Kāpiti mayor K Gurunathan. Photo / Jack Penman
Weekly column by Kāpiti mayor K Gurunathan.
Over the last two months, either through my columns, radio slots, or general speaking engagements, I had pointed out that it's impossible to completely seal off our national borders.
Given the raging global pandemic, somewhere, sometime, someone one will breach the border controls and carry Covid-19 back into our communities.
The Auckland cluster, threatening a second wave of infections, has delivered a reality check. A reminder to all of those amongst us living in a false paradise that the national bubble gives us licence to go back to a business-as-usual lifestyle. Ignoring that there is a new normal.
It did not help that the rest of the world, continuing to be hammered by the first and second Covid-19 wave, had been praising NZ's stellar management.
No doubt we have done well but the danger persists and in several quarters. One worth looking into is the weakening of our psychological border control by conspiracy theorists spinning a web of convenient bits of facts blended with blatant lies and misinformation.
I have watched in fascinating horror the views expounded by one Billy Te Kahika, on that cauldron of toxic vomit - Facebook.
Writer Charlie Mitchell described him well as a weaver pulling together Hegelian dialectics, communism, fascism, satanism, and geoengineering. To that I would add the 5G conspiracists.
Talking to experts, Mitchell is right to note that some people are attracted to conspiracies because it creates a semblance of order in a disordered world. Making 'sense' of realities out of one's control.
What's changed now is that the global disorder is so large. From climate change, to the demise of Pax Americana and the rise of other political powers, to the digital revolution, and now the health and economic ravages of Covid-19. This snowballing aggregation of disorders has a mirror where the different strands of conspiracies have started to amalgamate into a mass.
The conspiracy mongers are also gathering at meetings around the country to howl at the moon. They have forged a political vehicle in the form of the NZ Public Party and the Advance NZ Party to drive their views that the current government and New Zealand are leading a global conspiracy to control the world's population.
The immediate danger is that there are mobs advocating that the Covid-19 pandemic is a myth created by these global controllers and people should rebel against the management protocols advocated by the Ministry of Health.
These is where we have to say that the freedom of expression does not give you a right to yell out "fire" in a crowded theatre just because you feel you have a right. Those calling and organising such boycotts have the potential to cause the loss of lives.
A point to make is to note that Te Kahika lives in the pre-dominantly Māori, and poverty stricken, Far North. It would be interesting to explore if the emancipation struggle for decolonisation, especially during times of great disorder, make Māori more prone to hitching their horses to conspiracists. Certainly Mitchell's article mentions Māori academics who note this connection. If true, the danger of Covid-19 to Māori communities from such misinformation is higher.
One of the blatant global lessons from this pandemic is that it's in the interest of the well-off not to have poor people in our societies.
Covid-19 spreads more easily in crowded unsanitary conditions. The rich and their families can sleep better knowing they are safe if the poor are housed in warm, dry, comfortable sanitary homes and are paid and educated well to afford healthy food.
Darwin's survival of the fittest mantra is not about individuals creaming off the masses. The fittest species are those that look after everyone in the herd.