Mike Butler: Covid response a shambles or a coup?

Has the Ardern government’s response to Covid-19 been simply a shambles or is it a coup, a seizure of political power to establish a socialist dictatorship? Ron Asher’s new book A Jab in the Dark – Covid vaccines and the new health dictatorship presents evidence that a dictatorship has been established in New Zealand.

Authoritarian socialism is a political-economic system that can be generally described as socialist, but one that rejects the liberal-democratic concepts of multi-party politics, freedom of assembly, habeas corpus, and freedom of expression.

Since October 2017, when New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters anointed Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister, a heady mix of power, adoration, and opportunity to control presented by a fear-inducing pandemic, has enabled her to transform New Zealand from a free, open democracy to a police state in which “the unvaccinated” are denied basic rights.