Last Post: Jacinda Ardern, Brendan O’Neill and the weird woke mob

We shouldn’t be at all surprised that Jacinda Ardern has unleashed her inner tyrant and is now saying the quiet part out loud (“Woke queen Ardern’s war on free speech”, 4/10). Ardern’s iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove attack on free speech precisely reflects the doctrine of repressive tolerance, first expounded in the 1960s by Herbert Marcuse and what we today casually dismiss at our peril as cancel culture. Shutting down countervailing ideas is the default move on the chessboard of the tyrant, and from a former president of the International Union of Socialist Youth and a member of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum-aligned Young Global Leaders, whose mission is to “drive public-private co-operation in the global public interest”, we should expect nothing less.

Jim Ball, Narrabeen, NSW

We should enjoy Brendan O’Neill while we can. Does he have a future with the Jacinda Arderns running our world? The left always paints The Handmaid’s Tale TV series as a despotic fascist state. Who’s to say this mythical state didn’t start out as do-gooder progressives spending more time controlling other people’s lives than looking after their own?

Murray Horne, Cressy, Vic

Brendan O’Neill ought to acknowledge misinformation and disinformation do exist and words can wound and ideas kill. However, the woke extend the process to any beliefs they don’t like and are introducing hypersensitivities to definitions of hate speech, so-called toxic masculinity and the use of the words harassment, abuse and bullying. They’re quite impressive, but the mainstream can win out, wielding proactive common sense.

Rod Matthews, Fairfield, Vic

I know first hand our free speech is under threat, Brendan O’Neill. I’m trying to publish an educational course of videos under the banner “Learn the Real Science and how it Contradicts the Climate Change Hysteria”, which obviously marks me as a denier. YouTube will not allow me to monetise it and maybe not even publish it, and Google will not accept any advertisements for it. This on top of Facebook banning Jacinta Price’s views on the voice issue means we are already in real trouble.

Brian K. Fitzgibbon, Alderley, Qld

Brendan O’Neill’s description of Jacinda Ardern’s recent speech to the UN as “exposing the iron fist of authoritarianism that lurks in the velvet glove of wokeness” brings to mind the words of a Holocaust survivor who said we should always be wary of velvet totalitarianism.

Jock Munro, Rankins Springs, NSW