The Ardern regime claims to have public support for the methods they are using to try and shut down Freedom Protests across New Zealand.

The protesters are “just a fringe minority who have no popular support” they sneer.

Maybe that is true to some extent. Many NZers still get their news from the legacy media and they’re a fair proportion of the population. Its a demographic mainly made up of older people disconnected from the internet and out of deeply ingrained habit, still watching and trusting TV One and reading the NZ Herald. 

These people will only be getting one side of the story, and that is a side that is deeply pro the Ardern govt. Naturally they will hold opinions that reflect the biased nature of their news sources.

However these days its not so easy for mainstream media outlets to lie and propagandise. They might get a headstart due to their legacy status, but they’re nowhere near as far out in front as they would like to be.

Recently the NZ Herald ran a poll on support for the Freedom protesters. Asking who supported the protesters and who did not, the poll attracted close to 9000 votes before it was suddenly pulled. The responses were pretty much 50/50.

Yesterday morning Mike Hosking on NewstalkZB attempted to discredit Leighton Baker, an active supporter of the protesters. Hosking’s listener’s will be influenced by the negative tone of the interview, but Leighton’s daughter Chantelle broadcasts video and commentary on her own media channel. A channel with a fast growing audience that could soon exceed Mike Hosking’s.

In Canada, before the first anti-mandate protesters had even rolled into the capital, Ardern’s evil twin Justin Trudeau was branding the protest as a “fringe” and “unacceptable” minority with whom he refused to meet. He said he was “disgusted” with the demonstrators, and charged them with being in the thrall of “conspiracy theories.”

Its pretty much the same pattern Ardern and her media soldiers have adopted here in NZ. To discredit the protesters as Trudeau has tried to do. But Trudeau’s propaganda campaign hasn’t gone that well.

The Edmonton Journal reports that a major poll shows a massive decline in support for Trudeau and his handling of the Freedom Trucker protests. The Maru poll, which was conducted from Feb. 9 to 10, found that only 16 per cent of Canadians would vote for Trudeau based on his actions of the last two weeks.

Only 29 per cent of respondents said Trudeau “has acted like a Prime Minister should” in dealing with the truckers, while 48 per cent thought Trudeau was “not up to the job of being Prime Minister.”

A similar poll found that two thirds of Canadians now support an immediate end to all COVID restrictions in favour of treating the disease more like the flu.

It’s a stunning turnaround for a population that has been quite supportive of COVID strictures thus far. Just last summer, an incredible 69 per cent of Canadians still favoured lockdowns as an appropriate response to rising COVID cases.

Interview with Leighton Baker with examples of the “abuse” Mike Hosking says was directed at David Seymour. Pretty mild really, especially when politicians themselves are using provocative terms like “rivers of filth”.

So if events in NZ proceed anything like they have in Canada its by no means certain that Jacinda will continue to receive the same level of support as she has so far.

The protesters could easily be there for a month or more. Let’s see what the polls say as this time goes by. 

Given the legacy media’s wide influence, readers shouldn’t bet their house on a more favourable outcome for the protesters, but still, if Canada is indeed anything to go by, its quite possible the gloating Ardern supporters could be in line for a rude shock.