Black Helicopters! Just because armed idiot misogynists hellbent on overturning the Covid-19 rules are feeling ever-so-slightly paranoid, doesn't mean the NZDF isn't out to get them!
IT WAS EASY to miss amidst the information overload of
Lockdown at Level 4. A curiously thin news story, published by Stuff on 15
April, concerning “a routine military exercise” in South Auckland. The New
Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) was keen to reassure people living in the area
that the sound of gunfire, loud explosions and helicopters flying overhead were
nothing to be concerned about. But, as is so often the case with NZDF media
releases, that wasn’t the whole story – not by a long (and potentially deadly)
shot.
Any government facing a crisis on the scale of the Covid-19
Pandemic will, at a pretty early stage in the proceedings, be briefed by their
senior law enforcement and military advisers on how best to respond to a
serious outbreak of civil disorder. For the likes of Jacinda Ardern and Grant
Robertson this was likely to have been a sobering – and scary – experience.
The number of sworn police officers in New Zealand currently
stands at around 10,000. The NZDF musters roughly the same number, 10,000, with
a further 2,000 men and women in reserve. In other words, in a nation of just
under 5 million, the state can call upon just 22,000 trained personnel to
enforce its will. That’s one trained enforcer for every 227 citizens.
Obviously, the state’s best option, when faced with a
serious outbreak of civil disorder, is to concentrate as many of its enforcers
as possible at the scene. Equally obviously, those enforcers need to be trained
and equipped to quell such disorder swiftly and decisively. To achieve this
objective with a minimum of violence and injury, the first responders should
ideally be police officers trained in crowd control – i.e. a “riot squad”.
This was the preferred option for maintaining law and order
during the Springbok Tour protests of 1981, and it was highly successful. Only
outside Eden Park on the final day of the Tour did the Police contemplate
calling upon the military to aid the civil power. Armed naval personnel were
mustered in readiness, but fortunately their services were not required. The
“thin blue line” held.
Of course the overwhelming majority of anti-Apartheid
protesters were law-abiding members of the New Zealand middle-class, and the
main co-ordinating body of the anti-tour movement, the Halt All Racist Tours
organisation (HART) was officially committed to non-violent civil-disobedience.
That being the case, the highly-trained “Red” and “Blue” riot squads, equipped
with visored helmets, metal shields and long batons, were more than equal to
the task of making sure the games went ahead. They were bested by the
protesters only once – at Hamilton’s Rugby Park.
Serious civil disorder arising out of the prolonged
imposition of the lockdown rules is, however, unlikely to be undertaken by
idealistic protesters committed to non-violent action. One has only to take in
the images now flooding out of the United States, of loud and aggressive Trump
supporters openly flouting the social-distancing rules imposed by state
governors and legislatures. At present, most (but not all) of these protesters
are unarmed. Should that change, however, the potential for a calamitous eruption of violence is all too real.
Now, New Zealanders are not Americans: as a people we are
about “fairness” much more than we are about “liberty”. But, as the reaction to
the Government’s attempts to institute a more rational system of controlling
the possession and use of firearms has made clear, there is a vocal minority of
New Zealanders who appear to have absorbed completely the “gun culture” of the
United States and clearly intend to replicate it their own country.
Socio-economically, these folk tend to be found running New Zealand’s small
businesses and farms. Most of them are men, and an alarming number of them seem
to have enormous difficulty coming to terms with the fact that New Zealand is
led by a young, progressive, mother of one.
When that same young woman is telling these guys that they
have to stay at home; that their small businesses must remain shut; and that
they are not permitted to go hunting with their precious firearms; then there has
to be a reasonable chance that at least some of them are going to take a leaf
out of the play-book of Trump’s supporters in Michigan and Wisconsin and demand
that the economy be “liberated” from the Lockdown. How big a step is it, after
all, from the infamous placard declaring Jacinda to be “a pretty communist” and
the one carried high by a Trump supporter proclaiming “Social Distancing = Communism”?
Whenever they're confronted with courage and/or complexity, the idiot right call it communism.
All these angry white men, itching to lock and load their
guns and hit the streets in protest should, however, pause and think again
about those military exercises in South Auckland. Because it’s a pretty safe
bet that what’s being trained there in secret is a ready-reaction force. In the
worst case scenario, when Police intervention has failed to persuade destructive,
violent and armed protesters to disperse, then this is the military unit that
will be called upon to aid the civil power.
Idiot armed misogynists determined to overturn the nation’s
efforts to eliminate the Covid-19 virus will need to learn that the arrival of
this force is a very bad sign indeed. Its only purpose is to disperse armed and
violent offenders swiftly and decisively – if necessary by the use of deadly
force. Harsh? Certainly. But the rest of New Zealand will cheer them on. Why?
Because Kiwis will not tolerate a bunch of violent, armed and self-entitled
right-wing thugs putting them and their loved ones at risk. Moreover, unlike
the President of the USA, New Zealand’s prime minister has absolutely no interest
in encouraging them do so.
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Tuesday, 21 April 2020.
