The Ardern of Good and Evil

In the wake of the massacre in Christchurch, the New Zealand government led by 38 year old Jacinda Ardern has been doing everything it possibly can to disprove the oft-repeated mantra that terrorism will not change us. Before the echoes of the shots had faded completely they’d decided to impose new restrictions on the ownership of firearms, consistent with the knee-jerk reactions of other governments in the wake of a shooting spree. Within days the image of Arden wearing a headscarf was splashed across the pages of the global media, followed by campaigns encouraging all women to get with the program. Tomorrow, the Islamic call to prayer will be broadcast across the whole of New Zealand in a sign of solidarity. Meanwhile, a New Zealand bookshop has pulled Jordan Peterson’s bestselling book from the shelves, the police are arresting people for sharing the video, and ISPs are now blocking 4chan. All this within a week, but apparently terrorists will never change us.

Overseas things aren’t much better, with everyone clambering over the corpses of those massacred in Christchurch to justify what they’re doing anyway. The British police are doing their usual thing of arresting people for nasty words on the internet, US Democrats are blaming Donald Trump, Brits are blaming Brexit, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using footage of the attack to fire up the crowds at public rallies in Turkey, and the usual bunch of lunatics have come out and said all white men are the problem.

The opportunism doesn’t bother me so much; activists and politicians have been doing this since time began. What I find more interesting is people’s opinions of Jacinda Ardern. Her reaction was one of a mother who’s infant son has just fallen over and grazed his knee: endless soothing words, sympathetic grimaces, lollipops, and promises of a safer world in which knees don’t get grazed. I’m not likening a gun massacre to a grazed knee, rather I’m saying a prime minister should display the characteristics of leadership not motherhood. That is, a calm, rational analysis of what is certainly a highly complex issue covering mental illness, drug use, religion, racism, disenfranchisement, immigration, and gun control. We didn’t get that, and we’re not going to.

Unfortunately, as the gushing media shows (and social media comments) the chattering middle classes don’t want leading, they want mothering; that they celebrated Arden being New Zealand’s first prime minister to get pregnant in office should have served as a warning. It’s easy to see why women like her: she’s basically the president Mumsnet would have if it were a country. That men are on board with this shows how feminised society has become, despite the claims that women live under the jackboot of toxic patriarchy. If people don’t want to be infantalised by politicians they’re going to have to quit electing women who run on a platform of being mothers before anything else.

Whats going on here is a morality play, not too dissimilar to those you see on Mumsnet where women describe a domestic situation in the hope others endorse their moral stance. Arden and her worshippers are signalling that they are the Good people, and over there are the Bad people. If this massacre hadn’t occurred they’d have just waited for the next one: the virtue signaling never stops, only this time it’s amplified for a global audience. By choosing who to sympathise with, who to demonise, and who to ignore the middle classes and their elected priesthood can demonstrate to each other how morally virtuous they are. This explains the staggering difference in reactions to an Islamic terrorist bombing children in Manchester – “don’t look back in anger” – and a white lunatic shooting up a mosque in New Zealand. It also explains why the story of a man of Turkish extraction murdering three people on a tram in Utrecht in broad daylight this week didn’t get much attention. Apparently the fact it might have “only been an honour killing” is reason enough to downplay it, as if that’s unrelated to issues surrounding alien cultures, immigration, integration, and violence – the sort of things the Christchurch shooter took an interest in, as it happens.

Proving one’s moral virtue to one’s peers used to be the purpose of attending church on a Sunday; everyone saw you, and it showed you were a good person. As I’m fond of pointing out, while the western middle classes stopped going to church they never lost  the innate desire to show their peers how virtuous they are. This part of Arden’s biography didn’t surprise me one jot:

Raised as a Mormon, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ardern left the church in 2005 because, she said, it conflicted with her personal views; in particular her support for gay rights. In January 2017, Ardern identified as “agnostic”.

She’s not so much left the church as joined a new one, this confused jumble of sacred cows such as multiculturalism, environmentalism, and poor brown people which must be worshipped while denouncing temptations like conservatism, tradition, and pride in one’s culture (if you’re of European stock, anyway).

So my view is this. Most people clearly want mother figures ruling over them rather than leaders, and they want comfort and lollipops instead of being forced to grapple with serious issues requiring tough decisions. Which is fair enough, and why not? A mother figure like Arden will preside over a much more pleasant society than that of, say, Attila the Hun. The trouble is, as I’m fond of saying, I’m not sure societies run by mother figures will last very long. If New Zealand over the past few days is any guide, I very much doubt it.

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27 thoughts on “The Ardern of Good and Evil

  1. It’s a British web forum for (middle-class) women with kids. Has a bit of a reputation. Goggle “mumsnet madness” and enjoy.

  2. Ardern in a hijab is cultural appropriation. She should apologise immediately.

  3. I was rather astounded by the announcement a day or two ago of the NZ-wide broadcasting of the call-to-prayer, tomorrow. If there are any other nutters out their of the same mindset of the twat who did this shooting… well… that’s hardly going to calm them down, is it?

    It’s almost as if the powers-that-be want to bring them out of the woodwork. But that is conspiracy bullshit, obviously, therefore it must be knee-jerk, unthinking, virtue-signalling.

    As I say to a few floppy, virtue-signalling friends of mine each time something like this happens (after a bit of tut-tutting): “It’ll keep happening, more often, and worse each time, until…” and leave it hanging there. “…Until what?” they ask. I refuse to answer and let them work it out for themselves.

  4. In the 6 days since Christchurch on 15th March over 100 people have been killed in Islamic terror attacks in 8 countries. You will–of course–have heard nothing of this on MSM.

    Any chump who thought to escape the world’s troubles by emigrating to NZ should now give the idea up. Unless you are part of an invasion force.

  5. This will continue until middle class ladies feel personally threatened. We can only hope that is before it’s too late.
    I love that she left her religion over their aversion to homosexuality, yet sucks up to Islam.

  6. Ardern’s most ridiculous bit of posturing was her public statement that she would never mention the perp’s name. This is the politics of the middle-class girls’ school; on a level with sending terrorists to Coventry. And the Daily Mail-type sadface. She looks like some dozy woman who just realised her Nigerian “lover” has disappeared with her savings.

  7. Not naming him is the only non dumb thing she is doing. An important part of a terrorist’s motivation is infamy.

    Denying them that is sensible policy.

    The rest is twaddle….. But globalist approved twaddle.

  8. Twats down under have been popping a boner for her for a while. Check out this advert for lamb. I don’t think it occurred to anyone that anybody could be unimpressed with her.

  9. I was surprised when she invoked “oxygen of publicity”. When Margaret Thatcher used it, the BBC couldn’t wait to subvert MT’s intention by flooding the airwaves with G—y A—s and M—-n McG——s sound-alikes. No doubt the same thing will happen again…..

  10. While I agree that a society run by “mum” types is fleeting, it’s a small but important point that such a society could not exist except on the intellectual and material wealth created by the, well, “dad” types.

    As to the viciousness of a mum society vs the Huns, I’ll simply point to the type of people single motherhood produces en masse. The “soft” aspects of a mum society are indeed temporary, and last until Dad’s money and influence run out.

  11. In the month before the Christchurch attack, the Fulani massacre of Christians in Nigeria reached a death toll of 120, and a jihadi in Kashmir killed 40 Hindus. Crickets. It’s almost as though the west now accepts its role of dhimmitude.

  12. It’s almost as though the west now accepts its role of dhimmitude.

    A few people certainly do, but I think it’s more often the bigotry of low expectations. Not to mention becoming desensitized due to the sheer volume of attacks, something I bet most of us have become to some degree.

  13. It’s almost as though the west now accepts its role of dhimmitude.

    I think it’s more to do with location and the priorities of news editors.

    First – ‘orrible murder happening where you already have journalists or is easy to get to is going to get a lot more coverage then something 10 times as bad somewhere they’ve never heard of, at the arse end of nowhere. The only time that gets noticed is where there is a well financed PR campaign footing the bill.

    Second – we’ve had swivel-eyed religious nutters murdering people for 20 years. It’s not really news anymore. A right wing nutter – they’re rarer and so more newsworthy.

  14. “Any chump who thought to escape the world’s troubles by emigrating to NZ should now give the idea up”

    Yes, it’s particularly comical to hear alt-right types talk about escaping there (or Australia) as if it’s some bastion of European traditionalism. Auckland alone is something like 40% non-white already (mostly Asian/Pacific).

  15. Thank you for articulating what’s been going on in my head for the last week, the way NZers have reacted to this atrocity has made me want to re-emigrate.

    I moved to NZ 12 years ago and if there is one thing I’ve noticed in that time it’s that Kiwi blokes for all their haka-ing and rugby ability are the most mollycoddled guys on the planet. They are mothered from birth so Little Miss Stardust (a biography of her was called Stardust and Substance or some such bullshit) is a logical progression for them.

    Nothing you see abroad comes close to the vomit inducing sycophancy she generates over here. Worst of all for me is that she looks like so much like Steven Tyler I can’t even enjoy Aerosmith songs anymore.

  16. This has made me embarrassed to be a NZ’er.

    The guy who did this specifically did so in order seed division, and we have responded exactly as he wanted.

    Bookshops ban books that are ‘unacceptable’, and claim it to be moral.
    Newspapers call for censorship of Facebook and claim to be moral.
    Citizens lose rights for the crimes of another, and this is moral.
    The PM submits to Islam and claims empathy, then is immediately used for propaganda in Turkey.
    A small NZ forum I used to post on that claimed ‘free speech’ decides the new policy is ‘safe, acceptable soeech’ only.
    We claim tolerance, while behaving without tolerance.

    Total craven an shortsighted beyond belief. The ratchet turns all across the world.

  17. If people don’t want to be infantalised by politicians they’re going to have to quit electing women who run on a platform of being mothers before anything else.

    Claire “Ban-Porn” Perry MP (Con) and Sara “Nanny” Wollaston MP (TIG) being prime examples of these bully-mummies

  18. I moved to Christchurch with my wife, who is from a Muslim background, a few years ago and infantile is dead right. It took us about 3 days to go from shock and sympathy to WTF is wrong with you people. No one could care less about the Muslims here (and Kiwis are pretty racist in my experience), it’s just a bunch of white people having a melt down and mum’s not around to pick them up and say ‘there, there’. My wife’s coworkers are all wearing scarfs to work today in solidarity, when the boss asked her why she isn’t wearing one and she said she’d rather cut her head off than wear a scarf and they’re insulting all the Muslim women of the world who don’t get a choice of what to wear, they asked her if she wasn’t just doing what the white supremacists want. Bunch of kids playing dress up to make themselves feel better.

  19. Tim,

    You hit the nail on the head.

    Over the last twenty years or so, politicians have gradually whittled away ancient freedoms, while I’ve despaired at how little push back they’ve got – except from the kind of people who contribute to sites like this one. Gradually I came to realise that most people simply don’t care about freedom. Certainly politicians seem to see little political risk in, for example, their current calls for ever-greater curtailments of freedom of speech.

    But what does elict a full-throated roar of public fury, of the kind that scares governments everywhere, is the threat of cutting so much as a single penny from the welfare benefits. As you wrote, people just want to be cared for.

    Perhaps a slogan for the future might be: “The government provides. The government decides.”

  20. The knee jerk reaction defies logic.
    Gunman shows up at a mosque. Kills as many as he wants.
    Goes to another mosque, starts killing and is chased off by a worshipper WITH A GUN.
    Immediate call to ban guns and/or turn in your weapons.
    Okaaay.

  21. Did anyone else see this article? https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-asia-47630129

    It was so sycophantic I was waiting for it to credited as an opinion piece.

    “From that first address, observers all over the world have been praising her for her leadership.”

    “While the comparisons have continued [to Trudeau and Macron], they are only to show how exemplary Ms Ardern has become.”

    Those two direct statements crept through – the rest is mainly quoting jacinda-fan sources to give the ‘journalist’ some distance.

  22. Some people get shot and the first reaction is to play dress-up.

    I hope she did it properly. Had a man drive her home, and then when she tried to appear in public without the head covering her husband or brothers beat her for shaming the family. The women in Iran risking violence and prison by rejecting demands they cover their hair appreciate the solidarity.

  23. Monoi
    Not “real” Muslims – since the Shia and Sunni basically see each other as apostates.

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