By NZDSOS 

It takes courage to stand up for the oppressed, as Liz Gunn has done, and for those who speak out, even if we don’t fully agree with them. This is not about politics, whether Counterspin is always correct (no one is), nor about Covid, the injections, climate change or a great reset. This is about us as humans.

Yuval Harari may call us hackable animals but he is ignoring the human spirit. The spirit that has emboldened men and women to fight to their inevitable deaths for freedom, to uphold their spiritual beliefs in the face of being burnt at the stake or the spirit that has inspired countless parents, family and friends to give up their lives so that their loved ones may live.

Have we become so comfortable that we no longer stand with our fellow Kiwis, even when when we do disagree with them, for example with Counterspin? Is it too easy to look away, too easy to become distracted, too easy for our cognitive and emotive faculties to be high-jacked by the anaesthetising abundance of fake food and alcohol and the repeated dopamine hits of likes and gas-lighting? Is it too easy to see the “conspiracy theorist” rather than the human?

NZDSOS stands by the rights of everyone, including colleagues who despise us, journalists who put out hit pieces on us and the government agents who are likely spying on us to hold an opinion that is different to ours and to be treated with dignity and humanity. We also expect those serving us to do the same.

We are all humans with the same genes 99% of the time. We have the same needs of social acceptance, being part of a group, bonding to a partner and protecting ourselves. What if we extended our grouping to those who have what amounts to a tiny difference of opinion to us? Would we not be more protected, rather less protected? Not even animals, hackable or not, treat their kin in the manner in which the Counterspin journalists have been treated.