VJM Publishing

Free Speech Under Attack VI

This reading carries on from here.

The 16th chapter in Free Speech Under Attack is ‘Free Speech and the Fate of Socrates’ by Tim Wikiriwhi.

This chapter recounts the trial and death of Socrates, who angered the elites of ancient Athens by telling the truth. Those who represented the status quo, and who therefore benefit the most from the commonly-accepted lies, were happy to tell lies about Socrates or to use political force against him.

This is not much different to how Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt got the mainstream media to tell the nation that VJM Publishing was similar in mentality to Brenton Tarrant, just because we sold ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ t-shirts. There is nothing that a corrupt ruling class hates more than an honest person explaining the lies and falsehoods used by the ruling class to maintain their dominance.

Wikiriwhi puts it best when he says that “Free speech has always been despised by those seeking to perpetuate falsehoods and control the minds of the ‘sheeple’.” This point cannot be laboured enough – those against free speech always take their position because they wish to perpetuate lies.

Unfortunately, Wikiriwhi credits Protestant Christianity with free speech in the West, when Protestants were still burning people at the stake for heresy as little as 400 years ago. Calvinists in Switzerland were even happy to burn to death as great a man as Michael Servetus. The truth is that all the rights we possess have been prised from the claws of an Abrahamic theocracy that has darkened the West for over 1,600 years.

However, Wikiriwhi is dead right when he says that free speech has to be defended to the utmost, for, without it, all the other freedoms are lost in turn. He’s also right when he points out that the modern left hate no-one more than a member of a slave demographic who has escaped the plantation (Wikiriwhi is Maori). He concludes by pointing out that trying to silence people is the real hate.

The 17th chapter is ‘Hey, Give Us Back Our Rights’ by Robert Stanmore.

Stanmore opens this chapter by recounting the ways that free speech rights have been stripped away in favour of supposed other rights. The New Zealand Human Rights Act makes abusive and insulting language illegal – Stanmore contends that this should be changed. Laws must punish actions, not thoughts.

He points out that most of the political elite support restrictions on free speech, as shown by their widespread support for the Harmful Digital Communications Act in 2015. As such, the people are going to have to fight them in order to assert their rights to free speech.

This chapter mentions, at several points, David Seymour’s Freedom to Speak Bill. It also points out that it is often foreign interests that are against our rights to speak freely. Fundamentally, however, our enemies are not foreigners but the enemies of Western Civilisation themselves, whether external or internal. Free speech is an essential human right, and anyone who would take it from us is our enemy.

In summary, Free Speech Under Attack is an excellent and brave book by some intelligent and original thinkers. It’s a very timely volume, given the relentless and broad-fronted assault on free speech currently being carried out by authoritarians, particularly leftist ones. With any luck, many of the suggestions in it will be adopted by a wider movement of free people.

Anyone who believes in cognitive liberty and who doesn’t trust the mainstream media (i.e. the typical VJM Publishing reader) would enjoy reading this book.

If you enjoyed reading this essay/article, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Why I Won’t Be Taking A Coronavirus Vaccine

The whole world seems to be at a standstill, awaiting a coronavirus vaccine. Only when a vaccine is available, we are told, can we risk opening up the borders again and resuming normal life. But there are many good reasons to be skeptical about these impeding vaccines. I won’t be taking one – and in this essay I explain why not.

The mainstream media has presented a misleading picture of how easy it is to produce a coronavirus vaccine. The story we’ve been sold is that we just have to wait a few months longer, then it will be ready and all will be good. Apparently, “COVID-19 vaccine development has been expedited via unprecedented collaboration in the multinational pharmaceutical industry and between governments.”

By September last year, a variety of different potential vaccines were supposedly in advanced stages of development. At some point – soon – doctors everywhere will be telling people that they have an effective and safe coronavirus vaccine, and they’ll be expecting people to believe them and take one, as they expect people to believe everything else they say.

And I won’t be believing them and I won’t be taking a coronavirus vaccine.

Why?

Because they still don’t know that cannabis is medicinal. If they still don’t know that cannabis is medicinal, when there is mountains of evidence suggesting this and has been for decades, then how can I trust them to have an accurate picture about a coronavirus vaccine?

In 1996, doctors in California, being aware already then that cannabis was medicinal, organised to have it made legal. They arranged to have a referendum on the subject and made sure that the voters were correctly educated. Since then, recognising the science, 16 countries and 39 other American jurisdictions have legalised medicinal cannabis.

Despite these advances, doctors here in New Zealand have resolutely stayed ignorant. They know nothing about medicinal cannabis, not even the difference between CBD and THC. All cannabis use causes mental illness, they bleat, as if it were still 1970. The most recent quarter-century of scientific advancement can just fuck off.

So when doctors start telling me about a coronavirus vaccine, and how they’re sure it’s safe and effective, I’m just going to laugh. Their approach to medicinal cannabis has shown me that they’re more interested in political realities than scientific ones. Twelve years of trying to communicate with New Zealand doctors about medicinal cannabis has been utterly fruitless.

If these doctors want people to trust them about a vaccine that has been known for a few months, they have to start telling the truth about a medicine that has been known for thousands of years. If they’re not capable of doing that, I’m going to stay well away from any vaccines they might offer me.

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Understanding New Zealand 3: Who Voted TOP in 2020

Surprisingly for many, TOP went backwards between 2017 and 2020, from 2.4% of the vote (63,261 votes) to 1.5% of the vote (43,449 votes). This was despite the fact that, this time, they had a charming and personable leader in Geoff Simmons.

The major problem facing TOP is that they appear to be a Green Party B team made up of those too weird or too unprofessional to represent a Parliamentary party. As such, they have no real niche.

Their voting bloc is extremely similar to the Green Party voting bloc. Voting Greens in 2020 and voting TOP in 2020 had a correlation of 0.84. This was much stronger than the correlation between voting for any other party in 2020 and voting TOP in 2020.

Significant positive correlations also existed between voting TOP in 2020 and voting Labour in 2020 (0.33) and voting Sustainable NZ in 2020 (0.32). All these results place TOP firmly among the left.

The strongest negative correlations were between voting TOP in 2020 and voting for one of the parties with many poorly-educated brown supporters. The correlation between voting TOP in 2020 and voting for Vision NZ Party in 2020 was -0.38; with voting for Advance NZ in 2020 it was -0.36; with voting for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party or Maori Party in 2020 it was -0.34.

The correlations between having a university degree and voting either TOP or Greens in 2020 are almost identical – and they are identical in the case of having a doctorate and voting either TOP or Greens in 2020 (0.77). The correlations between having no academic qualifications and voting either TOP or Greens in 2020 were also identical (-0.64).

The largest differences here between TOP and Greens are with those at level 3 and those at level 6. TOP is significantly weaker than the Greens among voters at level 3, and significantly stronger than the Greens among voters at level 6. Voters at level 3 are usually at university, having completed high school and moved on. Voters at level 6 have usually completed a tertiary qualification at polytech level.

This suggests that TOP is more polytech in comparison to the Greens’ university, more working-class to the Greens’ middle-class. This revelation might serve to guide future TOP policy.

TOP is a much whiter party than the Greens. The correlation between being of European descent and voting Greens in 2020 was not significant, but the correlation between being of European descent and voting TOP in 2020 was 0.41.

Maoris and Pacific Islanders, for their part, were both much less likely to vote TOP in 2020 than to vote Greens in 2020. There was a significant negative correlation between being either Maori or Pacific Islander and voting TOP in 2020. This may be because both groups feel like they are already well-represented by the Labour Party. Asians were almost perfectly indifferent to TOP.

TOP voters are strikingly older than Greens voters, especially in the upper age brackets. Although the correlation between voting TOP in 2020 and median age is negative (-0.15), it isn’t significantly negative as it is between voting Greens in 2020 and median age (-0.24).

The main difference is that TOP voters are more equally represented across all age brackets. There are significant positive correlations between voting TOP in 2020 and being in any age bracket under 35, but the correlations between voting Greens in 2020 and being in any of those age brackets are all stronger.

By contrast, the correlations between voting TOP in 2020 and belonging to any age bracket above 69 were all positive (if not significant). These correlations were all negative for voting Greens in 2020. The overall difference in support for TOP and Greens between the various age brackets is probably because TOP has a heavier online presence, especially a FaceBook presence (which appeals to old people), while the Greens have a heavier presence at universities.

Curiously, there was a significant positive correlation between voting TOP in 2020 and being female (0.24). This could be because a majority of elderly people in New Zealand are female.

Although there is a significant negative correlation between having two children and voting Green in 2020 (-0.30), the corresponding correlation with voting TOP in 2020 was much weaker (-0.04). On the other hand, the correlation between having no children and voting Greens in 2020 (0.75) was much stronger than the correlation between having no children and voting TOP in 2020 (0.57).

All of this suggests that TOP voters are generally less exceptional and more representative of the mainstream than Greens voters. This is despite that the correlation between working as a professional and voting TOP in 2020 (0.73) is barely different to the correlation between working as a professional and voting Green in 2020 (0.75).

So the truth is that TOP voters aren’t any less intelligent or competent than Greens voters, but they are more representative of ordinary people. Unsurprisingly, then, there is no significant correlation between being foreign-born and voting for TOP in 2020 (0.19) when there is a significant correlation between being foreign-born and voting Greens in 2020 (0.24).

The most surprising correlation is between owning or part-owning a house and voting TOP in 2020 – this was 0.05, much more positive than the -0.19 between owning or part-owning a house and voting Greens in 2020. This is mostly a function of the fact that TOP voters are significantly older than Greens voters, because homeownership rates increase sharply as age increases.

It’s also a function of another correlation that will surprise many – the negative correlation of -0.15 between living on the North Island and voting TOP in 2020. It’s easier to own a home on the South Island because houses are cheaper, but, despite that the housing crisis is not as desperate there, South Islanders are more willing to vote TOP. This suggests that many TOP voters cast their vote out of concern for the national housing situation, and not out of mere self-interest.

This article is an excerpt from the upcoming 3rd Edition of Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan and published by VJM Publishing. Understanding New Zealand is the comprehensive guide to the demographics and voting patterns of the New Zealand people.

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Neoliberal Totalitarianism

The 20th Century gave us the right-wing totalitarianism of the Nazis and the left-wing totalitarianism of the Communists. The trauma caused by these ideologies caused people to gravitate towards the centre, in the belief that this was the opposite of totalitarianism. But the 21st Century has given us a new, centrist form of totalitarianism: the neoliberal form.

Neoliberal totalitarianism announced itself last week with the unpersoning of American President Donald Trump. Trump was first banned from Twitter, and then FaceBook, and then the rest of the neoliberal establishment piled in. Within days, he was even banned from Spotify.

The tech tyrants justified this by saying that Trump had violated the terms and conditions of the respective websites. But Twitter continues to host representatives of ISIS – who have been described as “winning the social media war” – as well as supporters of the Chinese Communist Party who argue in favour of concentration camps, and people sharing videos celebrating the Charlie Hebdo murders.

Nazi totalitarianism sought to control everyone’s lives down to the minutest detail, and was willing to destroy anyone who resisted. Communist totalitarianism also sought to control everyone’s lives down to the minutest detail, and was also willing to destroy anyone who resisted. The rhetoric that these forces used may have been different, but fundamentally both were authoritarian movements.

Neoliberal totalitarianism is just as bad. Like Nazism and Communism, it seeks total control over the lives of the citizens. Much like other totalitarian systems, it involves Big Business and Big Government working together against the common person. The degree of authoritarianism is the same. As Trump learned, when the neoliberal totalitarians decide that you’re gone, you’re gone.

Neoliberal totalitarianism is much more sophisticated than either Nazism or Communism.

The crude tyrannies of the 20th Century were not at all shy about making enemies, whether external or internal. Theirs was very much a rule of iron. Dissenters were crushed, sometimes literally as in the case of Tienanmen Square. Consent was achieved through submission to fear. Secret police were an everyday menace.

The tyrannies of the 21st Century are more the rule of silver. The logic is to abnormalise violence as much as possible, with the intent of making it unthinkable for any of their victims to use it against them. Neoliberal totalitarianism achieves its power through absolute control of the media matrix.

The reason for the current purge of wrongthinkers from social media is to maintain the effectiveness of that media control.

Josef Goebbels, in his Principles of Propaganda, wrote that “Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority. It must issue all the propaganda directives. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their morale. It must oversee other agencies’ activities which have propaganda consequences.”

This totalitarian approach was the basis of the Nazi propaganda strategy. Far from recognising the value of free speech, the Nazis banned every propaganda organ that wasn’t under their control. The Nazi Party would be the sole source of truth for the German citizenry. A similar situation arose in Communist countries.

Goebbels understood that, if all other voices were silenced, people would unquestioningly follow the narratives they were given. It was only when other voices started to question the veracity of the Nazi propaganda that it started to become less effective. So all those questioning it were silenced. Anyone pointing out how the Nazis were lying were liquidated, many in concentration camps.

Totalitarian governments attack free speech with more fervour than they attack any other freedom. This is because free speech is the basis of every other freedom. Without free speech, the other freedoms cannot be peacefully defended. The loss of free speech is therefore the breach in the dam that leads inevitably to tyranny.

The neoliberal totalitarianism of today is pushing for the same degree of central control over media content that existed in Nazi or Communist countries. They do this out of similar motivations to the Nazi and Communist totalitarians. Desiring power, and being indifferent to the suffering of the people whose freedoms would be lost, the totalitarian is happy to trade those freedoms away for more control.

The only major difference between the neoliberal totalitarians of 2020 and the Nazi/Communist totalitarians of 1940 is that today’s tyrants are more subtle. They use their total control of the apparatus of propaganda to train the citizens to police each other. They don’t need to put wrongthinkers in gulags if they can train the citizens to shun those wrongthinkers into submission.

Because the citizens themselves act as the overseers of the slave plantation, it feels like they are doing so consensually. As long as no-one questions why it is that people think they way they do, or who decided that they should think that way, the hate machine can roll onwards unimpeded. In this manner, wrongthinkers can be neutralised without provoking resistance.

Any future solution to neoliberal totalitarianism must base itself on anti-totalitarian grounds. This will require common agreement across all of left, right and centre that totalitarian measures are unacceptable. The first step might be to declare common agreement with George Washington that “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

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