The Politics of Barking and Biting

Barking mad? The last time the New Zealand State took the threats of Maori nationalists seriously, many New Zealanders responded by accusing it of over-reacting and "going a bit over-the-top". It is to be hoped that the mostly rhetorical and/or symbolic "barking" - of both sides - never progresses (as it did in the 19th Century) to "biting". Photomontage by Pam Templeton.

PROTESTING against "160 years of colonial oppression", Mr Tass Davis, a Ngapuhi elder, has announced his intention to lead up to 300-400 Maori in the non-violent "occupation" of courthouses and courtrooms in and around Auckland, and in the "invasion" of properties belonging to "targeted" judges.

It says something rather touching about this country, that this politically inflammatory news story has been received by most New Zealanders with either a weary sigh, or a wry grin – followed by a dismissive shake of the head.

And, so accustomed have Government Ministers and security officials become, over the past forty years, to radical talk from angry Maori groups, that threats like Mr Davis’s are simply absorbed and digested without anyone flying into a panic.

It is doubtful whether, in any other jurisdiction of this post-9/11 world, threats to occupy courthouses and invade the properties of the judiciary (albeit "non-violently") would be received with such equanimity.

In North America, Europe and Asia, anyone making such threats would almost certainly be rousted out of bed in the early hours of the morning by black-clad, heavily-armed policemen, and hauled off to several weeks of none-too-gentle "interrogation".

Indeed, so certain have New Zealanders become that this country’s indigenous population poses no threat to the status-quo, that, on the one occasion when our own police force did go in black-clad and heavily armed, there were howls of outrage, and a popular consensus swiftly formed that "the cops had over-reacted" and that their invocation of the anti-terror legislation was "a bit over-the-top".

For Maori activists, this Pakeha complacency at the quiescent state of New Zealand’s race relations must be almost as galling as the "colonial oppression" they are trying to resist.

Those familiar with the "Frankfurt School" of Marxist social criticism will, of course, recognise the phenomenon as an example of Herbert Marcuse’s "repressive tolerance". Or, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde: "The only thing worse than being taken seriously by the Colonial State – is not being taken seriously by the Colonial State."

It’s enough to make a Maori revolutionary upset the apple cart, if only to see, in D. H. Lawrence’s lovely line: "which way the apples go a-rolling".

Although, in this particular case, the political efficacy of the exercise would appear to lie in the threat itself. Because, according to Mr Davis, his group’s real purpose is to secure a meeting with the Minister of Maori Affairs, Mr Pita Sharples.

"We want to bring a sensible approach to these discussions, not incite fear", was how the Ngapuhi elder and former policeman put it to Jonathan Marshall of The Sunday News. "That does nobody any good."

Given the fact that Mr Davis’s nephew is none other than the Minister’s Maori Party colleague, Mr Hone Harawira, one might be forgiven for thinking that a simple phone call would have produced the desired outcome more effectively than threatening to re-start the sovereignty wars of the 19th Century. But, then again, the Maori way of politics has always erred on the side of subtlety.

Perhaps the actions of Mr Davis, like the actions of Mr Harawira’s nephews at Waitangi earlier this year, are targeted not so much at the wider Pakeha population, as at the Prime Minister, Mr John Key.

Perhaps it is Mr Harawira’s – and his left-wing faction of the Maori Party’s – way of saying to Mr Key: "Don’t take us for granted, or make the mistake of believing that, just because we’ve struck a deal with you, we’re no longer dangerous. For the moment, Prime Minister, we have chosen to smile at you. But that doesn’t mean we have lost any of our teeth."

A few years ago, a friend of mine very presciently remarked that Maori now held the place in New Zealand politics formerly occupied by the trade union movement. By which he meant that the tangata whenua possesses, as the unions once did, the collective strength of purpose to intervene directly – and decisively – in the life of the nation.

He was also saying that the level of coercive power required to break the strength of Maoridom would be far too draconian, and divisive, to ever risk deploying except in the direst need.

The Harawira whanau knows this, and the Pakeha Establishment knows that they know it.

Let us hope that neither side ever feels honour-bound to prove it.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 3 July 2009.　

Eighties Radicalism (Poem from 1980)

Otto Dix To Beauty 1922

On the day the Ministerial Review Committee released its report on the Foreshore & Seabed Act, a shiver of cold foreboding ran up my spine, and I recalled this poem. Written as the Thatcher-Reagan counter-revolution was hitting its stride, and based on a real encounter in Dunedin’s famous Captain Cook Tavern, the poem addresses the awful attractiveness of creative irrationality and intelligent cynicism – with which the fascist temperament is imbued, and which confers upon its most talented exponents such frightening plausibility.


No Stars Shone

The bar all but deserted,
He smoked silently in the shadows,
Keen eyes strafing the tables.

The clock clanked ominously.

‘Your bearing betrays you, comrade –
Visions of Nuremberg plague your dreams.’
He laughed at my confusion.

‘None believe the soft tales Mother told’,
He whispered. ‘The bullet and the buckle
Seduced us long ago.
Drink with me now and let us speak
Of fire and death.
The ultimate orgasm of annihilation
That all men yearn for – kill for.’

In the ashes of his cigarette
He traced a swastika.

Night thickened beyond the bar windows.

He recited the litany:
Hitler, Heydrich, Himmler, Hess,
Goring, Gobbels and Speer –
The best of them all.

A toast!’ he cried,
Crashing his heels together.
‘To better leadership
And improved technology!’

His glass shattered against the wall.

Our paths diverged into the darkness.
A pale moon shivered
Among the clouds.

No stars shone.

Chris Trotter.

Keeping Obama and Chavez on the same side

Honduras Agonistes: The best way of restoring democracy to the Honduran people is to do everything humanly possible to keep the Obama Administration on side with the left-wing governments of Central and South America. So long as Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez stand together, the Honduran Right's plans for establishing a dictatorship cannot succeed.

THE MILITARY COUP D’ETAT in Honduras has brought about the "pinch-me-I’m-dreaming" sight of revolutionary Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, ranged alongside reformist US President, Barack Obama.

That is a pairing worth preserving.

Not only because the cementing-in of US opposition to the Honduran elites’ attack on democracy is clearly the most effective means of restoring that country’s ousted President, Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, to power, but also because it would represent a massive advance towards the Holy Grail of left-wing Latin American diplomacy – a United States Government willing to stand behind the right of the region’s peoples to determine their own futures without the overt or covert interference of American capitalists.

Unfortunately, the first response of the New Zealand Left has been to more-or-less ignore Obama’s (and Hilary Clinton’s) condemnation of the Coup, and insist, instead, that the Honduran military are simply carrying out the wishes of their American advisers. It is inconceivable, they say, that such a controversial political intervention by the armed forces of a Latin American state (the first since 1993) could have been initiated without first receiving the green light from Washington.

Accordingly, a number of New Zealand leftists are planning to picket the US Consulate in Auckland. Their demands will include the closing of the notorious School of the Americas – training-ground for every military dictator and death-squad commander since the early 1950s, along with the withdrawal of all US intelligence agents from Central and South America.

Both strategically and tactically, I believe this is precisely the wrong course of action to follow.

Of course US intelligence officers and military personnel would have been aware that the Honduran Right was planning to head-off a Venezuelan-style revision of the country’s constitution, and many – perhaps most – of these individuals would have been strong supporters of such a plan. But the facts – as far as we know them to date – all point to the Obama Administration refusing to back the proposed coup.

To ignore this fact is to, objectively, play into the hands of the most right-wing elements within the US Government, Intelligence Community and Armed Forces. They don’t care if Obama is castigated by the International Left as an imperialist – in fact they’d rather welcome it. What terrifies them is the prospect of Obama and Clinton, by publicly repudiating the actions of the Honduran military, along with its right-wing civilian backers in the judiciary, congress and the news media, forcing the Americans on the ground in Tegucigalpa to break-off their relationships with the plotters and, by standing back, allow the popular resistance to gather strength.

Keeping the USA aligned with Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua and El Salvador on this issue should, therefore, be the prime progressive objective world-wide. The New Zealand Left – along with their comrades across the world – should be heaping praise upon Obama and Clinton. Instead of angry demonstrations outside the US Consulate, we should be organising expressions of support for the Obama Administration’s stance.

Only if Washington abandons Honduran democracy - thereby signalling a return to business-as-usual in Latin America - should the anti-imperialist slogans be dusted off, and Old Glory resume its time-honoured relationship with paraffin and matches.　

Seventies Pessimism (Poem from 1978)

Winter Sonnet

Dressed all in burgundy, so roughly swathed,
What does she seek, this pilgrim of the night?
Who startles winter revelers neon-bathed,
And meeting Victory, will call him Flight.

I meet her constantly in places drunk with lies,
Our speaking purged of all uncertainty.
As doubtful lust our faith and purpose tries
We laughingly salute each other’s frailty.

What blasts my soul that I do call it love,
And ache with every vacant hour I live?
No answers do I find in Powers above,
Nor Powers below do any answers give.

She is a dream that plagues my hours so.
Yet if I could to her each night I’d go.

Chris Trotter

More in Sorrow than in Anger: To Lew at Kiwipolitico

The Freedom of Speech: Norman Rockwell's famous illustration reminds us that it is the speech itself, and not the speaker, that we are obligated to contend with. Argument ad hominem (against the man) does not belong in the genuinely progressive person's rhetorical armoury.

NEVER has my conviction that engaging in personal debates on the Internet constitutes a truly fruitless enterprise been more painfully vindicated than in the posting I’m reluctantly responding to here.

Lew at Kiwipolitico disagrees with my stance on the Maori Party – fair enough. One of the truly great aspects of the Internet is that through websites and blogs such as these it really is possible to let a "thousand schools of thought contend". And if Lew had been willing to leave it at that I’d have had no problem with his posting.

But, he wasn’t.

Repeatedly, in his postings on Kiwipolitico, Lew has responded to articles and/or postings I have displayed here at Bowalley Road not by honestly confronting the arguments I have put forward, but with personal abuse and gross misrepresentation.

His latest posting, here, is the worst instance so far. In it he accuses me of "repeated denial and denigration of indigenous rights" and "denying that women should be free of sexual predation as of right".

Let me first state that I deny these charges absolutely, and defy any reasonable person, having read the postings on this blog, to draw such outrageous conclusions from them. Anyone who knows me, or has followed my writings over the years, will affirm that while I may have strong (and perfectly legitimate) disagreements with the followers of identity politics, I have never argued against the rights of women or indigenous peoples – nor denigrated any person for doing so.

It is ironic that Lew’s article should be headed up "Brogressives and Fauxgressives" because his own conduct casts serious doubt over whether he is now entitled to any sort of claim to the title of "progressive".

The essence of progressivism is its insistence on rationality – as the only tested method of fully comprehending reality; and its insistence on speaking the truth – as a counter to the lies and misrepresentations of those who seek to obscure reality for their own self-interested purposes.

But this is precisely what Lew is guilty of doing. Rather than attempt to test the truth of the statements I have made on this blog (statements made in good faith, I might add, and with the intention of helping both myself and my readers to more closely approach the truth) Lew has told lies about me. Moreover, he has told those lies with the aim of discrediting me – a fellow human-being – not the arguments I have put forward.

By resorting to these arguments ad hominem; and by conceiving and executing them in bad faith and with what appears to be malicious intent, Lew has effectively cast himself beyond the pale of the entire progressive community – perverting what is clearly a very fine intellect in the process.

I write this more in sorrow than in anger, fully acknowledging that I am as capable as anyone of becoming enraged, and of indulging in behaviour which, upon more sober reflection, was clearly insupportable. I must confess to responding in this way more than once to Lew’s postings. I guess the big difference between myself and Lew, though, is that on the one occasion when I foolishly gave vent to my anger, and posted the result on this blog, I quickly regretted my actions and deleted the offending material as grossly unfair to Lew – a person I had not met, and who certainly did not deserve the ad hominem attack I had leveled against him.

I just wish Lew possessed the decency to have done the same.

Minority Opinion

"They've got the guns, but we've got the numbers", or so sang 60s icon Jim Morrison of The Doors. But, for the first time since the progressive majority of the Baby Boom Generation became old enough to influence social and political trends, "the numbers" now lie with conservative social movements like the anti-anti-smackers, Family First .

FINALLY, the die-hards have got the numbers. For years now, on the issues that divide New Zealanders into progressives and conservatives, the progressives have been in the ascendant.

Whether it be issues as old as the death penalty and a woman’s right to choose, or as relatively recent as New Zealand’s nuclear-free status, genetic engineering, or the Iraq War, a solid majority of New Zealanders have held up their hands for compassion, justice, peace and rationality.

This progressive ascendancy has lasted a long time. From the late-1980s until about 2005 – nearly twenty years.

Historically, it coincided with the rise of the NewLabour, Green, and Alliance parties, and the election of the Helen Clark-led Labour Government – all of them elevated by the public’s deep mistrust of the New Right revolution of 1984-96.

Progressive dominance was also reinforced by the advent of proportional representation. Instead of a hide-bound club, comprised overwhelmingly of white, middle-aged men, MMP forced the House of Representatives to live up to its name. Nandor Tanczos’s dreadlocks, hemp suit and skateboard were only the most colourful proof that the times were a-changing.

Underlying all of this, however, was the relentless demographic pressure of the Baby-Boom Generation (1946-66).

The first of the Boomers were in their late-30s when Rob Muldoon’s conservative government finally fell in July 1984. Over the next 20 years, they and their younger brothers and sisters would steadily occupy all of the strategic decision-making points of New Zealand society – and progressively transform it.

From the moment they entered primary school in the 1950s, the Boomers had been absorbing New Zealand’s nominally progressive "official" ideology. And, as they entered high-school and university in the 1960s and 70s, these youngsters were naturally impatient to test its authenticity.

There was genuine reason for doubt.

Apart from a handful of progressive enclaves in the universities, civil service, arts and trade unions, the New Zealand of the 1960s and 70s was a profoundly conservative society. There were overwhelming popular majorities in favour of restoring the death penalty, keeping abortion and homosexuality illegal, maintaining sporting contacts with South Africa, and preserving the ANZUS alliance with Australia and the United States.

When it came to challenging the "official" values of their parent’s generation, the Baby-Boomers (as in so many other aspects of their lives) were spoiled for choice.

New Zealand had signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – but was willing to play Rugby with representatives of Apartheid. We had endorsed the UN Charter – but backed the United States’ rape of Vietnam. We solemnly affirmed that in our democratic society all citizens were equal – but we paid women less for doing the same work as men, and refused to protect te reo Maori, their lands and other treasures.

The Boomers’ great mission became matching their nation’s deeds with its words. And, to a truly remarkable degree, they were successful.

Or, perhaps it’s more truthful to say that the Baby Boomers who genuinely believed in the progressive ideals they’d been encouraged to actualise were remarkably successful. Because not all of the generation born between 1946 and 1966 ended up falling under the progressive spell.

For conservative Baby Boomers, these past 20 years have been a torment. While New Zealand’s officially progressive ideals remained little more than window-dressing, behind which the majority’s die-hard conservatism continued to hold sway, all was well. But when the official credo found official backing, and theory became practice, things turned decidedly sour.

Railing against the "political correctness" of the Boomer generation’s progressive majority, its conservative minority could only wait for the same demographic forces which had unseated their parents’ regime to come to their rescue.

And come they did, in the form of Generations X and Y. Innocent of the old conservatism’s crimes, but only-too-aware of their Boomer parents’ glaring hypocrisies (who was it who took everything the Welfare State had to offer, and then decided it was all too expensive for their children to enjoy?) the New Zealanders born after 1967 proved easy prey for the "political correctness" calumnies of the conservative Boomers.

And so the period of progressive ascendancy has ended, and the conservative Baby Boomers – backed by their privileged generation’s alienated offspring – are eagerly anticipating an historic victory for the anti-anti-smacking referendum.

Which leaves the progressives exactly where they’ve always done their best work: carrying the flickering flames of our vulnerable virtues into the cankered heart of the conservative darkness.

A version of this essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 26 June 2009.

My Enemy's Friends

My Enemy's Friends: Until the Maori Party ceases to support the neoliberal agenda of the National Party and its allies, it must remain the un-natural enemy of all progressive New Zealanders.

SOMETIMES important political questions just have to be answered – no matter how much we might prefer to avoid them.

A few weeks ago, I encountered a posting by "Lew" at the Kiwipolitico blog entitled "Memo to the Left: The Maori Party is not your enemy."

I was sorely tempted to respond: "Memo to Lew: Yes it is." But blogosphere debates with well-meaning but misguided political naïfs like Lew are never-ending, and I had better things to do with my time.

The question, however, refused to go away – resurfacing at a PPTA field officers’conference in Auckland.

As I was the guest speaker, I could hardly avoid answering, and I’m afraid my reply was rather brutal.

"Yes, the Maori Party did make a huge mistake by throwing in its lot with National. No, I do not think the Maori leadership had a very clear view of their long-term political interests. Yes, the National Party did trick them. And no, I do not believe – even after six months – they realise how very wickedly they’ve been deceived, nor how much damage their relationship with National is about to inflict on both Maori and Pakeha New Zealanders."

To properly understand the Maori Party/National Party relationship, it is first necessary to comprehend the scale of the betrayal represented by the Foreshore and Seabed Act.

For Maori, the Fifth Labour Government’s decision to nullify the Court of Appeal’s judgement on Maori customary rights was every bit as egregious – and just as devastating – as the Fourth Labour Government’s betrayal of the broader labour movement under Rogernomics.

The Maori Party was born out of the same sort of deep political anguish that saw an embittered working-class battler scrawl on the wall of the Christchurch Trades Hall: "You were supposed to help." The same sort of anger that led to the formation of the NewLabour Party in 1989, and the Alliance in 1991.

It took nearly ten years for the rage of the people who walked out of the Labour Party to subside sufficiently for Helen Clark to be invited to the 1998 Alliance Conference, and for the delegates to vote unanimously in favour of a coalition with her despised party. For most of that decade the emotional intensity of the Alliance’s attacks on Labour had always been much greater than its criticisms of National. How could it be otherwise? Pain inflicted by someone you love is always more hurtful than the blows of an enemy.

With feelings running so high, the old proverb, "my enemy’s enemy is my friend", takes on a grim logic.

But, of course, your enemy’s enemy can just as easily be your enemy too – and in the case of the foreshore and seabed debacle this was especially true. Labour’s erstwhile deputy-leader, Michael Cullen, was telling no more than the truth when he pointed out that his government had no room to manoeuvre over the Foreshore & Seabed Bill.

From the moment the Court of Appeal’s decision was announced, Labour’s pollsters began to register a rising level of anti-Maori feeling in the Pakeha population. Clearly, it would require a strong, bi-partisan effort to withstand such political pressure. Of course, National’s pollsters were picking up the same racist vibes as Labour, but, rather than stand against them, the strategists surrounding National’s new leader, Don Brash, opted to exploit them.

The Orewa Speech delivered by Brash in January 2004, and the extraordinary shift in political allegiance from Labour to National that it accomplished, destroyed any hope of a bi-partisan approach to resolving the issues raised by the Court of Appeal.

Labour was left with just two choices: It could either take a principled stand against National’s racism – and watch its electoral support evaporate; or, it could bend before the racist gale, pass the most generous legislation it could get away with, and wait for better weather.

Labour’s Maori MPs – with the obvious exception of Tariana Turia – knew enough about te riri pakeha (the white man’s anger) to grasp that, in the long term, their constituents would be better off under Labour’s reluctant racists, than they would be under a National Party eagerly exploiting anti-Maori feeling to stay ahead in the polls.

It’s the failure of the Maori Party leadership to make the same differentiation that is setting up their people for disaster.

Driven by its nationalist ideology, the Maori Party refuses to draw a distinction between the Pakeha Right and the Pakeha Left. Both the National Party and the Business Roundtable have exploited this ideological colour-blindness with consummate political skill. John Key has deployed his considerable personal charm to engage with and befriend the Maori Party MPs. (Something Labour, unaccountably, refused to do.) Meanwhile, the Business Roundtable, in an astonishing display of ideological legerdemain, somehow persuaded Turia and her co-leader, Pita Sharples, that tino rangatiratanga and laissez-faire capitalism amounted to the same thing.

On the strength of this (false) identification, both National and the Business Roundtable have been quietly transforming the Maori Party into a stalking-horse for a new round of neo-liberal "reforms". Maori Party MPs are already supporting the privatisation of prisons, and their endorsement of education vouchers and private-public-partnerships in healthcare delivery is widely anticipated.

Seduced by the Right’s uninhibited "love-bombing" (not to mention the "mana enhancement" of ministerial salaries and prestige) Turia and Sharples seem oblivious to National’s and Act’s continuing promotion of anti-Maori prejudice among their conservative base.

While "that nice Mr Key" has been playing volleyball at Ratana Pa, paying court to the "underclass" of McGeehan Close, and hongi-ing furiously with every Maori leader he can find, the National and Act parties have been indulging in "dog-whistle politics" like there is no tomorrow.

In place of the "Maori privilege" of Brash’s Orewa speech, the two right-wing parties have substituted the over-heated rhetoric of "law and order". Why? Because whenever terms like "child abuse", "violent crime" and "dysfunctional families" appear in the news headlines, the stereotype conjured up in the mind of the "right"-thinking Pakeha voter is black – not white.

Not content with becoming a stalking-horse for neo-liberalism, the Maori Party has also allowed itself to be cast in the role of the Judas-sheep: bleating dutifully about Maori "empowerment", even as it leads its trusting followers into the slaughter-houses of poverty, ill-health, educational failure and incarceration.

Although they dearly wish it were otherwise, until the Maori Party stops advancing the Right’s extremist agenda, it must remain the un-natural enemy of all progressive New Zealanders.

This is a slightly amended version of an essay originally published in The Independent of Thursday, 28 May 2009.