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Kurt Mahlburg
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture
We didn’t force you; we just took away everything until you consented
The Prime Ministers of Canada and, most recently, New Zealand, have assured their nation’s citizens that they had never forced anyone to get vaccinated, despite their years-long, well-documented support for vaccine mandates.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins are joined in their eleventh-hour rewrite of history by Pfizer executives who said in a recent Australian Senate hearing that “nobody was forced to have a vaccine”.
As citizen journalist Rebekah Barnett has quipped, “We are at the ‘no one made you take it, it was your choice’ stage of the pandemic.”
The latest round of memory-holing was kicked off by Mr Hipkins last weekend, who was apparently unaware that mandatory and compulsory are dictionary synonyms when he stated:
In terms of the vaccine mandates, I acknowledge that it was a challenging time for people but they ultimately made their own choices. There was no compulsory vaccination. People made their own choices.
In case the Kiwi leader was in any way misunderstood, the following day a radio host asked him if he regretted those remarks. Choosing his language carefully, Hipkins responded, “No one was made to be vaccinated.”
“So the person, for example, who made the choice not to get vaccinated, lost their business, laid people off, that’s on them not you?” the host further challenged.
“Well, they made a choice,” Hipkins replied, without a hint of irony or contrition.
Here’s the same Mr Hipkins in 2021, explaining that the authorities will “go out and look for” people “who haven’t come forward to get their vaccination or have missed their bookings”:
At the time, Hipkins was the architect of New Zealand’s strict COVID-19 regime under the prime ministership of Jacinda Ardern, who infamously bragged that New Zealand had become a two-tier society designed to exclude the unvaccinated.
Earlier this year in April, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau engaged in almost identical denialism as the New Zealand leader.
“Individuals are allowed to make their own choices. There may be all sorts of different reasons why someone is hesitant to get vaccinated,” he said at an event at the University of Ottawa.
“While not forcing anyone to get vaccinated, I chose to make sure that all the incentives and all the protections were there to encourage Canadians to get vaccinated.”
18 months earlier, almost to the day, Trudeau announced nationwide vaccination mandates for all federal employees, for international travel, and even for every Canadian travelling by plane or train within the country.
“Enforcement measures in place will make sure that everyone is vaccinated,” he said, in a video still available on the Prime Minister’s website.
Just this August, at a Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee hearing, Australian Senator Pauline Hanson called out Pfizer’s Head of Regulatory Affairs Brian Hewitt for a similar act of Orwellian doublespeak. She asked:
You were in Australia during Covid-19. You must have been fully aware that people, nurses, doctors, people to have their jobs, to keep their jobs, were forced to have the vaccination. Now do you retract your statement that they were not forced?
Hewitt replied:
Senator, no, I believe firmly that nobody was forced to have a vaccine. Mandates or vaccine requirements are determined by governments and health authorities. I believe everybody was offered an opportunity to get a vaccine or not get a vaccine. I don’t believe that anybody was forced to take a vaccine.
You see? Because we didn’t strap you to a bed and inject you as you kicked and screamed, you were not forced.
The choice between feeding your family, paying your mortgage and keeping your career — or maintaining your bodily autonomy, your medical freedom and your dignity — was an opportunity, not an act of coercion.
Doubtless, these are not the last denials we will hear.
Here we have not so much a medical story as a window into postmodern epistemology.
To the relativist, truth is never fixed. Whatever is coming out of a relativist’s mouth right now is the truth, even if it flatly contradicts what you heard last time they flapped their gums.
Fortunately, we do not live in the world of George Orwell, and no world leader or pharmaceutical executive wields a Men in Black neuralyzer.
People have long memories — especially those who paid the highest of prices to maintain their God-given human rights.
And they will vote accordingly at the next election.
