Libertarians across New Zealand were dismayed by news last month that Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government intends to press ahead with so-called “hate speech” legislation. This is widely expected to entail European-style restrictions that could see a person imprisoned for saying that mass immigration is like an invasion, as French author Renaud Camus was earlier this year. But those putting their hopes in the National Party to fix it will be disappointed.
Right-wingers, in general, were also dismayed at Ardern’s confirmation that the Sixth Labour Government will introduce “hate speech” laws if they are re-elected on the 17th of this month. The conservative argument is that free speech is a fundamental part of New Zealand culture, and there’s no good reason to throw this away.
Judith Collins responded by saying that National “would not add further” to the loss of free speech, but would not commit to rolling back any free speech violations that the Labour Government might commit. Neither did she affirm that free speech was a fundamental Kiwi value that needed to be defended.
The reality is that National can sense a political advantage in acting as if they are in favour of free speech, but they don’t really care about it, for two major reasons.
The first is that they’re not, in any sense, a libertarian party. In fact, they are transparently authoritarian in several ways. National likes to pose as if they’re against government interference into the private lives of citizens, in contradistinction to Labour, who want a nanny state. But if they were libertarian they would work to legalise cannabis.
Being in favour of legal cannabis is no longer a radical position for a right-wing party in the Anglosphere. 55% of American Republicans are in favour of cannabis legalisation, and even a state as Republican as Alaska, where Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton 51%-37%, now has legal cannabis. Part of the reason for this is the libertarian streak possessed by American right-wingers.
This libertarian streak doesn’t exist in New Zealand conservatism, which is why we are some 20 years behind America when it comes to cannabis. But the absence of these libertarian sentiments among New Zealand conservatives suggests that they won’t make an effort fighting for free speech either. Why would someone who thinks you should be in a cage for growing medicinal cannabis fight for your right to free speech? They wouldn’t.
The second major reason why National don’t care about free speech is because they are influenced by people who are against it.
British Conservative Leader Boris Johnson is bringing in draconian anti-free speech laws under the guise of child safety. The proposed bill will make it illegal to cause “online harms”. The Centre for Policy Studies declared their opposition to the bill, stating that it was wrong to let an unelected communications regulatory body decide what people were allowed to write on the Internet.
If the British equivalent of the National Party is restricting free speech in the same way that the New Zealand Labour Party intends to do, that is evidence that the moves are not inspired by left-wing or big government sentiments but by globalist ones.
Because the National Party is just as beholden to globalist interests as Labour is (even if those interests are slightly different), there’s no reason to think that they would be much different to Labour when it comes to free speech. Globalist interests want few things more than to shut down criticism of mass immigration – the less resistance, the higher house prices can be pumped, the more mortgage profits can be raked in.
In fact, one can predict that even if National wins the election this month they will introduce some kind of free speech restrictions anyway. There is transparently a wider globalist agenda to abolish free speech and, with it, dissent and criticism in general. This agenda has arisen because we are in the democracy to tyranny part of the political cycle.
No matter who wins this month’s election, New Zealand will lose our rights to free speech, as we have already lost our firearms rights and our rights to use spiritual sacraments. And in the same way that neither Labour nor National rolled back firearms restrictions or restrictions on the use of cannabis and psilocybin, nor will either party roll back any restrictions on free speech that might get passed in coming years.
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