Debating Debating.

Arguments-To-Go: Trained to espouse only the “correct” version of reality, the idea of giving “incorrect” ideas access to the mass media, must strike a large number of young journalists as just plain wrong.

THAT TELEVISION NEW ZEALAND saw fit to run a news item on the subject of political debate tells us something. Unfortunately, it is that we have a very big problem on our hands.

A generation has grown to adulthood for whom the idea that all important issues have at least two sides has acquired a counterintuitive aspect. It is a generation raised to believe that all the great questions that formerly divided society have been resolved.

To indicate otherwise, by affirming ideas that have been consigned, with extreme prejudice, to the dustbin of history, is to signal a form of individual and social pathology. Such persons may merit treatment, but what they absolutely must not be given is an audience.

What was it, then, that prompted TVNZ’s Laura Frykberg to pull together an item on political debate? The answer would appear to be the events surrounding the visit to New Zealand of the controversial women’s-rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull – also known as “Posie Parker”. Those events have clearly caused a number of journalists to re-examine the way New Zealand’s mainstream news media responded to Keen-Minshull’s visit. A much smaller number may even have asked themselves whether the media’s response played a part in stoking the violence which Keen-Minshull’s presence unleashed.

Frykberg’s framing of the item was, however, rather curious. Viewers were introduced to a clutch of high-school debaters – as if their highly formulaic “sport” in any way resembles genuine political debate. Skilled debaters are expected to acquit themselves effectively regardless of the subject matter. Being on the “Affirmative”, or the “Negative”, team should be a matter of supreme indifference to these “sporting” debaters. They expect to be judged solely on the organisation and delivery of their team’s arguments.

Genuine political debate could hardly be more different from this argumentative cleverness. When real human passions are engaged, debates can become extremely fraught affairs. One has only to encounter the fiercely committed protagonists and antagonists of abortion in the United States to gain some appreciation of the powerful emotions that are all-too-easily aroused by profound differences of opinion.

It is possible that the increasing disinclination to debate contentious issues, a trend already evident in the nation’s universities, is a reflection of the emotional frailty of many younger New Zealanders. More and more we hear the argument that free speech causes real harm to persons of a sensitive disposition. Certainly, hearing one’s cherished beliefs trashed by someone in possession of finely-honed rhetorical skills can be a devastating experience. Especially so, if one’s personal identity has been, to a large extent, constructed out of those beliefs.

In order to avoid upsetting their paying customers, universities have begun to downplay the idea that there are multiple ways of looking at contentious issues, in favour of the notion that there is only one “correct” viewpoint which, if not acknowledged by students, may severely limit their academic success. From this position it is but a short step to denying those with “incorrect” views a “platform”, or to the shouting-down of any dissenters who make it as far as the stage.

Emerging from this environment, it is easy to see why university graduates – especially those from the liberal arts and communications studies – might find it both strange and intolerable to end up in institutions where the tradition of allowing all sides of an issue to be aired remains deeply entrenched. Trained to espouse only the “correct” version of reality, the idea of giving “incorrect” ideas access to the “bully pulpit” of the mass media, can only strike a large number of these youngsters as just plain wrong.

But, what to do about it? The experience, both overseas and here in New Zealand, is for younger journalists to stage in-house uprisings against what they see as excessive editorial tolerance of incorrect ideas and practices. Rather than defend the tradition of ideological diversity in journalism, most editors, publishers and broadcasters are opting to bow to the will of the young people destined to replace them.

Thanks to the events surrounding Keen-Minshull’s visit, however, at least some journalists have been given cause to re-think their attitudes. The news-media’s repetition of the charge that Keen-Minshull was an “anti-trans activist” – rather than a “women’s-rights campaigner” – contributed significantly to the aggressive temper of her opponents. Educated to regard the exercise of the “Heckler’s Veto” as an entirely legitimate tactic, trans-gender activists felt morally entitled to monster Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull off her stage and out of the public square.

That this led directly to serious assaults against those who had gathered to hear Keen-Minshull speak (much of it captured on video) only made it harder for mainstream journalists to square their consciences with the behaviour a growing chorus of critics has condemned as overtly partisan media incitement.

Frykberg is to be congratulated for addressing the pros and cons of political debate on the Six O’clock News. Traditionalists might quibble that it would have been more enlightening to examine the way in which Members of Parliament deal with the passions aroused by genuine political debate, rather than the amoral artifice of school debaters. She might also have touched upon the highly contestable claims of Sarah Hendrica Bickerton of Tohatoha – a not-for-profit outfit dedicated to a “just and equitable Internet” – and Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s discombobulation at social media’s subversive mobilisation of non-elite opinion.

Taken as a whole, however, Frykberg’s item constitutes a welcome indication that the mainstream media is finally engaging in a little self-reflection. And it’s catching, at least within Television New Zealand. Frykberg’s Saturday item was followed the next morning by the Q+A programme’s decision to interview the former head of the American Civil Liberties Union, Professor Nadine Strossen, whose forthright defence of freedom of expression – even Keen-Minshull’s – left the host, Jack Tame, looking ever-so-slightly (and uncharacteristically) contrite.

Back in the 1970s, the Right used to joke that a liberal was a conservative who had yet to be mugged by reality. Both Frykberg and Tame, while not exactly the victims of a mugging, show signs of having, at the very least, witnessed something uncomfortably close to one.

As an old lefty, I can attest to the emotional wrench involved in having to own-up to the wrongs of people you once believed were doing the right thing. It took me a long time to realise that exposing bad behaviour – especially by those who purport to share your values – is by far the best way to ensure the survival of those values. Journalists, in particular, must never play favourites. There will always be two sides to an important story – usually more than two. The trick is to give every side the opportunity to present its case – and then allow the audience to make up its own mind.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 17 April 2023.

Censoring The Fantastic Mr Dahl.

Keeping It Real: Children need to know that the world can be an extremely dangerous place. They need to know that it is filled with quirky, alarming, and sometimes downright dangerous people. Children need to be able to reach back into their internal libraries for the sort of role models Roald Dahl specialised in creating: not always good; not always nice; but without doubt clever, brave, and entertainingly resourceful.

THAT IT COULD BE DONE AT ALL is unfathomable. That professional publishers and editors, supposedly the possessors of post-graduate degrees in English Literature, could even contemplate sanctioning such a desecration is astonishing. Surely, this must be one of those stories we read on “The Onion” website – preposterously funny satire?

No. Wrong on all counts. This story is true.

The publishers (Puffin Books) and current holders of the copyright (Netflix) have colluded in the re-writing of Roald Dahl’s books for young readers. That’s right, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, the whole Dahl catalogue, has been purged of words and attitudes deemed inimical to the moral sensibilities of these very strange times. Words like “titchy, “tiny”, and (with the most extreme prejudice) “fat”, have been purged from the pages of Dahl’s books.

Not at the behest of Dahl’s young readers, of course, they thrill to Dahl’s spiky, misanthropic and just plain naughty vocabulary. Even the dark and scary aspects of Dahl’s work are lapped-up by his young readers – in much the same way that they thrill to the dark and scary elements of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The occasional spine-tingle is a crucial part of the reading experience – at least, it used to be.

And this is important because ….. ? With a stricken North Island to nurse back to health, why should anyone care about the re-writing of Roald Dahl’s books?

The answer, of course, is that children need to know that the world can be an extremely dangerous place. They need to know that it is filled with quirky, alarming, and sometimes downright dangerous people. Children need to be able to reach back into their internal libraries for the sort of role models Roald Dahl specialised in creating: not always good; not always nice; but without doubt clever, brave, and entertainingly resourceful.

When disaster strikes, it matters – a lot – that it does not strike a society raised in the carefully nurtured belief that there are no disasters. That dishonest, abusive and downright dangerous people do not, in fact, exist. That being raised to recognise moments in which behaving sweetly simply will not cut it, is a good thing, not a bad thing. Moments when the resourceful trickster is a better role model than the politically-correct goody-two-shoes who would never dream of calling anybody “fat”. Call them Roald Dahl moments.

Literature, and all the other forms of cultural expression, are not supposed to make us good people, they are supposed to make us real people. That is why when well-meaning people (or so we must assume) decide to “rectify” the works of artists who care about reality, we should all be very worried.

It’s happened before, of course, back in 1818 when a Dr Thomas Bowdler decided that the works of William Shakespeare contained a surfeit of reality, especially in regard to the vexed questions of sex and death, and that the Bard’s opus would be immeasurably improved by getting rid of all the naughty bits.

“Bowdlerism”, as this improving censorship became known, was embraced with enthusiasm by the Victorians. That is to say by the middle-class Victorians, who looked askance at both the debauched antics of the British aristocracy, and the honest rutting of the working-classes. They were firmly of the view that the behaviour of such persons was unlikely to improve without those in possession of a proper understanding of appropriate human conduct showing them a better way.

As if the gross exploitation of Victorian Capitalism, and the impoverished lives of its victims, could magically be made to vanish by sanding-off Victorian society’s jagged edges. As if purging the artist’s work of everything that made it real and compelling could possibly make its ultimate consumers better persons. Protecting people from reality doesn’t make them good, it only makes them stupid – and dangerously vulnerable to those who wield the censor’s blue pencil.

Roald Dahl, being dead, cannot object to the behaviour of those in whom he entrusted the safe-keeping of his art. But living artists have no cause for complacency. Once the formerly rock-solid reverence for an artist’s work disappears – as it so evidently has among Dahl’s publishers – no writer, dramatist, poet, painter, sculptor, or cinematographer, alive or dead, will be safe. While we, their audience, will remain, thanks to our censorious middle-class betters, innocent ignoramuses.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 24 February 2023.

Can Words Hurt Us?

The Question Is: Can the Nuremburg Tribunal’s willingness to execute the notorious Nazi antisemite, Julius Streicher, for publishing hate speech serve as a moral rationale for giving the claim that “words breed deeds” the strongest possible legal expression in New Zealand?

JULIUS STREICHER was convicted and executed at Nuremburg in 1946 for what would today be called “hate speech”. For many years Streicher had been the editor of Der Stürmer, the virulently antisemitic newspaper notorious for whipping-up hatred against Germany’s – and Europe’s – Jewish population. The judges at Nuremburg had drawn a direct causal link between the words and images printed in Der Stürmer and what we now call “The Holocaust” – the state-sanctioned and organised genocide of European Jewry. Words breed deeds, the judges said, and Streicher’s hateful words had contributed to the death of millions.

Such reasoning is, of course, made much easier when it is the deeds of the Nazis caught in the moral spotlight. When the effects of extremism are so unequivocally horrendous, a degree of carelessness in identifying its causes is all-too-easily overlooked and/or excused. With the images of the Nazi death camps seared into the consciousness of the Nuremburg judges, Streicher’s squalid provocations encountered a pronounced deficit of historical understanding. Between 1933 and 1945, the editor of Der Stürmer had indisputably got what he wanted. Surely, on the scaffold at Nuremburg, he got what he deserved?

Just Deserts? The body of Julius Streicher, notorious Nazi editor of the antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, hanged at Nuremburg for his unremitting media hate campaign against the Jews.

The Nuremburg Trials have presented the world with such a clear moral template that they have become the go-to source for generations in search of a clear ethical steer on the conduct of those wielding state power. In the 1960s and 70s, opponents of the Vietnam War warned the conscript soldiers of the United States that when it came to war crimes and crimes against humanity the judgement of Nuremburg was very clear. The excuse, “I was just following orders” is unacceptable. There are some orders that no human-being worthy of the name should follow. Military discipline does not trump the fundamental moral precepts of a civilised society.

That the anti-vaccination occupiers of Parliament Grounds in February-March 2022 also reached for the moral absolutism of Nuremburg – not least its willingness to execute the guilty – should give us all pause. Certainly it should remind us that all human judgement is bounded by the historical events and prejudices within which it is exercised. Even the high-minded pronouncements of the Nuremburg Tribunal are capable of being twisted to ignoble – even evil – ends.

The question, therefore, becomes: Can the Nuremburg Tribunal’s willingness to execute Streicher for publishing hate speech serve as a moral rationale for giving the claim that “words breed deeds” the strongest possible legal expression in New Zealand? Perhaps fortunately, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has handed over this complex legal and ethical argument to the Law Commission. Even so, the consequences of a wrong call on the strength of the causal links between words and deeds is fraught with political risk.

Where should one start? In Streicher’s case, the antisemitic prejudices which fuelled his newspaper sales predated Der Stürmer by several centuries. Crediting Streicher alone with whipping-up hatred of the Jews in Germany is an historical absurdity. One might as readily put the Catholic Church in the dock for instigating the medieval “blood libel” against the Jews. The Nazis did not invent German antisemitism: but, by giving anti-Jewish prejudice the force of law, they made it compulsory. Without Adolf Hitler’s genocidal hatred of the Jews, Der Stürmer would never have amounted to anything more than a loathsome antisemitic rag. One among many.

Those seeking to make hate speech illegal are relying, increasingly, on the concept of “stochastic terrorism” to justify their plans for extensive political censorship. Stochastic, in this context, is best explained as the problem of identifying precisely which one of the ten thousand antisemitic readers of an incendiary online posting is going to borrow his brother’s rifle and walk into the nearest synagogue.

The promoters of hate speech laws argue that it is enough to know that those contributing to the creation of a climate of hatred and prejudice will, eventually, succeed in provoking a deadly political reaction. Although it is virtually impossible for the authorities to identify exactly which one of these ten thousand potential terrorists will pick up a gun, the statistical certainly remains that someday, someone will.

Better, therefore, to legally prohibit extremists from building-up the sort of highly-charged political atmosphere that can only be earthed by a bolt of terrorist lightning. No antisemitic literature, no antisemitic movies, no antisemitic blogs and – Hey Presto! – no antisemitism!

Quite apart from the immense cultural wounds such an approach would inflict – no Merchant of Venice – it is far from certain that such extensive censorship would be effective. The perpetrator of the Christchurch Mosque Massacre, for example, was inspired, in part, by the deeds of the Norwegian terrorist, Anders Breivik. Does this mean that all news of such deadly attacks should be suppressed? Brenton Tarrant was also inspired by the medieval military struggle between Christendom and Islam in the Holy Land and Eastern Europe. Do those promoting hate speech laws also propose placing a ban on the reading of history?

The hate speech legislation packed off to the Law Commission by Prime Minister Hipkins proposed to limit the extended protection of our human rights legislation to religious communities alone. This offered considerably less protection for “vulnerable groups” than had been promised in earlier recommendations, and yet, even when limited to religious belief, the potential for conflict remains high. The Bible and the Koran both contain passages that are, at least on their face, antisemitic. Should both holy books join Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice in the sin-bin?

The moral certainties reflected in the judgements of Nuremburg can still evoke a nostalgic response from those old enough to have grown up in their shadow. The Second World War was perceived (at least by its victors) as a Manichean struggle in which the Forces of Light had not only defeated the Forces of Darkness, but also, in the course of prosecuting those minions of evil who’d survived the War, spelled out with crystalline clarity the moral limits of political and military power. After the global exertions of the most destructive war in human history, the installation of a new moral order – the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the judgements of Nuremburg themselves – did not strike them as hubris, but as the very least that should be done to honour the millions who had fallen.

And yet, even as Julius Streicher was twisting at the end of a rope, his fellow defendant, Albert Speer, was being escorted to a comfortable prison cell, from which he would emerge 20 years later to burnish his growing reputation as the only “Good Nazi”. In the end, the thousands of Jewish and Russian slave labourers who died manufacturing the weapons which, as Hitler’s Armaments Minister, Speer had promised his Fuhrer, caused the Nuremburg judges less grief than Streicher’s hate-filled prose.

Truth is a hard goddess to like – and even more difficult to serve – but among all the other gods she stands alone for keeping her promise to humanity. “I cannot shield you from the pain that comes with me,” she told us, “but I am your only sure protection against those who would have you believe that happiness is ignorant, and that lies can set you free.”

This essay was originally posted on Interest.co.nz of Monday, 13 February 2023.

The Woman With The Red Umbrella - A Short Story.

“The thing you’ve got to understand about misinformation and disinformation, Mr … Smith, is that they’re like machine-guns and artillery – much too dangerous to have just anybody firing them off. They are weapons that only the state can be permitted to wield.”

I SPOTTED HER at one hundred metres. Average height, average build, entirely nondescript: the sort of person you would pass in the street without a second glance. Had she not been carrying a red umbrella on a day that smelled of rain, my eyes would have registered her presence, and continued searching. But the red umbrella fixed my gaze. It was the pre-arranged sign. This was the woman.

As she came up the steps towards the bench I rose, as arranged, to greet her like an old friend. She stretched out her hand and I shook it gently. As she seated herself beside me, she took care to position the red umbrella between us. A demarcator: on one side, her world; on the other, mine.

“I’m told you are in search of information, Mr … Smith?”

“Not my real name.”

No? You surprise me. My name is Ms … Jones.”

“What can you tell me about the Government’s war against ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’? Are my sources exaggerating? Or, is this something to be taken seriously?”

“Direct and to the point. I like that Mr Smith. At my age, time is precious. So, let me be equally direct. Your sources are not exaggerating. The management of information is something this government takes extremely seriously. Its predecessors had it much easier, of course. Fifty years ago there were so few disseminators of information. Keeping the official story – or stories – straight involved managing maybe two or three hundred individuals – certainly no more than that. Today, you’re talking thousands – tens of thousands – all on digital platforms which can be updated in an instant. Thousands of people espousing views pulled straight out of their arses. Or, even worse, out of Russian, American and Chinese arses!”

“But, surely, propaganda of one sort or another has been around forever? Misinformation and disinformation – they’re hardly new.”

“No, that’s true. But the difference between the present and the past is the degree to which propaganda – yours and your opponents’ – can be controlled. Think about it. There have always been crazies out there. People who wrote to the editor of the local paper using green ink and capital letters. But they weren’t a problem. Their letters were simply crumpled up and deposited in the nearest wastepaper bin. And there was nothing, short of buying their own printing press, they could do about it. But today … Today they go on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik-Tok and their craziness infects thousands, or, if you’re Donald Trump, millions.”

“Good luck with controlling Meta and Google, Ms Jones!”

“Yes, well, now you’re getting to the heart of the problem. Let’s start with the timing of this latest big push. Our Prime Minister, horrified by the Christchurch mosque massacre, reaches out to Zuckerburg and his ilk. But, she also takes to heart the criticism of the Muslim community about the ‘hate speech’ that fuelled the horror. All the lies and half-truths circulating about Islam. All that misinformation and disinformation. It took hold of Brenton Tarrant. It turned him into a mass murderer.”

“Okay. But Tarrant was refighting the crusades. How do you prevent that? Close all the libraries?”

“A fair question. But let me move the narrative on. Ten months after Christchurch, Covid-19 arrives on the scene. It’s new, and no one is at all sure how deadly this novel coronavirus is going to be. One thing the experts do know, however, is that the effects of a potentially deadly virus can be made a whole lot worse by people spreading misinformation and disinformation on the Internet. So the DPMC hires people to monitor what’s happening online vis-à-vis the pandemic. The results are frightening. It’s a nutfest out there.”

“And the Prime Minister, her government, and their advisers, are all convinced that these nutters have to be monitored and, if possible, reined-in, before they undermine the ‘Team of Five Million’s’ battle against the virus – especially the vaccine roll-out.”

“Well done, Mr Smith, well-spotted. But it gets worse. In the minds of the Government and its advisers, the anti-vaxxers and Wuhan Flu conspiracy theorists begin to merge with the white supremacists, Nazis, Islamophobes, transphobes and TERFs. As far as Labour and the Greens are concerned they are all dangerous nutters: people who can do real harm to others. And the people who defend these dangerous nutters’ right to free speech are little better than Typhoid Marys – allowing the viruses of hate and intolerance to spread throughout society.”

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“Is it? You’re not the Prime Minister. You’re not being accosted by these nutters every time you venture forth to promote vaccination. You’re not receiving e-mailed death threats – and worse – every day of the week. You’re not looking down on Parliament Grounds at a seething mass of what looks like every green ink correspondent that ever lived waving hangman’s nooses and threatening to execute the entire House of Representatives. You’d like to laugh it off, but then you remember Washington DC on 6 January 2021, and suddenly you no longer feel like laughing.”

“And then they start thinking about Three Waters, and He Puapua and co-governance.”

“Clever boy. Their great fear is that what the anti-vaxxers started, the racists will finish. They’re thinking of all the misinformation and disinformation that’s already being spread about the transformation of New Zealand into Aotearoa, and they’re telling themselves that these digital reactionaries cannot be allowed to win. That the Pakeha majority must not be allowed to crush the legitimate aspirations of the Māori minority. That the racists’ misinformation and disinformation must be stopped.”

“And so we get the Public Interest Broadcasting Fund, and journalists trying to convince us that there are right-wing monsters out there moving in the darkness.”

“And that is when people like me enter the story. People who can gently steer journalists in the right direction. People who can identify potential journalistic assets and supply them with the information they would have very little chance of unearthing without a great deal of unattributed assistance – information that makes their careers. People who can suggest which anti-government voices are most deserving of being silenced. You look shocked Mr Smith. You shouldn’t be. We spooks have been doing this sort of thing for years – just like the Australians, the Americans and the Brits. The thing you’ve got to understand about misinformation and disinformation, Mr … Smith, is that they’re like machine-guns and artillery – much too dangerous to have just anybody firing them off. They are weapons that only the state can be permitted to wield.”

She rose carefully from her seat, as if her joints were giving her discomfort. Glanced up at the grey clouds gathering before a sharp south wind, and pulled her coat more tightly about her.

“It’s coming on to rain, Mr … Smith. My car’s on the other side of the park – not far. So, since we know you came on foot, I’ll leave you the umbrella.”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 2 September 2022.

Protecting Freedom/Preventing Harm. Can New Zealand’s New Chief Censor Do Both?

A Delicate Juggler? Internal Affairs Minister, Jan Tinetti (above) has appointed Ms Caroline Flora as Chief Censor. Ms Flora owes New Zealand a comprehensive explanation of how she intends to juggle her duty to respect and protect the citizen’s right to freedom of expression, with her understanding of what is likely to cause society harm? 

IT IS TO BE HOPED that the new Chief Censor, Caroline Flora, will waste no time explaining herself. It is important that New Zealanders are told how her old job, Associate Deputy-Director Strategy and Performance, at the Ministry of Health, made her the obvious choice for her new job.

According to Peter Dunne, the Minister of Internal Affairs responsible for the appointment of Ms Flora’s predecessor, David Shanks: “The Chief Censor is responsible for protecting New Zealanders from material likely to cause harm while balancing the important right to freedom of expression”.

Clearly, the person tasked with this delicate legal and cultural juggling act should be someone with a solid background in law, and more than a passing acquaintance with philosophy, political history, the arts and literature, film, television, and social-media. Are these the core competencies required of the Associate Deputy-Director Strategy and Performance at the Ministry of Health? They may well be, but the prima facie case is not strong.

Which is why Ms Flora owes New Zealand a comprehensive explanation of how she sees, and how she proposes to carry out, her role. Where, for example, is her duty to respect and protect the citizen’s right to freedom of expression positioned in relation to her understanding of what is likely to cause society as a whole, or a vulnerable sub-section of it, “harm”. How does she define harm? A question which, depending on how Ms Flora answers it, will play a central role in how she carries out her responsibilities.

It is vitally important to remember that freedom of expression relates not only to the citizen’s right to communicate his or her thoughts and emotions to others, but also to their right to have their thoughts and emotions excited and stimulated by the communications of others. Our own Bill of Rights Act spells it out: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” In other words, the right to emulate Shakespeare, as well as the right to read and watch Shakespeare’s plays.

What threshold will a book, play, film or video have to cross before Ms Flora bans it? Would she consider banning the performance of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice on the grounds that it is antisemitic? Would she ban a film which presented a young person’s decision to transition from female to male in a negative light? Would she pull from the bookshelves a work of history that purported to prove that the chiefs who gathered at Waitangi in 1840 knowingly surrendered their sovereignty to the British Crown? Would she prohibit the distribution of a video depicting Islam as a religion of violence?

One would hope that the new Chief Censor’s answer to each of these questions would be an emphatic “No.” But, considering the censorious times we are living through, it is, sadly, necessary to ask. From the Caucus Room to the Common Room, the urge to shut-down and shut-up those accused of inflicting “harm” on others is strong – and getting stronger.

In the United Nation’s summary of the “International Bill of Human Rights” the notion of harm is spelled out in relation to communications inimical to the free exercise, individually and/or collectively, of those rights and freedoms the International Bill of Human Rights was created to protect. The latter provides for protection of the rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and to freedom of opinion and expression. Significantly, it also calls for the “prohibition by law of any propaganda for war and of any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

If this is Ms Flora’s definition of harmful “speech”, then she will find most New Zealanders are in agreement with her. Incitement of ‘discrimination’, ‘hostility’ and ‘violence’ would strike most of us as a sensible test for determining whether material not already defined as “objectionable” in the legislation establishing the Chief Censor’s office should be deemed so.

Were Ms Flora, in explaining herself to her fellow citizens, to refer approvingly to the legacy of her erudite and classically liberal predecessors, Arthur Everard and Bill Hastings, many of them would breathe a huge sigh of relief. They could then feel reassured that the Chief Censor’s power to rule a particular instance of communication objectionable (invoking all the powerful legal sanctions associated with that term) would be used both wisely and sparingly.

The worry, of course, is that Ms Flora will use the powers of her office to extend its reach into the communication of ideas and policies that, while falling well short of inciting discrimination, hostility or violence, nevertheless are likely to upset and alarm specific individuals or communities.

The new Chief Censor’s background in the upper reaches of the public service raise fears that her institutionally-honed inclination will be to move in the direction of the incumbent government. Given this Government’s growing obsession with misinformation, disinformation and extremism, driven by the Christchurch Mosque Massacres and the Covid-19 Pandemic, it would be helpful to know whether Ms Flora plans to go with the flow, or stand against the tide. Will she be guided by the fundamental tenets of classical liberalism? Or, will she be moved by the definitions of extremism supplied last year to the Department of Internal Affairs by the UK-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue? If it’s the latter, then freedom of expression in New Zealand could take a hit.

This is why the new Chief Censor owes New Zealand a clear explanation of where she stands, and where she would like to go. Ms Flora is taking up office in a climate of deepening antagonisms between ethnicities, identities and faith communities. If the Labour Government’s announced intention to criminalise “hate speech” is expedited by the new Minister of Justice, Kiri Allan, then the Office of the Chief Censor, along with the Human Rights Commission, will find themselves caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. The dual mandate set out by Peter Dunne: to protect New Zealanders from “material likely to cause harm while balancing the important right to freedom of expression” can only become harder and harder to fulfil.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 16 June 2022.

The Truth Prevails.

“The truth prevails, but it’s a chore.” – Jan Masaryk: The intensification of ideological pressures is bearable for only so-long before ordinary men and women reassert the virtues of tolerance and common sense.

ON 10 MARCH 1948, Jan Masaryk, the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia, was found dead below his bathroom window. His death was ruled a suicide, but very few Czechs believed the official story. Everyone knew that Masaryk, son of the country’s first president, Thomas Masaryk, had for months been a thorn in the side of the Communist-dominated government of Czechoslovakia. While he remained in office, it was still possible for liberals and conservatives to believe that the democratic state over which his father had presided still breathed. Jan Masaryk’s murder and the murder of democracy in Czechoslovakia occurred at precisely the same moment, at the hands of the same Soviet assassins.

Six months after Masaryk’s assassination, the Berlin Airlift was in full swing. Determined to drive the Western allies out of the Soviet Zone of Eastern Germany, Joseph Stalin had ordered the city’s land corridors to the west blocked-off. Without the food and fuel delivered to West Berlin by road and rail, the city would be forced to capitulate, and another thorn in the side of the new Soviet masters of Eastern Europe would be removed. What Stalin hadn’t counted on was American airpower. After nearly a year of Berliners being supplied by US aeroplanes, the Soviets threw in the towel. West Berlin remained a free city.

These brief historical snapshots from the late-1940s reveal exactly why the governments of the Western states, soon to be grouped under the aegis of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) had grown increasingly alarmed at the behaviour of their former wartime ally. Why, within the security services and across the government departments of the Western democracies, anti-communist attitudes began to harden, and serious questions began to be asked about the loyalty of individuals known to be sympathetic to the Left in general and to the Soviet Union in particular.

With the explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949, and the subsequent exposure of the extent to which Soviet espionage had made it possible, Western suspicion of the Left metastasised into full-blown political paranoia. The years that followed, known as the McCarthy Era (after the Wisconsin Senator who put himself at the head of the Red Scare) were notorious for the “witch-hunts” that saw people turned out of their jobs, imprisoned, and even executed for the “crime” of being a communist. Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association counted for little in the Cold War battle against the “Global Communist Conspiracy”.

Seventy years later, the word “McCarthyism” is again on people’s lips. Politicians and journalists point to the current persecution of individuals whose ideas do not sit comfortably with the “Powers That Be”, and attempt to construct an argument of equivalence.

It isn’t that hard. Once again, persons expressing unpopular opinions are risking their employment. Once again lists of required beliefs are being drawn up to weed out politically unacceptable aspirants to government funding and/or government jobs. People who once spoke freely to mass audiences are being “de-platformed” – lest their evil notions attract followers.

There is, however, a huge difference between the persecution of communists that took place in the decade following World War II, and the attacks on those giving voice to heterodox opinions in the early years of the Twenty-First Century.

The first and most obvious difference is that the Soviet Union was a brutal, totalitarian, nuclear power whose leaders openly boasted that their Marxist-Leninist ideology would “bury” capitalism. The Soviets did operate a global network of spies – some of whom, like Kim Philby, rose to the highest echelons of the Western security apparatus. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics thus constituted a real threat to the freedom and security of the capitalist West. While the state authorities, egged-on by an aggressive news media, may have caught up far too many innocent citizens in their anti-communist witch-hunts, no one can say, truthfully, that their fear and their zealotry were without at least some justification.

Identifying the equivalent of the Soviet Union behind the persecution of today’s conservatives and liberals poses real difficulties for contemporary political analysts. What, exactly, is the source – or sources – of the fear and antagonism currently coursing through the public service, academia and the mainstream news media? What is it that reduces hitherto voluble civil servants, professors and journalists to wary silence? What sets an entire government off on a quest to extirpate “Hate Speech” from all public discourse – even at the cost of putting a match to the Bill of Rights Act?

There are those on the Right who are adamant that what they call the “woke” are nothing more nor less that the children and grandchildren of the Marxists who commenced what they called “the long march through the institutions” way back in the 1960s and 70s, and who have now risen to positions of power and influence in the public service, academia and the mainstream news media.

From these “commanding heights” of our society and culture, argues the Right, these “woke commissars” are overseeing the deliberate dismantling of our liberal-democratic capitalist institutions. Like a grim spectre, the Communism which most people in the West thought dead and buried has risen from the grave to exact a terrible revenge.

A slightly less paranoid explanation identifies “wokeism” as the ideological terminus of the so-called “new social movements” of the 1960s and 70s: anti-racism, feminism, gay liberation and environmentalism. With the economic, social and political doctrines of actually existing socialism buried beneath the triumph of liberal capitalism in the 1990s, these new movements, often grouped under the heading “identity politics”, became the only “left-wing” game in town.

Backed, as they are, by the Centre-Left parties of the major Western powers: the Democratic Party of the USA; the Labour, Social-Democratic and Green parties of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; the politics of identity can boast sponsors every bit as powerful as the Communist International (Comintern) of the 1920s and 30s.

If it was Stalin’s murderous totalitarianism that terrified the nations of the West in the years after World War II, igniting the Cold War, and causing them to lash-out at anyone considered a “fellow traveller” of the people who murdered Jan Masaryk and blockaded Berlin, then we can only assume that it is the West’s alleged racism, sexism, homophobia, and hatred of the natural world, that has mobilised the identity politicians behind the woke witch-hunts.

Putting his own eccentric spin on this explanation, the prominent English historian, David Starkey, has posited “wokeism” as a Twenty-First Century echo of the Protestant Reformation of the Sixteenth. He likens the social-media of today to the cutting-edge communications technology of the printing-press back in the days of Martin Luther. A technology which spread Protestantism’s revolutionary credo across Europe with unprecedented speed. Starkey’s entertaining “The Woke Reformations: Historical Parallels” is available on You Tube.

Whatever it is that drives the persecution of old-fashioned liberals and conservatives in the Twenty-First century West: Marxism Redux; Identity Politics; or the social-mediated, quasi-religious fervour identified by Starkey; its promoters would be wise to ponder the common fate of History’s witch-hunters. The intensification of ideological pressures are bearable for only so-long before ordinary men and women reassert the virtues of tolerance and common sense.

The Enlightenment robbed religious extremism of its political heft. McCarthy was censured by the US Senate. The Soviet Union fell. The Czechs are once again a free people. Wokeism, with all its militant intolerance of debate, will also fail.

As Jan Masaryk said, paraphrasing the motto of the Czechoslovak state: Pravda vítězí, ale dá to fušku. – “The truth prevails, but it’s a chore.”

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz of Monday, 16 May 2022.

Not On The List.

A Moral Authority? The Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Paul Hunt, is supposed to uphold the secular character of the New Zealand state. As a public servant, he is not entitled to talk like an Archbishop. He may tell us what is lawful and unlawful. He may even reiterate the purposes of the Act of Parliament which created his office. But he has no mandate whatsoever to instruct New Zealanders on what is “Right” and what is “Wrong”.

PAUL HUNT, our British-born Chief Human Rights Commissioner, missed his calling. He would have made a much better Archbishop of Canterbury.

Archbishops are expected to use terms like Good and Evil, Right and Wrong. They subscribe to a faith in which the moral conduct of its adherents determines where they spend eternity: in Heaven, or in Hell.

Chief Human Rights Commissioners, however, are supposed to uphold the secular character of the New Zealand state. As public servants, they are not entitled to talk like Archbishops. They may tell us what is lawful and unlawful. They may even reiterate the purposes of the Act of Parliament which created their office. But they have no mandate whatsoever to instruct New Zealanders on what is “Right” and what is “Wrong”.

It is the arrogation of precisely this sort of moral authority, and the determination to instruct New Zealanders in right conduct, that makes the recent opinion piece by Mr Hunt, published in the NZ Herald of 31 August 2021, so objectionable. That, and the answers he gives to the questions he asks himself about “hate speech”.

“What’s the most effective way of stopping – or at least moderating – hate speech?” Mr Hunt self-inquires. The answer? “A fair, equitable, inclusive, diverse, plural, open, multicultural society which, in Aotearoa New Zealand, is grounded on Te Tiriti o Waitangi.”

It is difficult to imagine a sentence more loaded with concepts more likely to spark lively, not to say bitter controversy. The nature of fairness, and its first cousin, equity, has taxed humanity’s best minds of more than two millennia. What are the boundaries of inclusiveness? How much diversity is a society obliged to tolerate? Does multiculturalism tend towards unity or division? Does pluralism? How far does a society open itself before it simply collapses? Is the Treaty of Waitangi New Zealand’s “founding document”, or an historical artifact now dangerously overloaded with obligations nowhere iterated in the document itself?

Mr Hunt’s solution for hate speech – a New Zealand Utopia in which all of these controversial concepts have been debated and resolved to the satisfaction of all its citizens – is self-evidently unsatisfactory. Clearly, such an utopian state-of-affairs could only have arisen in circumstances of untrammeled freedom of expression. Only in an intellectual climate peculiarly favourable to the discussion of contentious and even painful propositions could such an astonishing level of consensus have possibly been achieved. And yet, reading the rest of Mr Hunt’s essay, it becomes increasingly clear that any form of speech which alarms, excludes, distresses, and/or “denies dignity”, is “vile” and must be prohibited by law.

Mr Hunt is very keen on establishing the “boundaries” at which the robust discussion of ideas must cease. “If you are powerful and privileged,” he writes, “it is easy to dismiss the idea of boundaries indicating what is acceptable. But if you are a member of a disadvantaged group […] boundaries matter.”

It is here, of course, that Mr Hunt, for all his fine talk of “a respectful model for relations between individuals and communities” comes unstuck. By his own admission, the proposed hate speech legislation will have, as one of its principal aims, the limitation of the ability of the “powerful and privileged” to defend their interests.

But, who are the powerful and the privileged? Mr Hunt is extremely careful not to identify those upon whom these tendentious labels should be pinned. We can, however, answer the question by a simple process of elimination. Mr Hunt identifies the “disadvantaged groups” – i.e. those without power and privilege – as: tangata whenua, ethnic minorities, faith communities, sexual minorities, women, and disabled people.

Who is missing from this list? Well, men, obviously. That is to say, men who are not brown, gay, transgendered and/or disabled. Which just leaves white men. This is the group Mr Hunt is enjoining to be “respectful, self-aware, and empathetic” as the hate speech debate heats up.

Also missing from Mr Hunt’s list of disadvantaged groups are the poor and the exploited. Which is strange, because down through the ages it is the poor and the exploited who have felt the lash of power and privilege most keenly. What’s more, the key which unlocked the shackles fastened upon them by the powerful was always and everywhere – Free Speech.

Then again, as all Archbishops know: “The poor are always with us.”

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 3 September 2021.

Voting Without Fear, With Open Eyes.

All Those In Favour: To raise your hand, more or less alone, in opposition to a forest of hands raised in favour, requires considerable courage. Going against the will of the majority in public risks incurring its wrath, and in the workplace that can be rough – very rough. That’s why calling for a show of hands is the preferred method of those anxious to secure a quick and favourable outcome - especially when careful, private, consideration might easily produce the “wrong” answer. It’s the tactic of demagogues, not democrats.

IT’S ONE OF THOSE STORIES that illustrates vividly the robust working-class culture of the trade union movement that was. An “all-up” stop-work meeting has been called to decide whether or not to take strike action. The union secretary makes it pretty clear that without strike action the members’ demands have bugger-all chance of success. The more militant members line up to support the secretary’s recommendation – treating their workmates to that old-time “shed oratory” that is so very rare today. After all their fiery rhetoric is spent, the call goes out for speakers against the motion. Silence. The union president prepares to put the motion. A hand goes up. “Yes?”, responds the president, eyebrows raised. “Um, I was just wondering,” came the hesitant reply from the mild-mannered union member on his feet, “Will this be a secret ballot?” The union secretary, famous for his uncompromising temperament, leaps to his feet and snarls: “If you want a fucking secret ballot, close your fucking eyes!”

It’s easy to laugh at the story, and hard not to secretly admire the brutally effective politics of the union decision-making process. It is also important, however, to acknowledge the anti-democratic tactics at work. The secret ballot effaces the essentially collective character of a strike. Writing “Yes” or “No” privately, on an anonymous piece of paper, allows you to put your interests above those of your fellow workers without fear of discovery. It’s an individual – not a collective act.

To raise your hand, more or less alone, in opposition to a forest of hands raised in favour, requires considerable courage. Going against the will of the majority in public risks incurring its wrath, and in the workplace that can be rough – very rough. That’s why calling for a show of hands is the preferred method of those anxious to secure a quick and favourable outcome - especially when careful, private, consideration might easily produce the “wrong” answer. It’s the tactic of demagogues, not democrats.

We take the secret ballot so much for granted, at least in the context of electing our parliamentary and local government representatives, that imagining any other way of voting is difficult. Many are astonished to discover that the introduction of the secret ballot dates back only to 1870 in New Zealand, and 1872 in the United Kingdom. In the United States where such matters are left to the individual states, the secret ballot only became universal when finally adopted by South Carolina in 1950! Interestingly, the secret ballot was originally referred to as the “Australian Ballot” on account of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania being the first jurisdictions in the English-speaking world to legislate for secret voting, in 1856. On this democratic reform, at least, the Aussies beat us to it.

In a world where challenging official orthodoxy is, increasingly, considered career-limiting, the opportunity to register one’s opinion away from the basilisk glare of the ideologically overbearing not only de-stresses the decision-making process, it also allows the true feelings of the majority to be revealed.

The free-speech battle waged last year at Cambridge University in the UK bears out the virtues of voting in secret. Outraged by the University Council’s attempt to limit its staff and students freedom of expression, philosophy scholar, Arif Ahmed, proposed a number of amendments to the proposed regulations – all of which the Council rejected. To overturn their decision a positive vote by the Regent House (composed of all the Cambridge “dons”) was required. To trigger a meeting of the Regent House, Arif and his supporters had first to secure the votes of 25 of its members.

This was easier said than done, as Arif recalls:

In March 2020, when the University first proposed this policy, I couldn’t find anyone willing to challenge it in public. Not because they all had other things to think about (though of course at that time everyone did) but because they feared the consequences.

The same thing happened when I and a few colleagues tried to gather signatures to force a vote. You would have thought 25 signatures would not be difficult to extract from more than 4000 dons; but again, I asked probably 50 people who said that they supported me in private but felt afraid to do so in public. They had just applied for promotion, or for a grant, or their head of department might be hostile, or their colleagues might ostracize them…

You see it in meetings too. Everyone here knows what I mean. Some meddlesome but trendy reform gets proposed by the departmental ideologues; it is tiresome nonsense; everyone knows that it is nonsense; everyone knows that everyone knows that it is nonsense … and yet nobody speaks or votes against it, it goes through, and the darkness thickens. Why don’t you speak or vote against it? – because you are afraid that nobody else will, and you will end up isolated, and you are on a temporary contract… If you had left Cambridge as a student in, say, 2011 and returned to academic life here today, you would be astonished and depressed at the rapidity with which, and the extent to which, fear has now penetrated people’s minds.

Thanks to the secret ballot conducted by the Regent House, Arif’s story had a happy ending. The Cambridge dons, unobserved (and, hence, unintimidated) by their “departmental ideologues” voted 4:1 in favour of Arif’s amendments – thereby preserving academic freedom at Cambridge and encouraging like-minded scholars in other universities to stand up and defend their rights.

In addition to upholding academic independence, the battle for free speech at Cambridge University revealed something else. It showed just how precariously the “Woke’s” political control is held. Put to a fair democratic test: where screaming crowds of protesters and collegial witch-hunters cannot influence the outcome; the pronouncements of “departmental ideologues” are shown to have derisory levels of support.

One is moved to wonder what the result would have been, right here in New Zealand, if our Parliamentarians had been permitted to vote privately on the recent legislation regulating the creation of Maori Wards. Indeed, it is fascinating to speculate upon which bills would and wouldn’t get passed if, instead of casting their votes in public, Members of Parliament were able to avail themselves of a secret ballot.

One can only assume that the reason they are forbidden from doing so is exactly the same as that of the apocryphal union secretary who made damn sure he got the decision he was looking for – by a show of hands.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 18 March 2021.

Sticks And Stones - And Bullets.

They're Only Words: New Zealanders are not angels, and they should not be expected to behave like angels. In the hours and days after the Christchurch Mosque Attacks, what mattered most was the swiftness with which the Prime Minister (unlike some of her left-wing fellow-travellers) moved to reassure her fellow citizens that they were not devils. That designation belonged to the terrorist alone. Words did not kill 51 innocent human-beings on 15 March 2019 – bullets did.

AT THE SERVICE marking the second anniversary of the Christchurch Mosque Attacks, New Zealand’s Prime Minister spoke of resilience.

“Many of us will remember, or indeed have seen children being taught from a very young age to be stoic.” Jacinda Ardern declared. “That if they face the harsh words of others they should adopt a stiff upper lip. Perhaps it has been our way of teaching children resilience in the face of those who might intend to cause harm.”

She’s right, that is the way New Zealanders used to bring up their children. Subjected to hurtful speech, those on the receiving end were taught to sing: “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

The Prime Minister was not convinced.

“Of course we want our children to be resilient,” she said, “but surely no more than we want our children to be kind?

“And so we have to ask ourselves, what does it take to create a generation that is empathetic but strong. That is kind, but fair. That is knowledgeable but curious. That knows the power of words, and uses them to challenge, defend, and empower.”

Jacinda’s question was rhetorical, but it deserves an answer.

What it takes is a society comprised of something other than human-beings – angels, perhaps.

Certainly, empathy confers a kind of strength: Jacinda proved that in the way she conducted herself in the hours and days after the massacres at Al Noor and Linwood. New Zealand was unquestionably strengthened diplomatically by the raw emotional power of its Prime Minister’s empathic response.

Jacinda’s empathy ran out, however, when confronted with the enormity of Brenton Tarrant’s crime. So unequivocal was her condemnation of its perpetrator that she vowed never to speak his name. Nor has she demonstrated the slightest curiosity concerning Tarrant’s motivation. On that matter, at least, she just doesn’t want to know.

But, how can words have power: how can they “challenge, defend and empower” if they are not imbued with the knowledge born of asking “Why?”

The Prime Minister’s own words notwithstanding, there is scant evidence that anyone in this government; the state bureaucracy; or the mainstream news media; has the slightest curiosity, or in-depth knowledge, of the forces that drive individuals like Tarrant. Indeed, within 72 hours of the massacre, New Zealand’s Chief Censor had declared his manifesto “objectionable” – thereby making its mere possession an offence punishable by imprisonment.

New Zealand has not been challenged to do anything about the Christchurch Mosque Attacks except condemn them.

And, of course, they should be condemned. They were cruel and wicked and utterly devastating of the lives of scores of innocent people. But, the overwhelming horror and disgust which such wanton savagery naturally elicits is all too easily harnessed to serve the interests of political causes that are neither kind, nor fair, nor innocent. Causes that have no interest whatsoever in encouraging the free exchange of words to “challenge, defend and empower” their fellow citizens. Causes whose purpose is, rather, to condemn, attack and weaken all those who refuse to endorse their ideology wholeheartedly and without reservation. Causes determined to silence all speech that does not echo their own.

In this regard, there is cause for New Zealanders to wonder exactly where their Prime Ministers stands on how free their use of words should be. What should we make, for example, of this rather oblique passage from her memorial address?

“We all own and hold the power of words. We use them, we hear them, we respond to them. How we choose to use this most powerful of tools is our choice.”

Is it drawing too long a bow to say that there is something vaguely threatening in the construction of those sentences? Something along the lines of: “Yes, of course you have freedom of speech – just be careful how you use it.”

The sense of menace is not dispelled in the sentences which follow:

“There will be an unquestionable legacy from March 15. Much of it will be heart breaking. But it’s never too early or too late for the legacy to be a more inclusive nation, one that stands proud of our diversity, embraces it, and if called to, defends it staunchly.”

Whenever political leaders begin to declare their intention to defend staunchly the ideas for which they stand – and for which they blithely assume the rest of the nation also stands – it is time to worry.

Stripped of its rhetorical finery, Jacinda’s speech boils down to this: If hateful words are directed at vulnerable groups, then legal sticks and stones will be deployed to silence those who utter them.

Jacinda wound up her speech by implicitly inviting her followers to be ready to respond, as she vowed to be ready, when empathy proves unequal to the darkness that dwells in the human heart:

“And [at] those moments, may I never, and may we never – be at a loss for words.”

The effectiveness of those words, however, will largely be determined by the strength of the person speaking them and the resilience of the society hearing them. Jacinda’s inspired words of 15 March 2019 – “they are us” – spoke much more to her strength than to her empathy. She imposed an explanatory framework on a society that was tough enough to carry it and make it work.

New Zealanders are not angels, and they should not be expected to behave like angels. In the hours and days after Tarrant’s attack, what mattered most was the swiftness with which the Prime Minister (unlike some of her left-wing fellow-travellers) moved to reassure her fellow citizens that they were not devils. That designation belonged to the terrorist alone.

Words didn’t kill 51 innocent human-beings on 15 March 2019 – bullets did.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 16 March 2021.

The Royal Commission’s Recommendations On Hate Speech Will Unite The Right.

Free Speech Coalition? There is no way in Hell that the National Party is going to let the free speech issue become the exclusive political property of the Act Party. Judith Collins is going to make damned sure that she, too, has her hands on the banner of freedom. Defending free speech is poised to become the unifying mission of the entire New Zealand Right.

THE BIG QUESTION now facing the National Party is whether to defend free speech or give that job to Act. If it is foolish enough to take the latter option, then its chances of rebuilding its electoral strength anytime soon must be considered slim. The banner of freedom is a potent electoral prop, once relinquished it is extremely difficult to reclaim.

How gratified Act must have been to read the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques on 15 March 2019’s recommendations relating to hate speech. David Seymour’s greatest worry must surely have been that the Royal Commissioners would resist the clamour for a clamp-down on New Zealanders’ freedom of expression.

A modest suggestion to extend the already existing legislation outlawing incitement of racial disharmony by including religious affiliation would, for example, have been considered unobjectionable by most New Zealanders. But, to what I am sure is Seymour’s immense relief, the Commissioners have gone much, much further than that.

To read the relevant part of the Report is to be presented with a plan for comprehensive social engineering that is as ambitious as it is frightening. The Commissioners are clearly determined to downgrade the right of citizens to express their opinions freely. Their justification for attacking this most sacred of democratic principles? Society’s supposed duty of care to those who might be offended by people giving vent to harsh or cruel opinions. Protecting people’s feelings from the insensitivity of their neighbours is seen as vital to building and maintaining “social cohesion” – the Commissioners’ over-riding desideratum.

If National Party MPs’ hackles are not rising at this point, then the condition of political liberalism in this country is a great deal worse than I dared imagine. Any subscriber to the principles of liberal democracy should stand aghast at the implications of the Commissioners’ arguments.

Society, it would seem, cannot be relied upon to do the right thing. Left to themselves, people will insist on behaving badly. To borrow a term from Hilary Clinton, far too many Kiwis hold opinions and harbour prejudices that are utterly “deplorable”. To make these bad Kiwis think twice before voicing opinions hurtful to their neighbours, the Commissioners are recommending that the Government raise the maximum penalty for inciting racial disharmony (“hate speech”) from three months to three years! That’s three years in prison for voicing or publishing the wrong opinions. In New Zealand.

At this point, you can see why David Seymour might be gleefully anticipating lifting up the banner of freedom and sallying forth to do battle with the Commissioners and their willing enablers in the Labour Government. (Oh yes, that’s right, the Prime Minister herself has promised that her government will give legislative effect to all the Royal Commissions’ recommendations.)

Equally easily imagined is Act’s nervousness that National might decide to abandon the bi-partisanship forged in the horrific circumstances of the 15 March 2019 attack. It was that bi-partisanship – especially on the need for gun control – that set Act on its path to 7 percent of the Party Vote and ten MPs. How keen they must be to see National lend its support to the Commissioners’ crusade to forge a richly diverse – but socially cohesive – New Zealand. Even if that involves police officers arresting comedians for failing to recognise the difference between edgy humour and hate speech!

By now, I would hope that it’s becoming crystal clear to the reader that there is no way in Hell that the National Party is going to let this issue become the exclusive political property of the Act Party. Judith Collins is going to make damned sure that she, too, has her hands on the banner of freedom. Defending free speech is poised to become the unifying mission of the entire New Zealand Right.

And it is in this respect that the Royal Commission has served New Zealanders – especially Muslim New Zealanders – very badly. What should have been a reaffirmation of unity and solidarity has instead been repurposed into an incitement to division and rancour. Pretty soon the only aspect of the Report that anyone recalls will be its attack upon New Zealanders’ freedom of speech – and, inescapably, upon the vitality of their democracy.

The Prime Minister’s inspired formulation, “They are Us” will be replaced by three much more dangerous words: “Us versus Them”.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 11 December 2020.

Defining Issues

Courtroom Drama: There is no off-switch in a courtroom. Neither is it possible to turn the page in disgust. Ill-formed and ill-defended opinions will be exposed ruthlessly and unapologetically. As Shakespeare put it: “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.” Sometimes the best course of action is to take no action at all.

UNFOLDING, IN A WELLINGTON COURTROOM, is a drama which speaks directly to the defining issues of our time. What is racism? How central is racial discrimination to the moral deficiencies of our society? What is Hate Speech? More importantly, what is the relationship between Hate Speech and Free Speech? And, lastly, what sanctions – if any – should be imposed upon those whose opinions give widespread offence?

It is, of course, forbidden to comment upon the rights and wrongs of a trial in progress. My apologies, then, to all those anticipating a right royal roasting of either the plaintiff, or the defendant, or both, in the matter of Sir Robert Jones versus Renae Maihi.

What can be observed of defamation cases in general, however, is that it is possible to be too protective of one’s good name. A court of law is a fearsome and dangerous place for those unaccustomed to having their ideas and opinions publicly scrutinised and dissected by persons whose ability to marshal and present contrary evidence has been honed by years of legal training and experience. There is no off-switch in a courtroom. Neither is it possible to turn the page in disgust. Ill-formed and ill-defended opinions will be exposed ruthlessly and unapologetically. As Shakespeare put it: “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.” Sometimes the best course of action is to take no action at all.

Let us then turn, then, to the broader issues at play in that Wellington courtroom: Racism, Hate Speech, Free Speech, and the most effective response to willful offensiveness.

Increasingly, in this country, as in other countries dominated by Europeans, racism is being viewed as the fundamental driver of social, economic and political injustice. Fifty years ago this was not the case. For most of the Twentieth Century, unequal class relations were deemed to be the primary cause of injustice. With the demise of actually existing socialism, however, and the global triumph of neoliberal capitalism, class inequality has become, to paraphrase Lord Alfred Douglas: the lack of love that dare not speak its name.

The neoliberal ruling-class, with considerable political finesse, has tapped into the energy once devoted to uplifting the working-class (within whose ranks are many, many people of colour) and diverted it into identifying and demanding atonement for the sins of slavery and colonisation committed by the ancestors of contemporary Europeans. The process of elevating racism to the status of the West’s original and abiding sin was greatly assisted by the inspirational examples of Martin Luther King’s non-violent campaign for African-American civil rights, and the African National Congress’s four-decades-long struggle against Apartheid. The impact of these historical struggles on the indigenous victims of European colonialism was direct and enduring.

The development of Maori nationalism in New Zealand offers an excellent example of the process. As the neoliberal experiment gathered momentum in Aotearoa, the formerly close ties between Maori, the traditional left and the trade unions were broken. By the early 1990s, what Dr Elizabeth Rata has dubbed “neo-tribal capitalism” was rapidly transforming Maori nationalism into a vital political adjunct to the all-conquering neoliberal project. The nightmare of working-class Maori and Pakeha making common cause against what was fast becoming a strategically bi-cultural ruling-class faded away, to be replaced by the new and rapidly expanding Maori middle-class’s scorn for the irredeemably racist redneckery of the Pakeha proletariat.

In this context, any unabashed expression of white ethnic chauvinism is almost always construed by Pakeha intellectuals as an unforgivable affront to the state’s steadily evolving anti-racist and decolonisation projects. For those Maori deeply embedded in these processes, however, such reiterations of white supremacist ideology are a godsend. Every such outburst reinforces the anti-racist and decolonisation critique and highlights the baked-in character of the colonisers’ prejudices.

Why then condemn such racially charged outbursts as “Hate Speech” and seek to punish its purveyors? Surely, by constantly exposing their racism, white supremacists provide ongoing and invaluable confirmation of the colonisers’ moral deficiencies? This may well be true, but it’s also irrelevant. The decolonisation process can only be advanced in an environment of hair-trigger outrage and demonstrable indigenous distress. Racism must, therefore, be confronted and condemned whenever and wherever it raises its ugly head, and the offending and offensive racists held accountable for the harm they have inflicted.

It is, accordingly, entirely unsurprising that the liberal-democrats’ passionate defence of the citizen’s right to freedom of expression is viewed as a serious obstacle to the success of the anti-racist and decolonisation projects. At the core of the free speech argument is the proposition that every citizen is obliged to uphold the right of every other citizen – even those whose views fundamentally contradict their own most cherished beliefs – to express their opinions freely and without the fear of any retribution beyond their opponents’ vigorous refutation.

The problems begin when the vigorous refutation of offensive speech is no longer considered sufficient. When the paucity of intellect and the absence of evidence so obvious in the arguments put forward by the racially prejudiced cease to be the best reason for fair-minded people to reject not only the content of those arguments, but also the morally dubious claims of the people making them. When the citizenry, in their confusing and contradictory entirety, are deemed inadequate to the task of determining the proper shape of their society and its future. When the responsibilities of government are entrusted exclusively to those powerful enough to determine which opinions are “correct”. And when those who deviate from such opinions are subjected to the full rigors of the law. At that point, it is possible to give these problems a name.

Totalitarianism.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 13 February 2020.

Could There Be Method In Massey University’s Madness?

Protective Zone: Reading the rules and guidelines released by Massey University, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that its governing body considers the whole concept of free speech a disruptive threat to the orderly imparting of orthodox academic knowledge.

IN TRUE ORWELLIAN fashion, Massey University has announced its commitment to Free Speech by restricting it. Beneath the ponderous bureaucratese of its official communications, the University authorities’ censorious impulses are chillingly clear. The process of inviting controversial external speakers onto the Massey campus has been made so daunting, so potentially penalising, that only the most fearless staff members and students will now be game to attempt it. Reading the rules and guidelines released by the University, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that its governing body considers the whole concept of free speech a disruptive threat to the orderly imparting of orthodox academic knowledge.

The Wellington-based lawyer and former Act MP, Stephen Franks, has speculated as to what the students and university staff of the 1960s and 70s would have made of such a blatant administrative power grab. The answer, of course, is “very short work”!

Two examples will suffice – both of them drawn from my old alma mater, the University of Otago. The first dates back to 1972, when the university authorities announced a new and draconian set of regulations. The students responded by occupying the University Registry. Roughly half the student body was involved in the protest, during which, according to legend, they consumed the Vice-Chancellor’s entire supply of chocolate biscuits!

Five years earlier, the poet and prophet, James K. Baxter, the University’ Burns Fellow, had responded to a similar outbreak of official folly by penning his celebrated “A Small Ode to Mixed Flatting” in which he mocked the authorities attempt to ban the practice. He slyly referenced the wild Scottish poet, Robbie Burns – “that sad old rip/From whom I got my fellowship” who liked nothing better than to “toss among the glum and staid/A poem like a hand grenade”.

Needless to say, in 1972 – as in 1967 – the glum and staid lost the fight. The offending regulations were either amended or withdrawn altogether.

The second example is more recent, dating back to the mid-1990s. Students were, once again, in occupation of the Registry building – this time in protest at the impact of student fees. When the University authorities discovered that the Alliance Party leader, Jim Anderton, had accepted the occupiers’ invitation to explain his party’s fees-free policy, they were outraged. As Anderton emerged from the Registry, he was greeted by the University Proctor who threatened to trespass him if he again set foot on Otago’s campus.

It was then the turn of the university’s staff to protest. Hundreds crowded into a lecture theatre to affirm Anderton’s right to discuss politics with the student body. A Vote of No Confidence in the Vice-Chancellor was proposed.  The anger of the meeting was palpable. As in 1972, the University authorities backed away from the controversy precipitated by their errant authoritarian instincts.

What has happened to New Zealand’s universities that the fighting spirit of staff and students, once so evident on the nation’s campuses, has been reduced to a pallid pile of expiring embers? Historically speaking, university bureaucracies have never hesitated to tighten-up and screw-down the turbulent inhabitants of their ivory towers. What is it, then, about the times we live in that allows those same bureaucrats to do their worst and encounter resistance only from former staff and students old enough to remember when they couldn’t?

Talking to today’s academics it would seem that the teachers and students of the modern university are at each other’s mercy. Lecturers and tutors are subject to the detailed written appraisal of their “paying customers” – whose career expectations it is most unwise to set back with anything less than “As” and “Bs”. The students, meanwhile: products of parenting strategies as over-protective as they are over-expectant; cannot take too much in the way of challenging ideas or uncompromising expression. The use of the term “snowflake”, while derisive, is not entirely inaccurate. Academics have learned the hard way just how sensitive these kids can be.

Certainly, the Massey authorities seem confident that it will not be their restriction of free speech that provokes outrage and protest. In their estimation, it is much more likely to be the presence on campus of representatives of ideas and causes deemed “hateful”, “harmful” or “offensive” that gets the staff and students up in arms.

God help us, but there just might be some method in Massey University’s bureaucratic madness.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 15 November 2019.

Putting The Check In Right-Wing Prisoners’ Mail.

If we are content to muzzle those with whom we disagree today, we should not be surprised when they muzzle us tomorrow.

IT ALWAYS STARTS SMALL. Colin James, in his masterful The Quiet Revolution, reminds us that what ended as “Rogernomics” began with the humble potato. National’s free-marketeers rebelled at a departmental proposal to regulate the size, shape and quality of New Zealand’s potato crop. It was a small victory, easily missed, but the arguments deployed to win it were destined to sweep all before them in the years to come. That’s why it pays to keep your ears peeled for arguments that sound a little off. What seems preposterous one year has a nasty habit of being enshrined in law the next.

By the time you read these words one of those seriously preposterous arguments will indeed have become law. With the combined support of the Labour, Green, and NZ First parties, the Corrections Amendment Bill sailed through its Third Reading in the House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon.

I wish I could tell you that the National Party fought a lonely rear-guard action against its passage, but that would be a lie. Because the incident which prompted this law change involved the alleged perpetrator of the Christchurch Mosque Massacres, no politician seeking re-election would dream of turning it into a cause célèbre.

When a letter penned by the alleged Christchurch Shooter was mistakenly permitted to leave Paremoremo Maximum Security Prison, and make its way into the hands of the accused’s white supremacist supporters, and from there, inevitably, onto the Internet, an immediate cry went up for increased legal restrictions on prisoners’ right to communicate with the outside world.

No matter that the power already existed to censor or withhold prisoners’ mail; nor that the failure to exercise that power was Corrections NZ, it was decided by the Coalition Government that the law must be strengthened.

Why?

The truly sinister answer would appear to be that the administrative failure on the part of Corrections NZ offered a wonderful opportunity to place upon the statute books, for the first time, vastly expanded legal powers to restrict New Zealand citizens’ and residents’ freedom of expression. With the passage of the Corrections Amendment Bill, content which, in the judgement of the prison authorities, discriminates against any person on the basis of race, religious belief, sexual orientation, sex, marital status, disability, age, political opinion and employment status will constitute grounds for censoring and/or withholding a prisoner’s mail.

What’s wrong with that? The communications of extremists and terrorists, especially those responsible for events such as the Christchurch Mosque Massacres, have the power to inspire similar acts of extreme violence elsewhere in the world. Of course they must be withheld!

Indeed they must. Any prison charged with detaining a terrorist of such lethality must exercise extreme vigilance. All of their communications must be carefully studied by experts whose prime responsibility must be keeping the public safe. That’s what should have happened with the alleged Christchurch Shooter. The powers to censor and withhold his letters were there – they simply were not used.

There is, however, a very big difference between a prisoner like the Christchurch Shooter and your common-or-garden variety criminal with right-wing ideas. It’s a difference the new legislation declines to recognise. In addition to being punished for the crimes they have committed, right-wing inmates are to be further punished by having their internationally recognised right to communicate with the outside world made subject to the political judgements of their jailers. Offensive material published by persons living outside prison will continue to escape censorship. Prisoners’ opinions, on the other hand, may be legally suppressed.

How fortunate for the world that the First Amendment to the American Constitution made it impossible for Alabama’s prison authorities to avail themselves of legislation such as New Zealand’s Parliament has just passed. Had they possessed in 1963 the legal authority we have vouchsafed to our prison wardens in 2019, can it be doubted that Dr Martin Luther King’s celebrated “Letter From Birmingham City Jail” would never have seen the light of day? A few sentences from that letter bear repeating:

Dr Martin Luther King in the Birmingham City Jail, April 1963.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

If we are content to muzzle those with whom we disagree today, we should not be surprised when they muzzle us tomorrow.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 25 October 2019.