How Covid’s Bitter Divisions Tarnished a Liberal Icon
从自由主义偶像到众矢之的：新西兰总理阿德恩为何辞职

Jacinda Ardern explained her decision to step down as New Zealand’s prime minister on Thursday with a plea for understanding and rare political directness — the same attributes that helped make her a global emblem of anti-Trump liberalism, then a target of the toxic divisions amplified by the coronavirus pandemic.

杰辛达·阿德恩周四解释了她辞去新西兰总理一职的决定。她请求人们的理解，并展现出政治上罕见的直率——正是这样的特质使她成为反特朗普的自由主义的全球象征，之后在新冠大流行加剧的恶劣分裂中成为众矢之的。

Ms. Ardern, 42, fought back tears as she announced at a news conference that she would resign in early February ahead of New Zealand’s election in October.

42岁的阿德恩强忍泪水在新闻发布会上宣布，她将在新西兰10月大选前的2月初辞职。

“I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice,” she said. “It is that simple.”

“我知道这份工作需要什么，并且我知道我已经没有足够的精力来做好这份工作了，”她说。“就这么简单。”

Ms. Ardern’s sudden departure before the end of her second term came as a surprise to the country and the world. New Zealand’s youngest prime minister in 150 years, she was a leader of a small nation who reached celebrity status with the speed of a pop star.

阿德恩在第二个任期结束前突然离职，令整个国家和世界感到意外。她是新西兰150年来最年轻的总理，这位小国领导人以流行歌星的速度成为了名人。

Her youth, pronounced feminism and emphasis on a “politics of kindness” made her look to many like a welcome alternative to bombastic male leaders, creating a phenomenon known as “Jacindamania.”

在许多人看来，她的年轻、明显的女权主义和对“仁慈政治”的强调让她成为一个可喜的替代者，取代了夸夸其谈的男性领导人，创造了“杰辛达狂热”现象。

Her time in office, however, was mostly shaped by crisis management, including the 2019 terrorist attack in Christchurch, the deadly White Island volcanic eruption a few months later and Covid-19 soon after that.

然而，她的任期充满了危机管理，包括2019年基督城恐怖袭击、几个月后致命的怀特岛火山爆发以及之后不久的新冠疫情。

The pandemic in particular seemed to play to her strengths as a clear and unifying communicator — until extended lockdowns and vaccine mandates hurt the economy, fueled conspiracy theories and spurred a backlash. In a part of the world where Covid restrictions lingered, Ms. Ardern has struggled to get beyond her association with pandemic policy.

尤其是这场大流行病，似乎发挥了她作为一个清晰统一的沟通者的优势——直到延长的封锁和疫苗规定损害经济，助长阴谋论并引发了强烈反对。在这个仍然存在新冠限制的地方，阿德恩一直在吃力地摆脱自己与疫情政策的联系。

“People personally invested in her, that has alway been a part of her appeal,” said Richard Shaw, a politics professor at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

“人们对她倾注个人情感，这一直是她魅力的一部分，”新西兰北帕梅西大学政治学教授理查德·肖说。

“She became a totem,” he added. “She became the personification of a particular response to the pandemic, which people in the far-flung margins of the internet and the not so far-flung margins used against her.”

“她成了一个图腾，”他还说。“她成了对大流行病做出特定反应的化身，互联网上，那些遥远的边缘人和不太遥远的边缘人都在利用这种反应来对付她。”

The country’s initial goal was audacious: Ms. Ardern and a handful of prominent epidemiologists who were advising the government held out hope for eliminating the virus and keeping it entirely out of New Zealand. In early 2020, she helped coax the country — “our team of five million,” she said — to go along with shuttered international borders and a lockdown so severe that even retrieving a lost cricket ball from a neighbor’s yard was banned.

新西兰最初的目标很大胆：阿德恩和为政府提供建议的几位著名流行病学家对消除这种病毒，并将其完全拒之门外抱有希望。2020年初，她以“我们500万人的团队”这样的措辞说服这个国家接受关闭国境关闭和严厉的封锁，甚至从邻居的院子里找回掉落的板球都被禁止。

When new, more transmissible variants made that impossible, Ms. Ardern’s team pivoted but struggled to get vaccines quickly. Strict vaccination mandates then kept people from activities like work, eating out and getting haircuts.

当更易传播的新变异株使这一目标无法实现时，阿德恩的团队改变了方向，但难以快速获得疫苗。严格的疫苗接种规定使人们无法外出工作，或进行就餐和理发等活动。

Dr. Simon Thornley, an epidemiologist at the University of Auckland and a frequent and controversial critic of the government’s Covid response, said many New Zealanders were surprised by what they saw as her willingness to pit the vaccinated against the unvaccinated.

奥克兰大学流行病学家西蒙·索恩利博士经常对政府的新冠应对措施提出有争议的批评，他说，许多新西兰人对她愿意让接种疫苗的人与未接种疫苗的人产生对立感到惊讶。

“The disillusionment around the vaccine mandates was important,” Dr. Thornley said. “The creation of a two-class society and that predictions didn’t come out as they were meant to be, or as they were forecast to be in terms of elimination — that was a turning point.”

“对疫苗强制令的幻灭起了很大作用，”索恩利博士说。“这制造了两个社会阶层，加上结果并不像人们所希望的那样，（病毒）没有像预测的那样被消灭——这成了转折点。”

Ms. Ardern became a target, internally and abroad, for those who saw vaccine mandates as a violation of individual rights. Online, conspiracy theories, misinformation and personal attacks bloomed: Threats against Ms. Ardern have increased greatly over the past few years, especially from anti-vaccination groups.

在国内外，对于将强制接种疫苗视为侵犯个人权利的人来说，阿德恩成了攻击目标。在网上，阴谋论、虚假信息和人身攻击层出不穷：过去几年，针对阿德恩的威胁大大增加，尤其是来自反疫苗接种团体的威胁。

The tension escalated last February. Inspired in part by protests in the United States and Canada, a crowd of protesters camped on the Parliament grounds in Wellington for more than three weeks, pitching tents and using parked cars to block traffic.

紧张局势在去年2月升级。一群抗议者在一定程度上受到美国和加拿大抗议活动的启发，在惠灵顿的议会场地扎营超过三周，他们搭起帐篷，停放汽车，阻塞交通。

The police eventually forced out the demonstrators, clashing violently with many of them, leading to more than 120 arrests.

警察最终驱散了示威者，并与其中许多人发生了激烈冲突，导致120多人被捕。

The scenes shocked a nation unaccustomed to such violence. Some blamed demonstrators, others the police and the government.

这些场面震惊了一个不习惯这种暴力的国家。一些人指责示威者，另一些人指责警察和政府。

“It certainly was a dark day in New Zealand history,” Dr. Thornley said.

“这无疑是新西兰历史上黑暗的一天，”索恩利博士说。

Dylan Reeve, a New Zealand author and journalist who wrote a book on the spread of misinformation in the country, said that the prime minister’s international profile probably played a role in the conspiracist narratives about her.

新西兰作家兼记者迪伦·里夫撰写了一本关于该国虚假信息传播的书，他说，总理的国际形象可能在关于她的阴谋论中起了作用。

“The fact that she suddenly had such a large international profile and was widely hailed for her reaction really seemed to provide a boost for local conspiracy theorists,” he said. “They found support for the anti-Ardern ideas from like-minded individuals globally at a level that was probably out of scale with New Zealand’s typical prominence internationally.”

“她突然有了这么大的国际知名度，并因对事态的反应而广受赞誉，这一事实似乎确实为当地的阴谋论者提供了动力，”他说。“他们在全球范围都能找到志同道合者反对阿德恩，其程度可能与新西兰在国际上的典型地位并不相称。”

The attacks did not cease even as the worst of the pandemic receded. This month, Roger J. Stone Jr., the former Trump adviser, condemned Ms. Ardern for her Covid approach, which he described as “the jackboot of authoritarianism.”

即使大流行最严重的浪潮已经退去，攻击也没有停止。本月，前特朗普顾问罗杰·斯通谴责阿德恩的新冠疫情应对方式，他将其描述为“专制主义手段”。

In her speech on Thursday, Ms. Ardern did not mention any particular group of critics, nor did she name a replacement, but she did acknowledge that she could not help but be affected by the strain of her job and the difficult era when she governed.

在周四的演讲中，阿德恩没有提到任何特定的批评者群体，也没有指定替代者，但她承认，她无法避免工作压力和她执政的困难时代的影响。

“I know there will be much discussion in the aftermath of this decision as to what the so-called real reason was,” she said, adding: “The only interesting angle you will find is that after going on six years of some big challenges, that I am human. Politicians are human. We give all that we can, for as long as we can, and then it’s time. And for me, it’s time.”

“我知道在做出这个决定之后会有很多人讨论所谓的真正原因，”她说。“在这六年，经历了一些重大挑战之后，你会发现，唯一有趣的角度是，我也是人。政治家也是人。我们竭尽所能，尽力坚持，然后是时候了。对我来说，是时候了。”

Suze Wilson, a leadership scholar at Massey University in New Zealand, said Ms. Ardern should be taken at her word. She said that the abuse could not and should not be separated from her gender.

新西兰梅西大学的领导学者苏兹·威尔逊说，应该相信阿德恩的话。她说，阿德恩受到的辱骂无法、也不应独立于她的性别而存在。

“She’s talking about not really having anything left in the tank, and I think part of what’s probably contributed to that is just the disgusting level of sexist and misogynistic abuse to what she has been subjected,” Professor Wilson said.

威尔逊说：“她自己已经精疲力尽了，我认为部分原因可能是她所遭受的性别歧视和厌女辱骂，实在令人作呕。”

In the pubs and parks of Christchurch on Thursday, New Zealanders seemed divided. In a city where Ms. Ardern was widely praised for her unifying response to the mass murder of 51 people at two mosques by a white supremacist, there were complaints about unfulfilled promises around nuts-and-bolts issues such as the cost of housing.

周四，在基督城的酒吧和公园里，新西兰人似乎存在分歧。这座城市曾发生一名白人至上主义者在两座清真寺大规模杀害51人的事件，阿德恩因呼吁团结的回应而广受赞誉，而现在有人抱怨说，围绕住房成本等具体问题的承诺没有兑现。

Tony McPherson, 72, who lives near one of the mosques that was attacked nearly four years ago, described the departing prime minister as someone who had “a very good talk, but not enough walk.”

72岁的托尼·麦克弗森住在其中一个四年前遭到袭击的清真寺附近，他说即将离任的总理“说得很好，但做得不够”。

He said she fell short on “housing, health care” and had “made an absolute hash on immigration,” arguing that many businesses had large staff shortages because of a delayed reopening of borders after the lockdowns.

他说，她在“住房、医疗保健”方面做得不够好，并且“在移民问题上绝对是一团糟”，他认为，由于封锁边境后延迟重新开放，许多企业出现了大量人员短缺。

Economic issues are front and center for many voters. Polls show Ms. Ardern’s Labour Party has been trailing the center-right National Party, led by Christopher Luxon, a former aviation executive.

许多选民最关注的是经济问题。民意调查显示，阿德恩领导的工党一直落后于前航空业高管克里斯托弗·卢克森领导的中右翼国家党。

On the deck of Wilson’s Sports Bar, a Christchurch pub, Shelley Smith, 52, a motel manager, said she was “surprised” at the news of Ms. Ardern’s resignation. She praised her for suppressing the community spread of the coronavirus in 2020, despite the effects on the New Zealand economy. Asked how she would remember Ms. Ardern, she replied: “as a person’s person.”

52岁的汽车旅馆经理雪莉·史密斯在基督城“威尔逊的运动酒吧”的户外座位上说，她对阿德恩辞职的消息感到“惊讶”。她称赞阿德恩在2020年抑制了新冠病毒的社区传播，尽管这对新西兰经济造成了影响。当被问及她对阿德恩的印象时，她回答说：“她是一个真实的人。”

That appeal may have faded, but many New Zealanders do not expect Ms. Ardern to disappear for long. Helen Clark, a former prime minister who was a mentor to Ms. Ardern, followed up her time in office by focusing on international issues with many global organizations.

这种魅力可能已经消退，但许多新西兰人预计阿德恩不会消失太久。前总理海伦·克拉克是阿德恩的导师，卸任之后，她加入了许多全球组织，专注于一些国际问题。

“I don’t know she’ll be lost to the world,” Professor Shaw said of Ms. Ardern. “She may get a bigger platform.”

“我不知道她会不会就此消失，”肖教授谈到阿德恩时说。“她可能会得到一个更大的平台。”

来源：好英语网