Free Speech Shell Games

New Zealand Prime Minister and professional scold Jacinda Ardern executed a nifty sleight-of-hand before the UN Security Council the last week of September. She took Russia's war on Ukraine, correctly noted that it is "based on a lie," segued deftly into Pacific victimhood re nuclear tests last century, coughed up a noble hairball about global nuclear disarmament... then made free speech the problem.

As leaders, we have never treated the weapons of old in the same way as those that have emerged. And that's understandable.

After all, a bullet takes a life. A bomb takes out a whole village. A lie online or from a podium does not.

But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms? To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then?

This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old.

We recognised the threats that the old weapons created. We came together as communities to minimise these threats. We created international rules, norms and expectations. We never saw that as a threat to our individual liberties - rather, it was a preservation of them.

The same must apply now as we take on these new challenges.

Much Doublespeak followed. Censorship is freedom, dontchaknow, and we can only save free speech by regulating it. Unrestricted online speech is a "weapon of war," because it may include misinformation and disinformation, we must come to understand.

The second segue was even defter. She went from blaming free speech for "a horrific terrorist attack on [New Zealand's] Muslim community" to blaming it for climate denialism, COVID skepticism, and "hateful and dangerous ideology."

Naturally, her remedy is government censorship.

Naturally, at least one apologist informed us, via "fact check," that it is mainly some pesky "right-leaning outlets and commentators" who are alarmed by her remedy, and that other parts of her presentation uphold free speech.

See again: Doublespeak. Mind you, a rebuttal to another’s opinion is fine, but it should certainly not be labeled a "fact check."

The bait-and-switch interests me more than the Doublespeak. Politicians routinely lie, and they often mean down when they say up. It takes motivated reasoning and biased coverage to argue that she's defending free speech even as she calls it a "weapon of war," but that's to be expected as well.

It's the implication that those who aren't on board with the warmist agenda and program should be censored that's the real stunt. Speaking to her audience in one breath about Russian war disinformation, on-line incitements to violence that may have prompted the Christchurch mosque shooting, climate action skepticism, and opposition to lockdowns implies an equivalence between the former two and the latter two.

Intentionally, in my opinion.

It's such a classic and oft-employed tactic that it has its own descriptor in the logic world: False Equivalence.

It goes beyond even that, though. The notion that Russia telling lies to justify the Ukraine war is equivalent with people who doubt the severity of or chosen remedies for global warming is the stunt of a totalitarian looking to mask her autocratic desires. Her argument is, in essence, ‘Russia spread lies in defense of its war, and instigators prompted the hate that led to a mass shooting, so we are justified in stifling those who disagree with our COVID lockdowns and our outrageously expensive climate action.’

J.D. Tuccille at Reason suspects that she's building her globalist bona fides ahead of an anticipated demotion. She may be shown the door next year by voters favoring the same turn as those in the UK, Italy, and Sweden, as the unpopularity of her aggressive climate agenda and draconian (yes, I can play the adjective game as well as the lefties) COVID lockdowns grow.

Tyrants rarely tell you they're going to tyrannize you. Instead, they trot out exaggerated or outright-false crises, portray their actions as good for us all, cast the opposition as extremists and demons, and tell us the way to save liberty is to trample on it. "Trust us," is the universal mantra, "we have your best interests at heart."

No, they don't.

And, no, you shouldn't.

Ardern is either a fanatic incapable of understanding that rational people can and do disagree with her policies and have legitimate reasons for those disagreements, or she's a power-hungry cynic trying to manipulate the masses and silence the opposition. Either way, she shouldn't be trusted with power, nor should anyone who plays the same sorts of shell games.

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