By Olivia Pierson
[First published on Incite 23/5/19]

Most people like the traits of self-confidence, tolerance and a fair mind. But when a prime minister consistently styles her public life and messaging in the fashion of a woman’s weekly magazine, one is left thinking how shameful it is that these traits are not being employed to serve worthier causes than meaningless emotional ejaculations.

Jacinda Ardern has perfected a modern “emoji" style of communication, one of self-confidence in her optimistic entitlement to respect (whether it has been earned or not) and an almost narcissistic preoccupation with projecting a self-image of tolerance and cutesy-pie niceness. This style of hers is unsurprising considering she was born into the earliest cohort of the Millennial generation (1980 – 1996).

As soon as Ardern became PM, press focus throughout the first year of her administration was entirely centred on her pregnancy and the birth of her baby daughter.  For the folks who like to chime-in that women in leadership are held to a more strenuous standard of judgment than men are, the national and world-wide tabloid focus on Ardern’s pregnancy clearly told a different story.  Nobody held her accountable for anything political. She was given a big, fat, free-pass on absolutely everything, because she was in a family way – and women’s magazines just couldn’t get enough of that.

Ardern has focused on grabbing depthless headlines with matching photo ops, from her early campaign slogans of ‘Let’s do this!’ and ‘Relentless posidivvidy,’ to her repetitious slogan ‘They are us’ after the Christchurch massacre – with accompanying photographs of herself and other female useful idiots swaddled in headscarves.

On the tail of that horrible massacre and on the very same day that Ardern announced the government was about to enact gun legislation outlawing all “military styled” guns (whatever they are), Ardern’s de-facto partner Mr. Stay-at-Home-Dad, Clarke Gayford, obviously with his girlfriend’s permission, hit social media with this doozy:
 
“For her 9 month birthday today we received the gift of crawling,” he posted on Twitter on Thursday night. “While her mum got her the gift of having a safer country to grow up in.”

Exactly how this country will ever be safer when only criminals and gang-members possess the illegal guns is never explained, and the press never ask.

Then we were bombarded by all the revolting gibberish associated with Ardern crumpling her mug into the most unimpeachably sincere facial expressions as she started to talk about limiting freedom of speech in New Zealand while saying things like: 

“This is an area where we need to be really cautious about balancing freedom of speech, but also where that speech tips over into a space where it becomes potentially violent and harmful.”

“Space.” As if we’re talking about something as apolitical as architecture or real estate. Then note the highly typical Freedom of Speech Denier’s predictable “but”  - and what on Earth defines “potentially violent and harmful?” A cartoon about Mohammad?  A piece of satire which sets off a minority’s touchy feelings? Using the words: “a minority’s touchy feelings?”

We’ve now witnessed the curious spectacle of the Christchurch Call, with Ardern flying off to Paris to have a virtue-signalling tête-à-tête with Emmanuel Macron at the very same time that he has tens-of-thousands of yellow-vest protesters in French streets every weekend, who are seriously calling for his removal as president.  Macron gave orders for his heavily armed police to crack down on these protests so forcefully that one of the main leaders of the movement (and it is a movement), Jerome Rodrigues, was shot by police through the eye resulting in his becoming handicapped for life.  He has since been placed in an artificial coma, to the enormous grief of his family members.

Nonetheless, our PM and Macron are busy playing nice grownups by trying to lead the world in having giant tech companies and governments voluntarily cozy-up with each other to end “terrorism and violent extremism” online.  But what about violent extremism in the flesh, Mr. Macron, and on your watch under your orders? 

It doesn’t quite strike the right glossy mag tone, does it…and while we’re on the topic of glossy mags, I guess we’ll know when Ardern and Macron have garnered a measure of success when the highly-polished Dabiq magazine, the online tool that ISIS uses to recruit foreign fighters in Western countries, is no longer available for free download.  If Ardern and Macron were serious about curing the world of terrorism and violent extremism, they would be pushing for the deportation of any Muslim with jihadist tendencies or connections into the deserts of Syria.  Same goes for the likes of imams who preach the most vile hate and violence against “infidels” in Western mosques every week. I haven’t heard Ardern or Macron even mention these very widespread and well-documented phenomena.  And they won’t.

While Ardern faffs about at this high-profile, do-gooder event, it is worth considering that in an act that can only be described as Orwellian, she had chief censor David Shanks ban the manifesto shared online by Christchurch shooter, Brenton Tarrant, upon pain of incarceration if anyone shares it or keeps a copy in their possession.

The communist China-loving, eco-fascist Tarrant stated that he chose firearms because of the influence it would have on social discourse, believing that the gun legislation debate would become global in nature and crystallise in the United States.  I surmise that he was right about that because I recently watched Ardern sit down with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and say, “Australia experienced a massacre and changed their laws. New Zealand had its experience and changed its laws. To be honest, I do not understand the United States.”  

No, it is clear that she doesn’t understand the United States, rabid socialists don’t get capitalism and freedom. 

What worries me most is that the warped mind of Tarrant understood that our woman’s weekly prime minister is so entirely predictable that she would set about turning a democracy against itself immediately after his heinous crime.  Ardern quickly began acting out his predictions. Perhaps that has something to do with why she made sure his manifesto was swiftly forbidden to be read by New Zealand citizens.

Ardern brazenly lied in that interview with Amanpour.  She claimed the altering of our gun laws was something “New Zealanders by-and-large absolutely agreed with.”

This is false.
 
New Zealanders were given absolutely no choice in the matter and a great many people, including non-gun owners, are fuming about it.  They are also incandescent with anger about the looming clamp-down on freedom of speech that Ardern and her coalition are aggressively gunning for. These infuriated feelings will not be placated by superficial appeals to women’s mag niceness, for it is only too obvious that such appeals are designed to mask Orwellian acts of crimes against liberty.

Jacinda Ardern’s leadership has become a glaring example of style over substance, manners over meaning and regularity over quality of content. I’ve seen this spectre before during the reign of Barrack Obama, this media fawning and rainbows over the Whitehouse with saccharine sprinkles – all disguising some pretty dark deeds.

As with Tarrant’s banned manifesto, along with President Macron’s under-reported, violent crack-downs on the yellow-vest protests, now into their sixth month, the seriousness of what is really going on in real-time is a far cry away from the fizzy pop bubbles of a fanzine. But why would Ardern care too much about the sombre gravity of these matters when she and Gayford are about to hog world media attention as they plan their big wedding day?

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer" ​ ​​​​​

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By Graham Hill
MA (Hons) Ll.B (Hons)
Nelson. NZ.

The rule of law (RoL) is one of the important gears that mesh with several others to form the machinery of Western civilisation. Niall Ferguson in the West and the Rest has called it one of “the Killer Apps" accounting for the success of the West and why  societies in the West that are  sought after by  people who wish to live in them.  The RoL gives certain efficacy to the working of our society in terms of commercial, political and social relations. It encompasses political and legal values including human rights.  Societies and cultures without the RoL, or with a severely fractured one, have issues with corruption, lawlessness, and clan-like violence; possessing arbitrary, relativistic and unpredictable legal systems; the serious loss of justice for the individual; and political issues in which there is little or no trust between governed and governors.

The RoL has also suffered in the West from erosion from indifference, ignorance and ineptitude. But for some time the RoL has been under siege from without by Neo-Marxism and its derivative, Cultural Marxism. The nadir has been reached where mental ‘trauma’ and the  “oppression” of feelings is felt.

Instances in the  detaching or  casting off of the  RoL in favour of an ideological Neo Marxist religion have featured in the media.  We turn to examine some of these for what they disclose about the state of the RoL.

First, Chris Cuomo, a CNN anchor in defending ANTIFA violence in August 2018 could unabashedly state: “ Fighting hate is right.  And in a clash [physical violence]  between hate and those who oppose it, those who oppose it are right... It is not about being right in the eyes of the law, but you also have to know what’s wrong and  right and immoral, in a good and evil sense.”  This is akin to a religious fiat for violence: violence is given the ‘Green Light’ if your relativist group or tribal narrative defines a term like ‘hate’ and says that it is wrong.  First, this is an indication of  a loss of a socially accepted standard.  Secondly,  what we are observing here is a tribal self-defining James Comey like “higher calling”, something normally the exclusive  province of religion.  
 
Secondly, the nomination hearings for Justice Kavanagh to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, displayed a similar detachment. The hearing’s process is worthy of a book in itself. Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly are said to be writing one. Saliently, the Judge’s detractors were ready to cut loose due process, fairness, the presumption of innocence, equality before the law and the principles of the law of evidence.  Emily Yoffe put the issue well in an article in the Atlantic (3 October 2018) when she said: 

But when a woman, in telling her story, makes an allegation [of sexual assault or rape] against a specific man, a different set of obligations kick in.

Even as we must treat accusers with seriousness and dignity, we must hear out the accused fairly and respectfully, and recognise the potential lifetime consequences that such an allegation can bring.  If believing the women is the beginning and the end of the search for truth, then we have left the realm of justice for religion.”
 
Thirdly, in mid-May of this year, a further assault on the RoL was directed at Harvard Law Professor Ronald S Sullivan, who is African American, and director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute. He and his wife (also a lecturer in the Harvard Law School) were also the first African-Americans to become Harvard Deans of Faculty. He has come under assault by students having been asked to be part of Hollywood’s Harvey Weinstein’s legal team.  This was a role outside of his Harvard duties.  Joanna Williams in Spiked (14 May 2019) had this to say:

“Unusually,  Sullivan’s ‘trauma-inducing’ sins against the sensibilities of undergraduates did not occur in the lecture theatre or indeed anywhere on campus. He neither misgendered students nor told them to sort out their own choice of Halloween costume. No, his crime has simply been to do his job. 

Sullivan practices law; the knowledge and experience he gains from being at the forefront of his profession are passed on to students fortunate enough to be studying at Harvard’s elite law school. Over the course of an impressive career, he has advised Barack Obama, represented the family of Michael Brown in their suit against the city of Ferguson, Missouri, and overturned more than 6,000 wrongful convictions. Only it is the very business of the law, the need to defend people accused of crimes, the need to assume defendants are innocent until proven guilty, that has proved too much for students to stomach. 

…The public denunciation of Weinstein ignited the #MeToo movement. For some of Harvard’s students – and staff – Sullivan’s decision to act in defence of Weinstein is not a legal duty and a professional responsibility, but a moral outrage that needs to be stopped. They have started petitions, held demonstrations and conducted rallies calling for his dismissal”
(Spiked, 14 May 2019)

The fundamental legal principle involved was a defendant’s right to have legal counsel of his or her choosing and to be represented at trial.  In New Zealand  legal counsel is acting for Benton Tarrant, so Professor Sullivan was acting for a defendant by assisting his legal team. Criminal law can be difficult and the rules of evidence need to be properly understood.  A defendant faces the power and deep pockets the state.  Professor Sullivan had neither broken the law nor acted in a reprehensible manner towards students.  The professor could not be removed from his Law Faculty job, so his role as a Faculty Dean was put in issue. The professor and his wife (the collateral damage) were subsequently sacked, as Faculty Deans of Winthrop House, a hostel for undergraduates, by the university's Dean, who had capitulated to student's trauma and mental health risk induced by the professor’s mere presence.  

Joanna Williams goes on to expand on the issue of mental trauma:

“Danukshi Mudannayake, the student who has led the campaigning, argues that Sullivan’s decision to represent Weinstein is ‘not only upsetting, but deeply trauma-inducing’, and it shows he ‘does not value the safety of the students he lives with’. [H]e cannot simultaneously hold that role while still having a charade of saying that he can actually protect the integrity of his students.’ Kacey E Gill, president of the Association of Black Harvard Women, said she was relieved and happy to hear of Sullivan’s departure, but added ‘I wish that it hadn’t taken so long’ or that it ‘required so many students to put their mental health, wellbeing, and potentially even their futures on the line in order to get that change to occur’.

Students have come to accept a ludicrously wide definition of trauma. There is not the slightest suggestion that Sullivan poses any danger either to the students he comes into contact with or anyone else. Sullivan does not stand accused of rape or sexual assault. The threat students think he poses is not physical, but mental. Students have come to believe that ‘trauma’ occurs not as a result of something catastrophic happening to them, nor even from having hateful words directed at them, but from the mere presence of another person in their vicinity. Even this understates their bizarrely elastic understanding of trauma. Harvard is not offering refuge to Weinstein, the rapacious folk monster of our times, but employing, in a professional capacity, his lawyer. Yet Sullivan’s presence is considered by the students to be sufficient to create a ‘toxic climate’. All of this begs the question: where are the adults?"
(Spiked 14 May 2019)

It does indeed. The RoL should not be set aside because of an ill-defined student misperception of what trauma (not  classified in DSM V)  is, which is said  to come about from an appointment unrelated to the Dean’s role Winthrop House. An instance of purity in danger by contamination of a human agent. If the university authorities at Harvard do not comprehend the RoL then what hope is there for other institutions?  This not the real world but again a  trespass into the realm of religion in the Cultural Marxist self-fulfilling oppressor/oppressed dialectic of the Woke: the dialectic is the Truth and the True Way.  The rule of law is based on human standards iterated and proven fit for use, over time. That was the approach, Daniel J Boorstein tells us, of William Blackstone who abhorred Enlightenment idealist theory as the basis of practical day to day law. The Woke are divorced from the past and the world of practical experience having a “Cloistered” tunnel vision of a future religious ideal.  The RoL may not be perfect but it is far better than a capricious judgment based on feelings,  idealistic predetermination based on  some ineffable “higher calling” and a misconceived fetish of trauma.

What is shown by the university’s response, and by the student’s errant protest is a woeful arrogant ignorance of a vital facet, of the  underlying legal principles of a free and civil society.   These principles of the RoL are  then substituted by a visceral  religious judgment by the irrelevant  health concerns of   students’ who are unrelated  to, and have no proximity  to the Professor’s defence counsel role.  The students religious tremors, all derived from the numinous and  subjective mysterium tremendum of feeling, trumped the  RoL.   

To put the matter on a different footing, how could Harvey Weinstein , if  sued in tort by the students, have foreseen the students’ trauma?  The question does not bear a second glance.  Williams adds to the legal principles at stake:

“Acquiescing to students campaigning against Sullivan has consequences beyond the university.  It also calls into question our understanding of fundamental principles of justice, most especially the idea that those accused are innocent until proven guilty and so, in order for justice to be best served, require a rigorous defence. Students crying trauma at Sullivan first assume Weinstein’s guilt, then mistake a defence of Weinstein for a defence of his alleged crimes. They assume defending an alleged rapist is a defence of rape. Again, where are the adults to tell them they are wrong?
(Spiked 14 May 2019)

RoL principles must prevail over the ignorance of the Neo Marxist/Cultural Marxist Woke: the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial and the principle that justice to be done needs to be seen to be done are fundamental, which was not the case, to give a historical example, of the trial of the Regicides, or if you prefer Geoffrey Robertson QC’s term, the Tyrannicides,  of Charles the  First. Is lynching, hanging and drawing and quartering before the University of  Harvard’s  Registry or Faculty of Law preferable?  On this last point Joanna Williams rightly concludes:

It is in the interests of everyone to have justice done, and that means a trial with a proper legal defence. Harvard’s decision comes just a day after Sullivan announced that he would be leaving Weinstein’s defence team.  Yet the better the defence, the more secure a conviction. If due process cannot take place, then we risk criminals going unpunished and the innocent being incarcerated.  Cries of trauma must not be allowed to undermine the legal system.
(Spiked 14 May 2019)

The guardians of the rule of law in the current freedom of speech issues presently before us are silent.  The Law Society last year censored in its publication Law Talk citations to Jordan Peterson. The Feminist Judgments project went by without notice from the profession and has considerable RoL implications. The Feminist judgments project in terms of the RoL may well be an oxymoron given feminism’s debt to Neo-Marxism which underwrites identity politics and ideas of intersectionality. That is an article for another time. My own experience of approaching two senior members of the NZLS Privacy and Human Rights Committee on a rule of law matter was met with no reply.  The abrogation of concern is woeful.  

​Has the Law Society turned to the new religion, with its Equity Charter, and become absorbed and oblivious in the new faith too?


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