It is going to be a long three years plus if this keeps up.
The Herald has suggested in this article the author has not put their name to that Jacinda Ardern is a Marxist, but the logic used is sadly lacking.
The evidence that our Prime Minister wants to socialise the means of production? To put it mildly it is pretty tenuous.
First up was a reference to Dr Richard Horton who wrote recently for the medical journal the Lancet.
From the Herald:
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is being used as a poster-child for Marxist ideas in a prestigious British medical journal.
In a November editorial for The Lancet, editor Dr Richard Horton discusses the impact of Marxism on the health sector. He doesn’t actually call Ardern a Marxist, but suggests that she has opened the door for Marxist ideas to be debated.
“More and more people, especially younger generations, believe that economies based only on free markets are not necessarily the best means to deliver fairer or healthier societies,” Horton writes.
“New Zealand’s new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, noted last month that, ‘When you allow markets to decide the fate of your people … that does not serve a country or people well.’ Marxist ideas have re-entered the political debate.”
But is Jacinda really a poster child for Marxist ideas? What she was saying and Horton was highlighting was that rampant free market capitalism does not serve the best interests of our society. Horton said that it was good that marxist ideas are debated. And I agree with him because the evidence is perfectly clear that rampant market forces can be socially disastrous. The logic of the market is that your kids should be working for a pittance cleaning chimneys. Or your grandmother.
That was the most sensible part of the article.
It then quotes Carlos D’Abrera who writes for the Australian Spectator.
That the millennial Ms Ardern should be considered a ‘go-to’ authority on such matters should trouble Kiwis and Marxists alike.
I think the Herald should read it again. I don’t think it says what the Herald writer thinks it says. D’Abrera was saying that Ardern clearly is not a Marxist.
Then failed Health Minister and cigar smoke blower Jonathan Coleman chipped in, claiming that ruling out of PPPs makes you a communist.
National’s health spokesman Jonathan Coleman brought up The Lancet editorial during Question Time [yesterday] while asking about whether the Government would support a public-private partnership for building Dunedin Hospital.
In ruling out a PPP, Coleman asked if that was why “the world’s oldest medical journal says in its November editorial that, with Jacinda Ardern, Marxist ideas have re-entered the political debate in health?”
PPPs are a disaster because they always cost the taxpayer more in the long term than they do in the short term. Investors expect a premium. If you are the Crown and can borrow at cheap interest rates you should always do this. Unless the goal is to enrich the top 1%.
Strange though that being fiscally responsible should be equated with being a marxist.
Intellectual giant Leighton Smith was quoted:
Newstalk ZB host Leighton Smith made similar observations after watching a speech from 2009 when Ardern headed the International Union of Socialist Youth, where she used the word “comrade” several times.
“Comrades this, comrades that. Comrades means something,” Smith said.
“She said this morning it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just – I’m sorry, it does. Comrades means something. It is actually a Marxist term. And you don’t pick that sort of thing up because you’re not a Marxist.”
Some of us on the left of the Labour Party still use the phrase “comrade” as a term of endearment.
The idiot farmer that had the “she’s a pretty communist” sign during the election campaign gets a mention.
And a Rupert Murdoch publication The Australian is referred to with its headline in “Kiwis now led by a commie as Ardern attacks capitalism and embraces socialist roots.”
So a misinterpretation of a UK medical article, a failed cigar blowing former Health Minister, a talk back host who thinks if you use the word “comrade” you want to line the owners of capital up against a wall and shoot them and take their shares, a farmer who would not know a communist if they polluted one and the rantings of a right wing paper owned by a megalomaniac are relied on by our major daily to claim that our current Prime Minister wants to nationalise the means of production.
The article concludes with a statement that the Prime Minister’s office declined to make a statement. Probably because they could not believe how banal and crazy the article was.
Please Herald can’t you do better than this.
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