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New Zealand’s Justice Minister, Kiri Allan, has announced that she will introduce new legislation before the next election to target hate speech. Allan was very tight-lipped on the proposed content of the new law, but she did let slip that the law will specifically target social media content. Similar moves are already afoot in the USA.

Exactly what does the Labour government mean by “hate speech”? Speaking at the UN, Ardern has rated the regulation of speech as more important than the right to free speech. According to Ardern, hate speech encompasses the promotion of undefined extremism, disinformation, ideas that the powers that be find threatening, and terrorism. This is a very broad definition.

This week Ireland also introduced “hate speech” laws much along the same lines where the meaning of the term “hatred” is vaguely hinted at, in a circular reasoning fashion, rather than defined.

(Related: Governments clamp down on Politically “Dangerous” Speech & “Hate” Speech while Facebook’s AI which helps spread them can’t be fixed)

By Dr. Guy Hatchard

So, what does the Labour government mean by “hate speech”? Most might agree about terrorism and violent extremism, but how will Allan define them and how much else is she seeking to censor? How far is Labour prepared to go to promote their views? Speaking at the UN Ardern said:

“How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?”

Given that political talk about proposed hate speech legislation has rumbled on during the last two years of the pandemic, what do Ardern’s government think constitutes harmful rhetoric, ideology and disinformation on social media? The short answer could be: “whatever the government says.” There is a very broad brush being applied.

When it comes to Covid, yesterday’s information is very much today’s disinformation

In February, government-sponsored research body Te Punaha Matatini designated a range of Covid-19 topics as conspiracies. These included:

• herd immunity; 
• close comparisons between flu and Covid-19 fatality rates; 
• severe adverse effects of Covid-19 vaccination;
• benefits of vitamins for Covid-19 treatment; 
• high prevalence of asymptomatic infection; 
• overestimates of deaths because many people are dying ‘with’ the virus not ‘because’ of it;
• bioengineered lab-leak origin of Covid-19; and,
• involvement of foreign powers in its development.

Crucially, all these topics have since proved to be within the range of scientific investigation and verification. They are not conspiracies as government scientists previously insisted, they have been found to occur. The government has used its existing powers to suppress discussion of these scientific concepts. It also pushed social media companies like YouTube and Meta to delete such material. 

Incredibly, rather than admitting error, the government is now seeking more powers to suppress more ideas. This amounts to nothing less than social engineering and the repression of political dissent.

Nor has the government retracted its universal safe and effective narrative that it repeated and advertised to the point of brainwashing. Covid mRNA vaccination was neither.

Despite recently published evidence pointing to safety concerns, do politicians and mainstream media still hold outdated views? 

Unfortunately, it appears the answer is “yes.” 

If you think the National Party will pull the plug on vaccine mandates and Covid policies if they are elected next year, think again. Unless there is an effort to update themselves, they might be tempted to outdo Labour in forcing compliance. Todd Muller MP, former National Party leader, for example, has a woefully out-of-date Covid blog still up on his personal page written by Nanotechnologist Dr Michelle Dickinson brimming full of since-disproved and hence misleading assurances of safety.

Among these: 

• the vaccine is not experimental; 
• the vaccine is not genetically engineered; 
• long term safety is assured; 
• the unvaccinated are overwhelmingly responsible for spreading Covid;
• the vaccine does not reduce fertility or affect pregnancy; 
• the vaccinated are 96% less likely to be hospitalised with Covid; and, 
• mRNA vaccination cannot alter your DNA. 

Whew!! All these blanket assurances and many other points Dickinson makes have since been debunked by more recently completed studies. Dickinson comes across as a pro-biotech vaccine advocate prepared to ignore medical ethics. Covid vaccine research is a moving target, not a static fact.

New Zealand conspiracy theory expert Dylan Reeve talking to ex-cabinet minister and National Party member Paula Bennett on iHeart radio on 30 October 2022 repeatedly equated discussion of Covid vaccine safety with mad ideas such as “men never landed on the moon” and “9/11 was a plot of the US government.” None of the Covid topics listed above, which Te Punaha Matatini designated as conspiracy theories, can be reasonably equated with such flat earth theories, but Reeve and Bennett repeatedly drew parallels. 

Neither discussed the substantive scientific arguments, apparently assuming that the use of natural health products and doubts about Covid vaccine safety were obviously unfounded beliefs, rather than matters of fact that could be discussed rationally. Bennett, possibly more so than Reeve, suggested that it was best to avoid such discussions – the same social exclusion route that has been encouraged by the government and fundamentally a “head in the sand” attitude to the evolution of scientific understanding.

The very word conspiracy is being misused to imply ignorance. 

To prove criminal conspiracy in a US court, you do not have to prove that people acted together consciously, merely that they acted in such a way as to unfairly promote their mutual interest. In that sense, when there are very large financial gains enjoyed by multiple people and corporations, earned through shared products and procedures which have adversely affected public health, it is quite legitimate to suggest there has been a criminal conspiracy.

Paula Bennett was concerned about the possible effects of internet content on teens. I am too, especially government Covid fear-mongering and mRNA vaccine promotion. Haven’t the Ministry of Health learnt that the young are at a lower risk from Covid than they are from mRNA vaccine-induced myocarditis? This is not a conspiracy theory – it is a matter of careful published research. 

New Zealand is not alone in the world. There is a growing sense that a lot of extreme and fanciful nonsense is being spoken by leading politicians around the world, without basis in fact. Mark Steyn on GB News can’t get his head around it. He comments we are living in very weird times, made even weirder by the failure of corporate media to countenance the misapprehensions and misrepresentations involved.

Politicians are apparently unable to change gears. They have become stuck with early pandemic assessments which were largely sourced from pharmaceutical interests based on heavily redacted mRNA vaccine trial results where key harms had been carefully hidden from scrutiny. Times have changed. Court orders have led to the public release of revealing material.

In 2022, there is certainly enough evidence of accumulating harm to suggest a need for extreme caution. Write to your Member of Parliament or government official and ask that mRNA vaccination programmes be suspended pending independent up-to-date safety assessments. This especially affects our children’s future. For more information about biotechnology safety and regulation visit HatchardReport.com and GLOBE.GLOBAL.

About the Author

New Zealand’s Guy Hatchard, PhD, is an international advocate of food safety and natural medicine. He was formerly a senior manager at Genetic ID, a global food safety testing and certification laboratory. He has lectured and advised governments in countries around the world on health and education initiatives.

Recently Dr. Hatchard launched a Campaign for Global Legislation Outlawing Biotechnology Experimentation – GLOBE – a global initiative to end risky biotechnology experimentation.  You can register, contribute as an author or follow this initiative on the website: https://globe.global/about-globe/ or signup to receive GLOBE’s email newsletters HERE.

You can find more articles by Dr. Hatchard on his website The Hatchard Report HERE.

Featured image: UK and Australia move to regulate online hate speech, but Canada lags behind, The Conversation, 10 April 2019