The Sydney Morning Herald breathlessly reports: “Ardern may need ongoing security as true extent of threats is revealed.”

“Jacinda Ardern is likely to require an unprecedented level of security for a former New Zealand prime minister given the extent of the abuse and threats she faced while in office.

VITRIOL

“ ‘The vitriol is, quite frankly, off the charts,’ said Paul Buchanan, a former intelligence and defence policy analyst who was a consultant to US security agencies. ‘The threats to her will not go away simply because she steps down. Some of these people are capable of taking violent action against her.’

“Ardern was found to have faced between 50 and 90 times more online vitriol than any of the others. She was mentioned in more than 18,000 posts, with 5438 classified as strongly negative, angry, sexually explicit or toxic. The research also found the abusive messages increased in the second half of last year.”

Gosh. Off the charts. Toxic. This all smells like carefully constructed narrative building to me. Just like the narrative created earlier by those who depicted Ardern as “the empathetic leader”.

Because she donned a scarf and comforted Christchurch Muslims after their awful shootings. Some might well have regarded her Christchurch play as a carefully crafted pitch. Narrative construction.

Within moments of her tearful resignation in Napier the other week, my former fellow Napierians organised a pointed demo against her. God bless them. The Kiwis are pretty worked up over Ms Ardern, with good reason.

What she did to her fellow countrymen was shocking. And not just in relation to COVID.

Just like one of her mentors and fellow revolutionary, Tony Blair, she has been setting out to create a legacy that no future New Zealand government can overturn.

The aggressive and radical Maori (apartheid) play is just one example. This will change New Zealand forever.

Then there is her sell out to the Chinese. The Three Waters calamity. The crushing of education. The green push. The abortion and euthanasia push. Her support for the World Health Organisation’s diabolical new pandemic treaty. Changing New Zealand’s name. The out-of-control government spending. Why on earth would there be anger in the Shaky Isles, I wonder?

DISLIKED

Amy Brooke observes: “Very possibly no other New Zealand prime minister has become so universally and deeply disliked, to the consternation of the far-Left, inveighing against those who, acutely aware of the damage she has caused, were increasingly supporting a petition so far signed by nearly 100,000 people, asking her to go.

“Ardern’s repeated exhortation to New Zealanders to be kind to one another meshed oddly with telling the population not to speak to neighbours when COVID entered the country, and the appalling decision to refuse to allow people to visit ill and dying relatives during her government’s imposed lockdown, leaving them to die alone, with entry to the country denied even to desperate family members.”

Righteous anger. It was inevitable that the Napier protesters would be vilified, of course. The deplorables always are.

So, martyrdom, then. But first there was the misogynist card. This targeting would never have happened if Ardern were a man. (And, no, there is no reliable evidence that some of the rabbit-holers’ theories about her original gender have any substance).

They wheeled out academics, inevitably: “I draw the conclusion that misogyny was a key part of it,” said Chris Wilson, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Auckland. Ardern attracted backlash for being a Left-wing woman in power who “symbolically or otherwise was taking a number of steps to undermine structures of patriarchy, racial hierarchies and structures within society,” he said.

Both Hipkins [Chris, the new Kiwi Prime Minister] and former prime minister Helen Clark have in recent days called out the misogyny and hatred directed at Ardern.

All we need is to let loose a faux-sociologist and a former Lefty feminist politician on the discussion.

The physical insults have been referenced, for example. Horse face? The over-hyped feminazis are a little short on memory. Only women politicians get this stuff? The usual suspects were wheeled out to prosecute the case.

Yes, this has been going on for a while. The feminist theorising, I mean.

VIOLENT

According to one sympathiser: “While it wasn’t explicitly stated, it’s hard to imagine the increasingly violent abuse directed at her was not part of the reason [for her departure].

“It is no surprise to me at all … she could not, not be affected by this,” says Disinformation Project director Kate Hannah.

“Ardern probably tops the list for the amount of vitriol endured by any political leader in this country,” Hannah believes.

“In the earlier parts of her first term we got sort of commentary about her looks and her lack of perceived experience. The fact that sort of she was, you know, well spoken, and really good at communicating complex issues was kind of a slur against her.”

This is rubbish, of course.

The most casual observer should vaguely remember all of the male politicians on the conservative side that have been pilloried for their physical appearance.

It is the core business of cartoonists, for example. But not just the cartoonists.

Think Billy McMahon, whose head was once described by some clever critic as looking like a volkswagen with both doors open. He was bald with big ears.

Little Johnnie Howard kept the Left scribes amused for decades. Little? Five foot eight. Same as me. Same as Bob Hawke.

Can anyone remember Bob Hawke being called “little Bobby Hawke”? No, I didn’t think so. No one has ever called me “little Paul”. Well, not since third form.

BARBS

Howard was normally pictured next to the giant Malcolm Fraser. It is all comparative. Howard, to his immense credit, ignored the barbs, barbs that formed the basis of a decades long campaign of derision concocted by the likes of Mike Carlton, who didn’t know how else to lay a glove on him.

Speaking of Fraser, he was always described as an Easter Island statue. A lifeless blob. Tony Abbott? He in the speedos. Because he was (and probably still is) a lifesaver, wearing his work gear in a rather noble (unpaid) profession.

No, Jacinda has been roasted for her politics, not her gender or looks. Playing the misogynist card just looks pathetic.

Casual abuse of politicians’ appearance is par for the course, and anyone who signs up for this job must know this. (Ron Tandberg, of course, was taken to task for depicting Serena Williams as an angry, bulky, black woman throwing a tantrum on the tennis court.  She is, and she did).