “Make America Great Again” hats and flags from the QAnon conspiracy theory movement are visible among the crowds. Sam Brett, a student at the University of Canterbury who attended recent protests for his doctoral research, said they felt like a “miniature, New Zealand version of a Trump rally.”
The protests often feature “powerful, charismatic speakers,” Brett said, who cast the government as “maliciously trying to take away people’s rights.”
Paul Buchanan, an Auckland-based security analyst and former consultant to U.S. intelligence services, said he was concerned by the “importation of U.S.-style populist rhetoric” into New Zealand’s anti-vaccination movement, characterizing it as “tinged with violence and vulgar, dehumanizing disrespect for political and social opponents.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Self-fulfilling prophecies are what I think you’ll get when enough people dive down the conspiracy theory rabbit-hole
Anyway, if you want to discuss it, to find out more, or anything, I'm happy to try and answer questions. Talk about what is really happening (if I know - I know a lot but not necessarily every detail) and why - I'm open to that.
I don’t need to believe a single one of those extreme claims that you mentioned to believe that Australia is heading down the path to dictatorship. People making extreme claims that may or may not be true doesn’t negate the very REAL things that are happening there.
If it makes you feel better, I think the very same thing about the USA.
Interesting that I replied to two people in this thread, and both people gave me two replies each to my single reply.
To you I’ll just say this: resistance to totalitarian actions by your government is NEVER a conspiracy theory. Ever. The only conspiracy theory I’ve witnessed in the last two years is the one where people believe that some corona virus with an acknowledged 99.47% survival rate is somehow killing half the world and justifies governments assuming total control, including the ability to tell people where they can go and force them to accept experimental injections.
Speaking as somebody living in Melbourne, who has seen the protestors, I am definitely seeing both Trump hats and Trump signs.
I don’t doubt the same is happening in New Zealand at all.
You're entitled to your opinion. I disagree. I think a lot of people don't understand that safeguards that exist here that haven't yet come into play. If they do, it's going to get very interesting but democracy and constitutional convention will win out. But I don't think it will be pushed that far, because the people who would like to be dictators know they will lose at that point. They are already backing down.
I think a lot of Australians have become complacent about our democracy over the last 46 years (since our last significant constitutional crisis). Most of them don’t really remember that or have swallowed the left wing revisionist version of what happened.
I think we need a reminder here - but if we get one, that reminder will stick and make things better again for another few decades until people forget again.
Then those people need to be reminded that Trump supports the vaccines. And anyone can put on a Trump hate to set a narrative.
A sizable proportion of the covid survivors end up with “long covid” and other survivors that suffer permanent injury and debilitation are another aspect of why covid is a bad thing. Such a thing will impact the workforce for months if not years. No sane person is going to want their country to take an economic hit like that, to say nothing of the impact on the voters.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211013114112.htm
The demonstrations aren’t just about vaccines - that’s the thing. There’s a whole lot of different things going on there - it’s not single issue.
Yes, that does play in > IMO.
To be honest, I have gotten to where I really only care deeply about here in the US. It’s kind of selfish in a sense, but IMO we are reaching the point of “every man for himself” - meaning every country for itself. We are all on our own so to speak.
How bad people think things are in their country is largely affected by what their expectations are. I think for those Americans like myself, the government is WAY overreaching and has been for a long time. My BIL and his idiot wife don’t give a shit about what is happening as long as they don’t see it materially affecting their personal lives. They have plenty guaranteed income and live in an upscale gated community. In a bubble as it were. It is a sort of “let the hoi polloi eat cake”. As long as they see themselves as being left alone, they don’t care about anyone else’s liberties. His wife is truly befuddled why everyone doesn’t just go out and by a $70K electric BMW. Her world view in a snapshot.
Back to my original point. In most of the world people are not at all perturbed to have liberty restricted to a degree that many of us here in the US view a call to arms.
Yeah - Americans say that, but I don't see much sign of it.
Here on Freerepublic I see Americans everyday claiming that your last election was stolen and an illegal and illegitimate President was installed.
I don't know if that's true. But I would have thought if it is, the time is long since past that Americans should be using all those guns they say they have to keep themselves free.
The development of an armed resistance would only follow political leadership, which is non-existent. The only prominent anti-globalist political leaders are Trump, Cruz and de Santis. One has limited his utterances to the question of another run for the presidency; the other two are elected to high office (senator Cruz, governor de Santis) and are therefore not in a position to lead an armed resistance since they are still working within a system that they and many others may consider to be quite flawed.
If any or all of these three, and various others like them who are less prominent, came out in favor of an organized resistance to an illegal regime, then it would probably materialize. But right now, nobody wants to go it alone, and you can’t blame anyone for that, it would be suicide and it would accomplish nothing.
I don’t expect to see any such developments unless this regime over-reaches beyond tolerable limits, or the aforementioned natural leadership of the anti-globalist movement sees fit to change tactics. The lack of an armed resistance may indeed signal that prominent people have conferred behind the scenes and determined that there is a lack of critical support available if the matter came to a head, and therefore the prospects of victory would be too small to justify the attempt. Victory can be obtained through peaceful means, but only if fraud can be either eliminated or pushed back into the marginal range. There has always been electoral fraud, in fact the 1960 election may have gone to Nixon rather than JFK had there not been fraud in two states. Whether that would have been a great thing or not is a different question perhaps than whether Biden or Trump would be a better president; that question answers itself on a daily basis.
The demonstrations aren’t just about vaccines - that’s the thing. There’s a whole lot of different things going on there - it’s not single issue.
One of them being lockdowns? Lockdowns do suck.
Lockdowns are pretty much over for the moment, but, yes, anger at those is still part of it.
In Melbourne, the protests are also heavily about proposed legislation before Parliament at the moment that would give the state government increased powers to declare pandemics and impose conditions in the future - more power than they currently have with less controls than currently. We’ve actually beaten the worst parts of that legislation over the last week and a bit - but it remains to be seen how much what is left gets through Parliament in the next couple of weeks.
There’s also concern about government corruption, refusals to disclose information under freedom of information laws, police corruption, overly politicised court systems...
New Zealand -—An island full of sheep and sheeple, those Covidized idiots. Make that two islands full of them. Taking orders and lockdowns from idiot child Jacinda.
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