Leaders & Followers

A war host at their back: The anti-mining march up Auckland's Queen Street on May Day, in terms of providing powerful images, was much more effective than the photographs of "Warrior John" Key in Afghanistan.

JOHN KEY in body-armour. Thirty-thousand protesters marching up Queen Street. What are these images saying to us? Both events were deliberately contrived to convey a powerful message. So, what was it, in the language of symbols, that the image-makers were hoping to communicate – and to whom?

The first image, of "Warrior John", is all about the leader facing danger. Here is a man who, in his own words, is "not prepared to send people to a destination [that] I am not prepared to come to myself."

In propaganda terms it’s an old trick. As long ago as the First World War government publicists realised the value of having the nation’s leaders photographed in solemn (and potentially dangerous) communion with the troops. King George V did it. Prime Minister Lloyd George did it. Even New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Bill Massey, did it. Wartime presidents and prime ministers have been doing it ever since.

Symbolically speaking, the image taps into the deepest wells of human memory. Since men combined to bring down woolly mammoths one hundred millennia ago, leadership and danger have, conceptually-speaking, marched hand-in-hand. At its most basic level, leadership is about persuading people to trust you with their lives.

War-correspondent, Dexter Filkins, writes about leadership in The Forever War. With the US Marines "Bravo Company" in Falluja, he shadowed Captain Read Omohundro:

"It was an odd thing about leadership; people talked about it and CEOs wrote books about it. But there was nothing like facing death to feel it in the flesh. It was as if Omohundro wore a mask, and with that mask he gave everyone more courage than they knew they had."

Anyone who has seen combat says the same. Leaders are the people other people follow.

Will the image of Key in body armour encourage us to go on following him?

Probably not. New Zealanders no longer look upon the conflict in Afghanistan as their fight. In fact, polling suggests that a majority of voters would like to see, at the very least, the combat elements of New Zealand’s contribution withdrawn. Why? Because, to put it bluntly, the Taliban is not regarded as an existential threat.

In the aftermath of 9/11, with the images of the twin towers falling still vivid in their minds, New Zealanders were more than willing to throw in their lot with the aggrieved Americans. They were not alone. A visceral desire to avenge the victims of Al Qaeda’s devastating terrorist attack send military contingents flying towards Afghanistan from all over the world.

But that was eight years ago. Al Qaeda survives. Osama Bin Laden still lives. The Taliban have not been defeated. The democracy we promised to bring to the Afghan people has not materialised. And, according to The Sunday Star Times’ Jon Stephenson, 64 percent of the people we’ve supposedly been "assisting" in Bamiyan province don’t think very highly of our efforts.

In an existential struggle – like the Second World War – images of the leader at the front are extremely effective. That’s because, in an existential war, the troops on the ground are, literally, the nation’s children in arms, and the leader is there representing their parents and siblings back home. When they see him reach out to shake the hand of a soldier, it is their son or daughter, their brother or sister, that he is touching. His hand is their hand. The identification is deeply emotional and unequivocal: perfect propaganda.

In the case of Afghanistan, however, the emotional connection is weak, and the level of equivocation high. Instead of coming across as heroic, Key in body armour looks faintly ridiculous. As a consequence, most New Zealanders are going to decode the official images with their heads, not their hearts. His meeting with the troops will be perceived for what it actually was: a photo opportunity.

The contrast with the May-day anti-mining demonstration up Queen Street could hardly be more telling.

Here, too, the imagery stirs memories lodged deep into what Carl Jung called "the collective unconscious". For all humans, the sight of a large body of people moving purposefully towards them is invariably registered as a threat. What they see is a war-host – someone’s enemies on the march. And the first question they ask themselves is: "Who are they marching against? Is it me – or someone else?"

The protest demonstration is, thus, a double-edged weapon. It’s intended to frighten and intimidate those whose actions it opposes, while inspiring and encouraging those who share the demonstrators’ views.

That’s why estimates of the true size of an obviously large demonstration are so contentious. Those targeted are naturally concerned to minimise its significance. If they can make the march smaller, it not only becomes less threatening to people on their own side, but also less inspiring to their opponents.

It’s one of the first things protest organisers learn: never put a figure on the expected turn-out. Failure to meet a stated target will invariably be represented by the news media as proof that the organisers’ have inaccurately gauged public opinion. Further proof, perhaps, of the political demonstration’s double-edged character: "Suppose they organised a protest march – and nobody came."

But that certainly wasn’t the case on May-day in Queen Street.

The Government and its supporters were quite clearly shocked by its size, its energy, and even more importantly by the broad cross-section of the electorate represented in its ranks.

For Greenpeace and Forest & Bird – the demonstration’s organisers – the goal of intimidating and frightening their pro-mining opponents was achieved with stunning effectiveness. Even more stunning, however, was the environmental lobby’s success in inspiring and encouraging its supporters.

Crucial to that success was their choice of Lucy Lawless and Robyn Malcolm as the "faces" of the protest. Lawless is, of course, "Xena – The Warrior Princess", and Malcolm, in her role as Outrageous Fortune’s gutsy matriarch, Cheryl West, represents the quintessential "Waitakere Woman" – the precise demographic National cannot afford to lose if it is to win a second term.

In a curious way, therefore, the two images we have been discussing blur and merge. "Warrior John" turns out to have no more substance, in reality, than Princess Xena or Outrageous Cheryl.

The crucial political difference, however, is that while Key had a camera in his face, Lawless and Malcolm had a war-host at their back.

This essay was originally published in The Independent of Thursday, 13 May 2010.