A Disturbing Preoccupation: Why the Right-Wing Media Hates Jacinda’s Covid Elimination Strategy.

Captain of The Life Star: A great many of Jacinda Ardern’s right-wing opponents seem to be inspired by a sexist antipathy towards a young, female prime minister, from a tiny and powerless country, who has outperformed (by a wide margin) the male leaders of much larger and more powerful nations. In doing so, Ardern has produced a disturbance in the conservative “Force” that makes them shudder: as if an entire political ideology suddenly cried out in indignation and was rudely silenced. 

THERE IS SOMETHING DECIDEDLY SINISTER about the way the right-wing media is pursuing the “elimination strategy is madness” argument so doggedly. Yes, it’s always interesting to discover what people are saying about New Zealand overseas, but the NZ Herald re-publishing anti-Jacinda Ardern editorials from the Daily Telegraph – mouthpiece of the British Conservative Party – points to an altogether more disturbing preoccupation. These misgivings are only reinforced when one considers the near unanimous hostility directed towards the Prime Minister and her government by New Zealand’s talk-back hosts.

At the most superficial level, one could argue that the right-wing media’s editorial hostility is generated almost entirely by bottom-line anxieties. With most of its advertising revenue generated by realtors, retailers, the hospitality industry and tourist operators, the big media outlets must experience significant financial pain whenever New Zealand and/or its most important economic hub, Auckland, goes into lockdown. The pressure brought to bear on media bosses to get the doors open for their advertisers’ paying customers is easily imagined.

More than anything else, commercial enterprises hate surprises. Certainty and predictability are what they need to go on generating profits for their shareholders. The sudden appearance of Covid-19 in the community, followed by lockdowns of a severity to make the eyes of overseas commentators water, bring with them consequences that are costly, disruptive and generally bad for business. Unsurprisingly, a significant fraction of the business community would very much prefer that Covid-19 was responded to in a fashion less injurious to their financial health.

Those business leaders less bound by the short-term selfishness of their colleagues take a more responsible position. They understand how very bad it looks for businesspeople to convey the impression that they care a great deal less about people getting very ill, and quite possibly dying, than they do about making money. They also know that New Zealand’s style of short, sharp, uncompromising lockdowns protect the economic interests of the business community a whole lot more effectively than the loose, dangerously porous, lockdowns on display in the UK, the USA, and across the Tasman in Australia.

Not that anything as mundane as “the facts of the matter” have ever slowed the Government’s critics down. Neither New Zealand’s extraordinary success in keeping the number of Covid-19 deaths below 30, nor the powerful bounce-back of its economy, cuts any ice with the “elimination strategy is madness” brigade. Indeed, the obvious success of Jacinda Ardern’s elimination strategy only seems to make them madder.

So what is it? What drives Ardern’s critics so crazy?

Sadly, a great many of her right-wing opponents seem to be inspired by nothing more edifying than sexist antipathy towards a young, female prime minister, from a tiny and powerless country at the bottom of the world, who has outperformed (by a wide margin) the male leaders of much larger and more powerful nations. Something about this picture is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Young women are supposed to defer to the “big dogs” of the international community – not show them up. Ardern has produced a disturbance in the conservative “Force” that makes them shudder: as if an entire political ideology suddenly cried out in indignation and was rudely silenced. They fear something terrible is going on.

And, in a way, they’re right. From the perspective of those responsible for creating a world in which the interests of business take precedence over even the ordinary person’s right to stay safe and well (some might say especially over the ordinary person’s right to stay safe and well) the sight of a young, female prime minister putting the interests of ordinary people first is a terrible thing. Because Jacinda Ardern’s “kindness” doesn’t just work a little bit, it works way beyond neoliberalism’s capacity to supply a credible explanation.

Take Sweden, for example. For a while it was the “who needs lockdowns?” brigade’s poster child. But Sweden, with just twice the population of New Zealand, racked-up a horrifying 14,000+ Covid fatalities. Had Ardern followed the Swedish prime minister’s example, her country would have sustained upwards of 7,000 deaths. By following its leader’s strict elimination strategy, however, New Zealand’s “Team of Five Million” kept their country’s Covid death toll to 26.

On the Right, however, this sort of science-guided, humanitarian response to Covid-19 just doesn’t compute. Conservatives around the world react by accusing Ardern of political cowardice. She simply doesn’t have the balls to adopt a strategy that will lead directly to hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths. Look at the Brits; look at the Yanks; they had the courage to condemn tens-of-thousands of their people to early and unnecessary deaths; they know that “you can’t live in a cave forever”; that, in the end, the economy must come first.

This is the upside-down world towards which the right-wing media’s wayward editorial decisions are dragging its readers, viewers and listeners. A world in which saving New Zealanders’ lives is the wrong thing to do. A world where “freedom” means nothing more than being able to go shopping wherever and whenever you want – without a mask.

That the big media companies haven’t quite arrived there yet is because there are still some executives who understand that, ultimately, the news media relies on ordinary people to read its copy and listen to its broadcasters’ opinions. Ordinary people who, if right-wing editors and producers ever get around to actually swallowing the insanity-inducing Kool-Aid swishing about in their mouths, will be offered-up to deranged conservatives (and the advertisers) as unavoidable human sacrifices to the Moloch god of the free market.

The only elimination strategy these right-wing media bosses will ever wholeheartedly support.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 26 August 2021.

Rebooting The Red Menace.

Not So Much A "Cold" As A "Deep-Frozen" Warrior: New Zealand's most industrious anti-communist, Trevor Loudon, would have been much happier peddling his red-baiting wares back in the days of US Senator Joseph McCarthy and his local franchisee, National’s first prime minister, Sid Holland. At least back then there was a market for left-wing names, addresses and meticulously-recorded red rendezvous.

 

IT’S HARD NOT TO FEEL just a little bit proud of New Zealand-born businessman, Chris Liddell. To have a Kiwi in the West Wing of the White House – as Director of Strategic Initiatives, no less – is a pretty big deal.
 

Another Kiwi making waves in Donald Trump’s America is a lot harder to like.
 

In her coverage of the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in Washington DC, Rolling Stone journalist, Sarah Posner, name-checked our very own Trevor Loudon.
 

Describing the Christchurch-born anti-communist as: “a conspiracy theorist who appeared on a panel moderated by Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas”, Posner offered Loudon’s outlandish conspiracism as proof of the Republican Party’s “willingness to look the other way as the movement mutates from 20th century conservatism to a Trump-Alt-Right-white-nationalism.”
 

What caught Posner’s attention were the startling claims contained in Loudon’s 23-minute video America Under Siege: Civil War 2017. Decrying the very idea that the Russians intervened in last year’s US Presidential Election on Trump’s behalf, Loudon advances the novel theory that Vladimir Putin is, in fact, the principal funder and director of Donald Trump’s enemies.
 

New Zealand Leftists of a certain age, especially those who belonged to the gaggle of tiny communist groups that once clung like limpets to the broader labour movement, will have little difficulty recalling Loudon. I certainly remember his NewZeal blog and its ferocious dedication to tracking down and monitoring the membership and minutiae of every Marxist-Leninist group that ever published a pamphlet or stood on a picket line. Verily, wherever three or more of them were gathered in Marx’s name, it seemed that Trevor was with them also.
 

To be honest, I felt sorry for him. Like so many others who found themselves swept up in revolutionary politics in the 1980s and 90s, Loudon was born too late. How much happier and more gainfully employed he would have been had he been able to peddle his anti-communist wares back in the days of US Senator Joseph McCarthy and his local franchisee, National’s first prime minister, Sid Holland. At least back then there was a market for left-wing names, addresses and meticulously-recorded red rendezvous.
 

But Loudon’s influence, both here and in his spiritual home, the United States, grew out of the Internet. There is considerable irony here, because by the time New Zealanders started connecting themselves to the Internet and starting up blogs, Loudon’s great fountainhead of subversion and sedition, the Soviet Union, had suddenly and irrevocably blipped-off History’s computer-screen.
 

Not that Loudon was about to let a little thing like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of what used to be called “actually existing socialism” get in the way of his Manichean conviction that the future of the entire world turned upon the never-ending twilight struggle between the Children of Darkness and the Children of Light.
 

Nevertheless, the collapse of the Soviet Union in August 1991, did leave Loudon prey to the same deadening realisation that had demoralised its loyal disciples all over the world. Without so much as a bang, indeed, with barely a whimper, all the patiently collected literature and memorabilia of Soviet-style communism – along with all the bulging files detailing its collectors’ every move – were reduced to piles of worthless junk. Like those Russian warehouses filled with unwanted busts of Lenin and Stalin, Loudon’s vast archive of red subversion in Godzone no longer had any serious buyers.
 

Luckily for Loudon, the USA remains the one place where comically unserious people can still be taken very seriously indeed. While their more adaptable comrades made the necessary Manicheist transition from the evils of Soviet Communism to the evils of Radical Islam (assisted admirably by the terrorism of Osama Bin Laden) dyed-in-the-wool anti-communists like Loudon (now based in the United States) doggedly insisted that the Red Menace was still very much alive.
 

Putin and his “puppet masters”, says Loudon, have been “guiding the chaos unfolding on America’s streets”. Still inspired by the doctrines of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, these shadowy string-pullers have been “organizing protests and riots in the United States from the Vietnam War to Ferguson, Missouri.”
 

The CPAC crowd lapped-up Loudon’s Cold War retro paranoia like gravy. Instead of being hailed as Trump’s best friend, Putin was, very helpfully, being recast as America’s old adversary.
 

As strategic initiatives go – it’s a beauty.
 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 3 March 2017.

Here Be Dragons: The Ika Seafood Bar & Grill’s First “Table Talk” Looks At The Year Ahead - Through Right-Wing Eyes.

"Have a care when fighting dragons, lest ye become a dragon yourself." Nietzsche's famous aphorism remains as confronting as ever. To beat the likes of the Right's Matthew Hooton, should the Left attempt to match their Machiavellian amorality? Or, should it simply decide not to invite them onto "Table Talk" panels?

 

I LEFT the first Ika “Table Talk” for 2016 feeling very down – and I know I wasn’t the only one. The panel discussion, on “The Year Ahead”, could have been an enlivening rehearsal of the challenges facing the New Zealand Left in 2016 – but it wasn’t. Instead Ika’s patrons endured an hour-long demonstration of the Right’s remarkable skill at kicking the Left’s ass.

 

Moderated by broadcaster Lisa Owen (of TV3’s The Nation) the panel was made up of the ubiquitous far-right political commentator, Matthew Hooton (proprietor of Exeltium Public Relations) arbiter of all-things-Auckland, Simon Wilson (Editor at Large of Metro Magazine) and Maori educationalist, Dr Ella Henry (AUT Faculty of Maori Development).

 

Dr Henry adopted a position of wry detachment from her “bourgeois” audience of mostly inner-city leftists. Her comments throughout the evening suggested that she regards "Table Talk" as little more than an additional course which Laila Harré has tacked on to Ika’s menu. A heaped ideological platter in which, this time, the sour easily overpowered the sweet.

 

Only once did she cut through the relentless conservative discourse of her fellow panellists and that was in relation to the forthcoming local government elections. Her uncompromising description of the world inhabited by West and South Aucklanders: Maori, Pasifika and immigrant; was as compelling as it was unsparing. Intruding, as it did, a jarring note of brutal social reality to the proceedings, Dr Henry’s intervention was easily the most uplifting of the night.

 

There was a period in Simon Wilson’s life when he mixed almost exclusively with the sort of people who attend the Ika Seafood Bar & Grill’s events. As the Editor of the Victoria University Students Association’s newspaper, Salient, and later, as the Maoist President of NZUSA, Wilson’s youth was an emphatically left-wing affair. The journey he has undertaken since then, from the Left to the Right, has been a slow one. The Maoism he ditched early in favour of the well-mannered leftism of the Wellington liberal intelligentsia. It was only when he bade farewell to Wellington, and Consumer magazine, to take up the editorship of the yuppie gourmand’s glossy guidebook, Cuisine, that the shift to the Right began in earnest.

 

Wilson has a newshound’s nose for a shift in the political winds. As a Metro writer, he’d correctly predicted John Key’s comprehensive electoral victory in 2008, and two years later used his new position as Metro’s Editor to deftly reposition the magazine as the voice of the socially liberal, economically conservative and aggressively acquisitive Auckland middle-class. Nowhere was this repositioning more in evidence than in his choice for Metro’s political columnist. Where the magazine’s founder, Warwick Roger, had turned to New Zealand’s best left-wing journalist, Bruce Jesson, for political commentary, Wilson’s choice was the National Party’s leading ideological skirmisher, Matthew Hooton.

 

Those skirmishing skills were displayed to considerable effect from the get-go on Tuesday night (9/2/16) when Hooton accused the writer of seeing the 4 February anti-TPPA demonstrations as “the beginning of a revolution”. It is precisely this acidic mixture of smile and sneer that makes Hooton such a formidable opponent. That, and his ability to master a complex political brief very quickly and then fashion it into a political argument that is at once simple and subtle. Hooton, when he’s in control of himself, is both a superb manipulator of the truth and a master at identifying his opponents’ weak spots.

 

Out of control, Hooton can be rabid. One of the reasons the numbers were down for Ika’s first Table Talk for 2016 was that many people simply refused to be in the same room as the man who has constantly and viciously impugned the integrity of Professor Jane Kelsey. This penchant for abusing progressive New Zealanders publicly has turned Hooton into something of a hate figure, and it seriously undermines his political credibility. If he ever learns to control it, he will instantly become an even more deadly opponent of the Left.

 

As it was, the Good Cop/Bad Cop routine of Wilson and Hooton was deflating enough. Between them they succeeded in making their left-wing audience wince, sigh, squirm and shake their heads in disbelief. A different set of panellists may have blunted some of the worst thrusts from Hooton, but the one we “bourgeois” leftists had to endure on Tuesday night left Lockwood Smith’s political adviser; the man who makes RNZ’s Kathryn Ryan sound like a moderate; in undisputed possession of the field.

 

Now the more hard-headed leftists amongst us would no doubt say that Tuesday’s Table Talk was an important wake-up call for the Left. Unused to the punishing performance that Hooton excels at delivering, an hour-long pistol-whipping at his hands might be exactly what the Left needed if it is to muscle-up and become politically competitive.

 

But if the only way to defeat a dragon is to become a dragon oneself, then what’s the point? What distinguishes the Left from the Right is its belief that the world should be – and can be made – a better place. Against all the contrary evidence that the cynics and trimmers delight in throwing in their path, the world’s progressives must somehow continue to muster the faith, hope and love to continue fighting. That’s why Laila Harré’s gatherings at the Ika Seafood Bar & Grill are so valuable. They provide an opportunity for the beleaguered Auckland Left to recommit itself to a more just and equal future. The cause that Simon Wilson long ago abandoned, and Matthew Hooton openly despises.

 

So, Laila, please. No more dragons!

 

This essay was posted on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Thursday, 11 February 2016.

Why Isn't The Left As Angry As The Right?

If You Want To Get Even - Get Mad! The Government's response to the Labour-Green Opposition's energy plan may not have been very rational, but it certainly conveyed the message to it's followers that their opponents had crossed a line and "there will be blood". What is it that prevents the Left from deploying the same kind of political rage?

 

“ECONOMIC SABOTAGE!” “North Korean Economics!” “Half-Baked Soviet Union-Style Nationalisation!” The right-wing rhetorical explosions that greeted the Opposition’s new energy policy were as entertaining as they were ludicrous.

 

But, they were also highly revealing.

 

When the Right’s economic and social achievements are threatened, its response is both immediate and dramatic. No accusation – no matter how absurd – is ruled out as a response. Its enemies are left in absolutely no doubt that they have crossed a line and that, rhetorically, at least, “there will be blood”.

 

The Left’s response to attacks on its own achievements, by contrast, is rather bloodless.

 

Had Labour and the Greens felt as strongly about defending workers’ rights as National and ACT clearly feel about the sanctity of markets, their response to the Government’s proposed changes to New Zealand’s employment laws would have been very different.

 

The amendments announced by Labour Minister, Simon Bridges, last Friday, rip the guts out of the Clark-Anderton Government’s mild-mannered Employment Relations Act (2000). If passed, the brutal regime set up by the Fourth National Government’s Employment Contracts Act will be restored. New Zealand’s formal commitment to international conventions guaranteeing the right of workers to bargain collectively – already tenuous – will be further diminished.

 

All in all, a pretty reasonable days’ work for Mr Bridges, who has clearly set out to impress his senior Cabinet colleagues as the ‘go-to-guy’ for all those unpleasant and unpopular jobs that have to be done quickly, efficiently and without flinching.

 

National’s big-business backers are always on the lookout for someone prepared to present their ideological butcher’s-bill to the voters. If the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, and Mr Bridges’ earlier, draconian, response to deep sea drilling protests are any indication, they may have found their man.

 

Indeed, this latest legislative flurry from Mr Bridges signals the arrival of an unusually bold and ruthless political operator. As someone once said of that other ‘Young Turk’ in a hurry, Sir Robert Muldoon: “This little man, he will bigger get.”

 

So, you might think that political and legislative threats on such a scale would see the Left unlimbering its heaviest rhetorical guns. In the spirit of National’s splenetic response to the release of the Opposition’s energy plans, you could forgive Labour and the Greens for going all-out with headline-grabbers like:

 

“National’s Anti-Union Bill Channels General Pinochet!” “Fascist-Style Legislation Will Hurt Kiwi Workers!” “Far-Right Thinking Inspires National’s Attack On Union Movement!”

 

Nothing of the sort appeared.

 

The Council of Trade Unions’ President, Helen Kelly, and Labour’s Employment Relations spokesperson, Darien Fenton, both defaulted immediately to Cassandra mode. All manner of dire consequences for working people were predicted should Mr Bridges’ legislation be passed. But, neither woman was prepared to engage in the kind of no-holds-barred, red-in-tooth-and-claw ideological warfare immediately reverted to by their right-wing opponents. 

Far from declaring all-out war on Mr Bridges and his right-wing business supporters, Ms Kelly asked, instead, for employer assistance:

 

“I don’t expect the national business organisations to do anything but support this. I hope some major employers will speak out against it as some did the youth rates. It is time for a better approach to work in this country – today is a giant step backwards.”

 

Ms Fenton’s media release didn’t go that far but it was deafeningly silent on what Labour’s response to Mr Bridges’ assault would be – apart, of course, from voting against it in Parliament:

 

“Labour will oppose this legislation. The New Zealand labour market needs hands-on policies that help create decent work and fairness, not this return to failed policies of the past.”

 

But a return to the policies of the past is, arguably, exactly what Labour should do! The prime targets of the Employment Contracts Act were: universal union membership; the system of national “awards” (collective contracts covering whole occupational groups); and the right to strike.

 

At the very least, trade unionists might expect “their” political party to give back what National and its employer allies went to such extreme lengths to take away!

 

How to explain this left-wing passivity? Why is even the trade union movement’s peak organisation, the CTU, so loath to defend its members with the commitment and aggression now so evident on the right?

 

Its behaviour points clearly to the existence, at the very heart of the New Zealand Left, of deep-seated ideological doubt: a profound degree of uncertainty which is influencing not only the level of confidence which the CTU and the Labour Party have in themselves, but also the confidence they are willing to place in their members and voters. Unlike their right-wing opponents, they no longer appear to be very sure what is the right thing to do, or which is the right way to go.

 

While this lack of conviction on the Left persists, the passionate intensity of the Right will go on winning.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 30 April 2013.

Anything Cam Can Do ...

Can He Handle The Truth? Cameron Slater has leveraged his extraordinary success as the author of the Whaleoil blog into the editorship of the once-mighty Truth newspaper. Now that they know what's possible, the Left's bloggers should aim for similar communications success.

 

“ALL I WANT is the truth!” It’s a measure of Cameron Slater’s propagandistic flair that he should celebrate his appointment as Truth’s new editor by posting a video-clip featuring John Lennon. Recruiting one of the Left’s pop icons to celebrate his new job as right-wing press baron – that’s our Cam!

 

Though you wouldn’t think it to read the response of the left-wing bloggers, who have, almost unanimously, greeted Mr Slater’s success with the level of enthusiasm usually reserved for the Black Death, his appointment is a very good reason to celebrate.

 

The extraordinary effort Mr Slater has put into his Whaleoil blog - propelling the single-man operation to the Number One slot on Open Parachute’s New Zealand blog-rankings - is almost certainly the reason he was asked to do the job. Mr Slater may not be a trained journalist, but 600,000 page-views per month more than entitles Whaleoil to be compared favourably with most of this country’s provincial dailies.

 

Certainly Whaleoil reaches more people than Truth has been able to attract over the past few years. And that, presumably, is the point. As newspaper circulation figures continue to decline and publishers tear their hair out trying to arrest the slide in both readers and advertisers, the proprietors of Truth have taken a punt on a guy who has proved that right-wing political blogging has mass appeal.

 

Okay, okay – so it’s not the sort of political blogging that appeals to me, but in assessing the effectiveness of any sort of blog the number of page-views it registers cannot be ignored. And by that measure Mr Slater is a highly effective communicator.

 

A crucial part of Whaleoil’s appeal lies in its direct and simple prose-style. That, and its author’s unerring eye for the political jugular. These are the qualities upon which Truth’s owners, Messrs Horton and Crow, have staked their reputations – and their fortunes. They are betting that Mr Slater can restore Truth to its former status as one of the most influential newspapers in the country.

 

From its current circulation of 10,000 to 16,000 copies, they will be hoping that Truth – both as a newspaper and as an Internet presence – will once again become powerful enough to make or break any citizen fortunate or unfortunate enough to attract its interest.

 

At present, the paper’s readership is made up, to the tune of around 80 percent, of the social group I have elsewhere dubbed “Waitakere Man”. Mr Slater will be doing everything he can to keep these blokes attached to the National Party and, if possible, recruit their friends and workmates to the right-wing cause.

 

If ever there was a time to throw one’s hat into the ring as a potential Truth columnist, it was the day Mr Slater’s editorial appointment was announced and his left-wing nemesis, Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury, resigned. Getting on board what could become one of the great publishing adventures of recent years (and hopefully seeding whatever left-wing ideas one could squeeze past the Fox News-style of journalism Mr Slater so clearly favours) was certainly worth a try.

 

I did my best, but the ubiquitous Josie Pagani beat me to it.

 

Well done that woman, I say, and congratulations to Mr Slater. The challenge before the Left is now to build their own version of the sort of extraordinary communications vehicle that Whaleoil has become, and which the proprietors of the Truth newspaper are clearly expecting its new editor to replicate on their behalf.

 

After all, anything Cam can do, the Left should be able to do better.

 

The last thing we need to see is Mr Slater, contemptuously twitting his left-wing opponents by posting a YouTube clip of Jack Nicolson snarling:

 

“You can’t handle the Truth!”

 

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.