Macho chest-beating won’t tame the gangs, but Poto Williams’ “softly, softly” approach just might.

Misdirection: New Zealanders see burly gang members, decked out in their patches, sitting astride their deafening motorcycles, cruising six abreast down the motorway as frightened civilians scramble to get out of their way, and they think these guys are the problem. Fact is, these guys represent little more than the misdirection of the criminal magicians no one ever gets to see.

THE GROWING CHORUS calling for Poto Williams to be sacked as Police Minister bespeaks a fundamental misreading of her performance. We are so used to bumptious males like Stuart Nash and Mark Mitchell holding (or seeking) this portfolio that we read Williams’ “softly, softly” approach as a sure-fire indication of failure. But, since when did inflated male chests, bombastic claims and political humbug ever bring about anything more useful than inflated poll-ratings? Since we have seen this noisy “Laura Norder” pantomime repeated over and over again, we can say with some confidence that it makes next to no impact on crime.

My impression of Williams is that she has spent the last 18 months searching desperately through all the available research/data for something that just might help her make a real difference. But, seeking to base government policy on something more substantial than rabid right-wing reckons is the very last thing an ambitious Police Minister should be doing. The tried and true methodology is to get the voters’ blood up with rhetoric red in tooth and claw. Then, while you’re doing that, task your officials with finding out what rabid right-wing police ministers overseas have settled upon as their solution to rising crime – and steal it.

Chances are that the real-world effects of these “solutions” will be pretty close to zero. But, since the research/data only proves their ineffectuality after a two-to-five year time-lag, this is of no political consequence. The voters have already watched the launch of the Government’s getting tough on crime initiatives on the six o’clock news, dutifully bumped the ruling party’s poll-ratings up a couple of percentage points, and then forgotten all about it – until the next crime wave. In response to which the entire pantomime will be re-staged. Same script, different actors.

What most people simply don’t understand is how sophisticated criminal offending has become. They see the burly gang members, decked out in their patches, sitting astride their deafening motorcycles, cruising six abreast down the motorway as frightened civilians scramble to get out of their way, and they think these guys are the problem. Fact is, these guys represent little more than the misdirection of the criminal magicians no one ever gets to see. While rival gangs are shooting up each other’s neighbourhoods, draining-off Police resources and thoroughly terrifying the public, core criminal business continues to be conducted largely unmolested.

The Guardian of 7 June reports the existence, in Australia, of “thousands” of members of the Italian Mafia, or, more specifically, the ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria. (That’s the “toe” of the boot-shaped Italian peninsula.) Hiding in plain sight in ordinary suburban communities, looking like any other Aussie, upwards of 5,000 of these criminals have been quietly plying their illegal trade for decades. According to the Australian Associated Press: “The Calabrian mafia work with other organised crime groups including bikie gangs and Asian or Middle Eastern crime groups to cooperate on drug importation, money laundering and violence.”

“It’s entirely possible that people will be living next door to members of the ‘Ndrangheta without knowing,” the Assistant Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, Nigel Ryan, informed the media. “They’ve been able to stay under the radar while living modest lives in modest homes. They funnelled the illegitimate wealth into their legitimate construction, agricultural and catering businesses. In many ways, I would say that the ‘Ndrangheta are actually the ones pulling the strings of other organised crime groups, particularly the more violent groups, such as outlaw motorcycle gangs.”

As The Daily Blog’s Editor, Martyn Bradbury, has been telling his readers for many years, Australia’s harsh immigration regime is sending hundreds of New Zealand-born members or associates of these same violent outlaw motorcycle gangs across the Tasman as deportees. These “501s” have fundamentally changed the way New Zealand gangs do business, introducing a level of violence that had not hitherto been a feature of indigenous gang culture. It would be naïve in the extreme to assume that at least some of the ‘Ndrangheta’s string-pullers have not crossed the Tasman with them.

The Aussies run our largest banks, so why not our largest criminal enterprises? (If you’ll pardon the tautology!)

The same Guardian article also makes reference to the extraordinary law enforcement coup that saw organised criminals around the world avail themselves of a supposedly unbreakable encryption app called “ANoM”. Little did the crooks know that their every conversation, every text, every e-mail, every JPEG was being copied to the international law-enforcement inventors of ANoM.

“Officers gathered intelligence from the ANoM app to understand how transnational serious organised crime syndicates – including the ‘Ndrangheta – operate and communicate.”

Just how serious is the ‘Ndrangheta? According to Assistant Commissioner Ryan, Calabria’s organised criminals are “responsible for 70 to 80% of the world’s cocaine and they are flooding Australia with illicit drugs ….. They are pulling the strings of Australian outlaw motorcycle gangs who are behind some of the most significant violence in our communities.”

Ultimately, it is the sort of intelligence gathering exemplified by ANoM that will provide the Police with the information they need to push back against the criminal organisations already well-ensconced in New Zealand. If New Zealand’s Police Commissioner, Andrew Coster, is not working closely with Police Minister Poto Williams on this method of bringing not only the local outlaw motorcycle gangs, but also, their Calabrian, Columbian, Mexican, Chinese and Australian string-pullers into New Zealand courtrooms, then he bloody well should be! Undercover operatives and state-of-the-art electronic surveillance have been the key to the apprehension of organised criminals since the 1980s. “Eyes of Mordor” they might have been, but they brought down the Five Families.

Christopher Luxon and Mark Mitchell would do well to ponder the possibility that the recent spate of drive-by shootings may actually be intended to divert Police resources away from the string-pullers. In calling for Poto Williams’ head, they may be doing the very thing that would most assist the real criminal masterminds. If this is the case, then a sudden reduction in drive-by shootings will not be a sign of Police success, but proof that the wise-guys are once again conducting their criminal enterprises in the preferred manner.

Quietly, without being noticed.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 9 June 2022.

The Twenty-Third Day.

The Fire This Time: The Götterdämmerung the protest’s extremists had willed into existence over the preceding 22 days was finally upon them. Black smoke billowed-up from beneath the Pohutakawas, swirled around the statue of King Dick Seddon, and scudded over the nation’s Parliament on the wings of an early-autumn wind. New Zealand had never seen anything like it.

THE COUPLE sat in the middle of Molesworth Street sobbing. The young man turned his face away from the camera, shoulders heaving. The young woman stared directly at the camera lens, her face a pitiful picture of hurt and confusion. How had it come to this?

On Day 23 of the Occupation of Parliament Grounds, the Police’s patience ran out – as it was bound to, eventually.

Seldom has New Zealand witnessed a policing strategy which placed so much emphasis on “de-escalation”, or was so loathe to use violence to end what was, from the very beginning, an unlawful protest.

The restraint of Police Commissioner Andrew Coster offered a compelling historical contrast to that of Police Commissioner John Cullen, the man who called forth “Massey’s Cossacks” in 1913, and who in 1916 led the Police raid on Rua Kenana’s religious community at Maungapohatu. From the very beginning, Coster was determined to avoid the sort of violence for which Commissioner Bob Walton’s policing of the Springbok Tour is remembered. Coster was, after all, the senior police officer responsible for managing the Ihumatao occupation – the one that ended peacefully.

Unfortunately, it takes two to tango, and what passed for “the leadership” of the occupation steadfastly refused to dance. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that a peaceful resolution was never going to happen.

As the reports of the SIS’s Combined Threat Assessment Group (CTAG) released to the NZ Herald under the Official Information Act, make disturbingly clear, the “extremist elements” within the multi-faceted and “overwhelmingly peaceful” anti-vaccination and anti-vaccination-mandate movement, never had anything to gain from a peaceful resolution.

Coster, well aware of the CTAG assessments, gave every opportunity for the “overwhelmingly peaceful” elements encamped on Parliament Grounds to send him representatives with whom a meaningful dialogue about the character and duration of the occupation could be sustained. That this proved to be impossible indicates just how completely the residents of “Freedom Village” had allowed themselves to become enthralled to the ideas of its “extremist elements”.

Epitomised by that traumatised young couple in the middle of Molesworth Street, so many of the people participating in the occupation did not appear to grasp the reality of their situation. In spite of the fact that they had set their faces against the laws of the land. Heedless of the dangerous behaviour manifested by a growing number of their fellow occupiers. Regardless of the harm and inconvenience their actions were causing to others. The protesters continued to behave as if they were somehow immune to the likely consequences of their actions.

A pitiful picture of hurt and confusion. Two young protesters, Molesworth Street, Wellington. 2 March 2022.

Like the Native American “Ghost Dancers” of the late-nineteenth century, the protesters had convinced themselves that their powerful “medicine” would save them. The little world they had created on Parliament Grounds was stronger that “Jacinda’s” government; stronger than the journalists of the “evil media”; stronger than Andrew Coster and his “pigs”; stronger than anything the corrupt “system” could throw at them. Every attempt by that same system to engage with them and negotiate a peaceful resolution to their occupation was presented by the movement’s extremist guides as proof of their enemies’ diabolical cunning. All the more reason to “hold the line”.

The New Zealand government, and the New Zealand public, were prepared to let Coster give his de-escalation strategy a decent try. But, their patience was not endless. As the days turned into weeks, and the occupiers’ alternative reality kept smashing into the reality of everybody else, even Coster was forced to concede that his policy of reaching out and attempting to establish common ground had failed.

What’s more his intelligence reports began to align more and more alarmingly with the findings of CTAG. The peace, love and mung-beans crowd was thinning out, replaced by individuals eager to play the roles of “saviour” and “avenger” – by any means necessary.

It was time to wind it up.

And wind it up Coster and his highly-disciplined constables did. In scenes that will long be remembered, the Police in considerable numbers, and properly equipped (at last) with the riot gear needed to do the job, unleashed a torrent of pepper-spray on the protesters attempting to “hold the line” against the Police Commissioner’s encroaching army.

People reeled back in pain and shock. Eyes burning, skin burning, stumbling blindly, they were met by “medics” carrying 5 litre containers of milk to soothe the fire in the victims’ eyes. The skirmishers learned quickly to turn their backs to the Police, but that just offered the men and women with the riot shields increased surface area upon which to apply pressure. Remorselessly, the “line” was driven back.

And on this, the 23rd day, to the dismay of the protesters, the Police did not stop. Like the amplified messages on continuous loop telling the protesters that continued resistance would result in arrest, phalanxes of police officers just kept on coming. Soon, every corner of “Freedom Village” was under assault. In the manner of a garotte, the contracting police lines began, slowly but surely, to throttle the protest.

There was no perimeter to defend now, the blue tide was surging across Parliament Grounds, ripping out the occupiers’ tents, hurling them aside. Then the fires broke out. Tents and belongings burned. The protesters’ angry retreat became a rout. The Götterdämmerung the extremists had willed into existence over the preceding 22 days was finally upon them. Black smoke billowed-up from beneath the Pohutakawas, swirled around the statue of King Dick Seddon, and scudded over the nation’s Parliament on the wings of an early-autumn wind.

New Zealand had never seen anything like it.

In the dying days of World War II, as the British and Americans advanced deeper and deeper into western Germany, and the news of Adolf Hitler’s suicide spread, his people began to give up. His soldiers, too, started to surrender. One of these was photographed by Allied newsmen. Hans-Georg Henke was just sixteen, one of the boy-soldiers that had been Nazism’s last hope, and he was weeping openly before the cameras. His child’s face a pitiful picture of hurt and confusion.

Another Pitiful Picture: Sixteen-year-old Hans-Georg Henke surrenders. May 1945.

What had it all been for? How had the Fuhrer led Germany into this nightmare of death, destruction and defeat. Why had the German people allowed him to set their whole world on fire?

The look in the eyes of that young woman, as she clung tearfully to her young man in the middle of Molesworth Street on the 23rd day of the occupation; and the expression on the face of Hans-Georg Henke; were strikingly similar.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 3 March 2022.

What Happens Next?

The Man In Charge: Police Commissioner Andrew Coster admits that with the help of batons and, probably, tear gas (hitherto unused in New Zealand crowd control) he and his officers could clear Parliament Grounds. What he asks us all to think about, should he accede to the growing public pressure to ‘get tough’ with the protesters, is: What happens next?

ANDREW COSTER’S PERFORMANCE on Television New Zealand’s Q+A, broadcast on Sunday morning (20/2/22) was impressive. Many New Zealanders, increasingly frustrated by the Police’s apparent impotence in the face of what they acknowledge to be an unlawful protest, are calling for Coster to be sacked. In responding to Jack Tame’s questions, however, Coster offered the public some sobering (albeit rather cryptic) clues as to why he is not yet prepared to emulate the policing tactics currently on display in the Canadian capital, Ottawa.

Coster admits that with the help of batons and, probably, tear gas (hitherto unused in New Zealand crowd control) he and his officers could clear Parliament Grounds. What he asks us all to think about, should he accede to the growing public pressure to ‘get tough’ with the protesters, is: What happens next?

As Coster explained to Tame, the Police have a duty to do two things at once: Enforce the Law; and, Keep the Peace. In most circumstances there is no conflict between these two duties. In the case of the occupation of Parliament Grounds, however, enforcing the law may result in an extremely serious breach of the Peace.

Although he didn’t say so in as many words, Coster made it clear that what was likely to follow the violent clearance of Parliament Grounds was a prolonged and serious eruption of violence not just in Wellington, but across the nation.

Obviously, Police Commissioner Coster’s primary concern is for his front-line officers: the men and women who will bear the brunt of the protesters’ physical resistance.

The volatility of these folk was plainly in evidence on Thursday, 10 February, when the Police made a concerted effort to move the protest on. On more than one occasion, the Police line was driven back by individuals more than willing to mix it with the cops. That the line was not broken in an all-out assault is probably due to the fact that the officers were bareheaded, unarmed, and in their shirtsleeves. It was hard to conceptualise these vulnerable constables as implacable enforcers of state power.

Were Coster to deploy officers wearing riot gear – i.e. helmets, visors, gas-masks, and full body armour – armed with long-batons, tasers and pepper spray, with tear-gas and water-cannons in reserve, the protesters would see nothing but implacable enforcers of state power. Paradoxically, this would make his constables much easier to attack and injure. Certainly, the protest encampment contains plenty of potential weapons with which to fight back. Serious injuries (or worse) on both sides would be inevitable.

And that would only be the beginning.

Coster is well aware that, in Parliament Grounds, he and his officers are confronting a very different kind of protest movement. It’s intent is not only persuasive, but also coercive. The “Freedom Convoy” set out with the intention of forcing the democratically elected government of New Zealand to bow to its demands.

How else to explain the creation of a veritable laager of motor vehicles around the parliamentary complex? The hundreds of cars blocking the streets adjacent to Parliament are the protest encampment’s castle walls. While they remain, the logistics of removing the protesters non-violently are fiendishly difficult.

The protest organisers knew all this before they set out. Since then, they have certainly been made aware that the positioning of their followers’ vehicles is unlawful. Their point-blank refusal to move them offers ample confirmation of the protest’s coercive intent.

The organisers must also be aware that in the event of a concerted Police effort to clear the grounds, the barriers of parked cars will leave very few clear escape routes for the several hundred protesters camping there. Caught between the advancing Police lines and their own vehicles, the situation could very easily spiral out of control.

How aware of these potential dangers are the inhabitants of the protest camp? Hard to say. But, grasping the risks they are running shouldn’t demand too much hard thinking from the protesters. Unfortunately, many of them seem persuaded that the Police will not use force to remove them, and, even if they do, the protesters are confident they can “Hold the Line!”

But who are the organisers? It is among the most difficult problems confronting Coster and his senior commanders. In spite of all the evidence pointing to a lot of money and a lot of managerial expertise at work in and around the protest site, finding people with whom to negotiate a process of de-escalation is proving extremely difficult. Yes, there is Brian Tamaki’s Rights & Freedoms Coalition, and a slew of anti-vaccination and anti-mandate activists, but anyone looking for an organising committee, let alone a “leader”, will look in vain.

Then again, the Police may simply have been looking in the wrong place. The guiding intelligence behind this whole event may well be nowhere near Parliament Grounds. Indeed, it is even possible that the protest has been brought into existence for purposes unknown to all but a handful of hard-core participants.

Certainly, that is the impression Coster conveyed to Tame on Q+A. That he is holding-off on using more forceful methods to evict the protesters because those are precisely the tactics which faceless, online, string-pullers want him to employ. They want images of Police in riot-gear bloodying the heads of “ordinary Kiwi battlers” with their batons. They want to see people wincing under the sting of pepper-spray. They want to see tear-gas and water-cannons deployed for the first time in New Zealand history. They may even be hoping that in all the violence and chaos a protester – or a protester’s child – is killed.

Coster told Stuff’s Andrea Vance that he and his colleagues are only too aware of far-right elements embedded in the anti-vaccination mandates movement :

“I am hugely concerned about the mindset of some of the people, not just in that crowd, but generally behaviour that we see online at the moment ... Yes, we wanted to deal with that stuff.”

And rightly so! Because in a country already deeply polarised by the exigencies of combatting Covid-19, scenes of mayhem in Parliament Grounds will make it so much harder to drain the “sea of non-compliant Covid people” in which the fishes of far-right extremism are safely swimming.

Is it asking too much of the NZ Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau to tear their eyes away from Five Eyes scare stories about Russia and China for a moment, and give some professional support to a Police Intelligence operation that is clearly struggling? Surely, an ever-expanding crowd of angry people who hate politicians and journalists and now have very little to lose by besieging the nation’s parliament might just fall within the definition of “Threat to National Security”?

With a recent Horizon poll telling the angry online ranters that upwards of 30 percent of New Zealanders are in support of the protesters on Parliament Grounds, the widening gulf between enforcing the law and keeping the peace will tax the capabilities and the professionalism of Andrew Foster in ways not seen since Police Commissioner Bob Walton oversaw the policing of the Springbok Tour more than 40 years ago.

Maybe the Beehive could give him a hand?

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 21 February 2022.

Reality and the Left – A Bitter Divorce.

Things Fall Apart: The events of the past ten days offer ample evidence of just how seriously social decay has weakened New Zealand society. A more confident New Zealand Left, recognising the weakness of the system, and its acute vulnerability to those who would enlist the aid of “gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals” would have no hesitation in identifying the so-called “Freedom Convoy” as the reactionary, quasi-fascist, enterprise it has always been.

WHERE IS REALITY HIDING amidst all these claims and counter-claims concerning the protest encampment in Parliament Grounds? In an excruciatingly post-modern political moment, reality seems to have gone AWOL, leaving behind only a noisy collection of competing narratives.

To make matters worse, the state itself, supposedly the supreme arbiter of what is and is not politically real, is refusing to do its job. Even though it is his sworn duty, the Commissioner of Police, Andrew Coster, has made it frighteningly clear to the public that he lacks both the will and the means to assert the state’s authority. The New Zealand Defence Force, meanwhile, holds itself aloof from the fray. Jacinda Ardern and Christopher Luxon, powerless to intervene, look on ineffectually. The crisis deepens.

Ask yourself: what does it mean when tow-truck drivers, asked to assist the Commissioner of Police, refuse? At what point during the last decade did citizens begin to tell themselves that they had no obligations to the society in which they live? That nobody had the right to tell them what to do – not even the Police? What business is it of theirs if the people of Wellington, their neighbours, need their help?

It has been reported that at least one towie openly declared his support for the protesters encamped on Parliament Grounds. Entirely understandable. The occupiers don’t accept that their government has the right to require their vaccination against Covid-19. Nor do they believe that they owe their fellow citizens even the slightest co-operation in the fight to limit the harm of the virus. That tow-truck driver recognised kindred spirits when he saw them. Andrew Coster and Wellingtonians could go fuck themselves.

Not all the towies were so bloody minded. According to media reports, some of them were just plain scared. They claimed to have been threatened with dire retribution if they allowed their trucks to be used by the Police. Considering those trucks carried the names and phone numbers of their owners, it’s not difficult to understand the impact of such threats. Were someone to burn down a towing company’s premises, torch its trucks, that would be multiple livelihoods lost and a business ruined. Who wouldn’t think twice?

Such tactics are, however, remarkably effective. I remember reading about Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters’ bitter battles with the trucking companies. The bosses could rely on local politicians, local judges, local editors and local cops to defend them against Hoffa’s strikers. The union was on a hiding-to-nothing, until Hoffa reached out to the Mafia. It only took a few dozen torched trucks for the bosses to get the message. The Teamsters won their improved contract. But the spoon Hoffa took to his dinner with the Devil wasn’t quite long enough. His beloved Teamsters’ Union now belonged to the Mob.

Now, you might think that people on the left of New Zealand politics would recognise the danger of holding up the occupation of Parliament Grounds as a praiseworthy assertion of working-class power. As if poverty and marginalisation, frustration and anger, ignorance and credulity are always and everywhere evidence of moral force and progressive intent.

Karl Marx himself recognised the acute political danger inherent in what he called the Lumpenproletariat. According to the Encyclopedia of Marxism, this social formation is composed of the “outcast, degenerated and submerged elements” of industrial society:

It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements. In times of prolonged crisis (depression), innumerable young people also, who cannot find an opportunity to enter into the social organism as producers, are pushed into this limbo of the outcast. Here demagogues and fascists of various stripes find some area of their mass base in time of struggle and social breakdown, when the ranks of the Lumpenproletariat are enormously swelled by ruined and declassed elements from all layers of a society in decay.

That our society is in decay can hardly be doubted. The events of the past ten days offer ample evidence of just how seriously that decay has weakened New Zealand society. A viable Left, recognising the weakness of the system, and its acute vulnerability to those who would enlist the aid of “gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals” would have no hesitation in identifying the so-called “Freedom Convoy” as the reactionary, quasi-fascist, enterprise it has always been.

Alas, New Zealand no longer possesses a viable Left. Identity politics has schooled a whole generation to accept the self-definitions of “oppressed groups” at their face value. Drilling down into the actual character of such groups, and scrutinising their relationship to the ruling class, is not encouraged. Even among those leftists who still acknowledge the primacy of class politics there is a pronounced unwillingness to subject movements like the Freedom Convoy to any kind of rigorous class analysis.

For these leftists, it is enough that the occupiers of Parliament Grounds are, or were, members of the working-class. So desperate are these “revolutionaries” for the slightest hint of revolutionary consciousness that they are willing to overlook the absence of anything remotely resembling a concrete programme for the social and economic emancipation of the working class. The only programme in evidence among the occupiers is the one demanding the instant cessation of all measures aimed at minimising the hurt and suffering of Covid-19.

How self-proclaimed “socialists” could possibly mistake such a noxious potpourri of anti-social attitudes for anything remotely progressive is a mystery. Perhaps it is no more than the curious allure of the demi-monde, coupled with the magnetic eccentricities of the Bohemian temperament, that has led these desperate socialists to mistake reactionaries for revolutionaries. Clearly they have forgotten that Adolf Hitler himself was a Lumpenproletarian. A more “declassed, degraded and degenerated” specimen History has yet to supply!

It was the Italian socialist, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) who understood most completely the extraordinary fluidity of reality in periods of acute social stress and political disintegration. Moments in history when the hegemonic explanations of the ruling-class have lost, or are beginning to lose, their power to allay the fears and misgivings of subordinate classes. In such times – and we are living through them now – people are desperate for new and more persuasive narratives about the nature of reality.

Not all of those narratives are addressed to the best that is in human nature. Sorting out the lies of charlatans and demagogues from genuine revolutionary truths isn’t always easy – especially in this age of social-media algorithms. Leftists are often surprised to learn that Mussolini was a socialist before he became a fascist.

Gramsci put it best when he wrote: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Or, more succinctly: “Now is the time of monsters.”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 17 February 2022.

Turning Up Angry.

Goin' Full Cray-Cray: The vandalism of a Panmure Vaccination Centre came just a day after an estimated 5,000 anti-vaxxers staged an impromptu march from the Auckland Domain to Newmarket and back. Clearly, the maintenance of social cohesion in Auckland is fast becoming a critical issue for the authorities as the Covid-19 Delta Outbreak intensifies across New Zealand’s largest city.

AROUND MID-DAY on Sunday (31/10/21) Auckland City Councillor, Josephine Bartley, tweeted. “Anti vax now turning violent smashed shop front of our local pasifika provider here in Panmure after our successful community vax yesterday and the online abuse they been receiving unacceptable.” Half an hour later, the Councillor tweeted again. “Oh boy pacific leaders turning up here angry that’s not helpful. Just waiting on police and have sorted business Association for camera footage. I know we have strong anti vax movement here in my area but what we don’t want is for this to become violent and for retaliation.”

The vandalism in Panmure came just a day after an estimated 5,000 anti-vaxxers staged an impromptu march from the Auckland Domain to Newmarket and back. Clearly, the maintenance of social cohesion in Auckland is fast becoming a critical issue for the authorities as the Covid-19 Delta Outbreak intensifies across New Zealand’s largest city.

The biggest concern for the political and law enforcement agencies should not, however, be the behaviour of the anti-vaxxers – deeply concerning though that may be – but how much anti-vax provocation the vaccinated majority is prepared to tolerate. No matter how ugly the anti-vaxxers get, any kind of co-ordinated backlash from the vaccinated is bound to get uglier.

Seized with all the passion of true believers, the anti-vaxxers have yet to demonstrate any awareness of this acute vulnerability. There are a number of reasons for this. Not the least of which is that the communities from which they draw their energy and (mis)information are virtual – not real.

Without social-media, the anti-vaxxers would be unable to escape the reality of their isolation from the broader society’s shared understanding of the Covid-19 crisis and its remedies. Prior to the arrival of the Internet, it required considerable fortitude for a single citizen, or tiny group of citizens, to challenge the accepted wisdom of the overwhelming majority. Human-beings do not like to live outside the social embrace. Ostracism is a terrible punishment.

With social media, however, it is possible for individuals to join communities in which their dissident views are echoed enthusiastically by every member. The natural safeguards against making oneself a social outlier, with all the risks which, historically, marginalising oneself incurs, are simply over-ridden by the twenty-first century’s astonishing communications technology. When everyone you talk to reads the same thing, and believes the same thing, then your outlier status is concealed and your outré convictions strengthened.

This misapprehension of reality is aggravated by the fact that so much of the anti-vaxxers’ world view is bound up with the notion that those who reject their ideas are not simply mistaken, but malevolent. That so many people share a completely different understanding of what is going on in relation to Covid-19, and what to do about it, is taken as proof of the monstrousness of the global conspiracy, of which the virus is but one part. Far from seeing themselves as the deluded victims of disinformation, the anti-vaxxers regard themselves as an heroic minority of truth-tellers. Some go further, describing themselves as “purebloods”. What does that makes the rest of New Zealand society? Zombies?

The problem this poses for the Police is enormous. Although the percentage of hard-core anti-vaxxers may be very small, when manifested in flesh and blood, on the streets of Auckland, even a small percentage can take on an extremely menacing aspect. Five thousand anti-vaccination protesters, many of them vociferously anti-government, have the potential to do a lot of damage: to private property; to their vaccinated fellow citizens; and – not least – to the Police themselves.

There has been much criticism of Police Commissioner, Andrew Coster, for appearing to “do nothing” about obvious and egregious violations of the Level 3 Covid-19 regulations. In the eyes of those Aucklanders who have done everything they were asked to do: stay at home; social distance; wear masks; get vaccinated; the inaction of the Police in the face of anti-vaxxer defiance is intolerable. Many cannot help feeling that the likes of “Bishop” Brian Tamaki and his Destiny Church are laughing in their faces. Why aren’t the Police getting stuck in?

The surprisingly forthright answer of the Health Minister, Andrew Little, when questioned on this matter by Q+A’s Jack Tame was: “Because you can’t arrest 5,000 people.” The Minister is quite correct, and this is Coster’s dilemma. Taking even 500 protesters into custody would require a Police operation of unprecedented scale. The Police Commissioner simply does not command the human and material resources needed to mount such an operation. And, even if he did, he would be most unwise to do so.

The level of craziness in the anti-vax movement is such that an aggressive Police response would, almost certainly, spark a ferociously violent reaction from the hard core anti-vaxxers. Coster will be very anxious to avoid the sort of running battles between protesters and riot cops that took place on the streets of Melbourne for three straight days.

Not the least of these worries would be straightforwardly tactical. To arrest and detain a fully-grown human-being who is behaving aggressively requires at least two – more likely three or four – police officers. Unwilling to deplete their on-the-ground strength by ordering such mass arrests, Police commanders will resort to tactics designed to immobilise and/or disperse violent protesters. Pepper-spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, truncheons: all of these riot-control weapons were deployed in Melbourne. It ain’t a pretty sight.

What’s more, it doesn’t work. Escalation of force on the part of the Police, simply begets escalation of force on the part of the protesters. Whatever moderation remaining among the leadership of Auckland’s anti-vaxxers would be shunted aside by hard-core extremist elements – many of them Pentecostal Christians convinced they are on the eve of the Battle of Armageddon. Better by far to let 5,000 people let off a bit of steam by marching from the Domain to Newmarket and back again, than to have at least some of them running down Queen Street smashing windows and beating up cops.

All well and good, but for how long are people like Councillor Bartley and her Pasifika constituents supposed to put up with abusive and threatening phone-calls and the vandalising of vaccination clinics? If conscious law-breaking is not met with a decisive Police response, then it will increase. All that is ever required to bring out the absolute worst in human-beings is a rising level of confidence that their actions will not bring consequences.

 If it becomes clear to Police commanders (and one hopes that Police Intelligence is in a position to advise them) that such voices of moderation as could be counted on among the anti-vaxxers are no longer being heeded, and that, even in the absence of heavy-handed policing, extremist violence is about to escalate –– then all bets must be considered off.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 1st November 2021.

Getting Tough.

Not Mucking Around: With upwards of 800 dead from the virus’s resurgence in the Australian state of Victoria, leniency is not on Premier Daniel Andrews’ agenda. The Victorian Police are cracking down hard on the protesters the Australian press has labelled "Covidiots".

IMAGES OF POLICE, some in riot gear, others on horseback, charging into Victorian protesters have shocked a lot of Kiwis. We all realise that the second wave of Covid-19 has hit the Australian state of Victoria hard. So, when it comes to people deliberately flouting the rules of lockdown, we are not surprised that the patience of both the state government, and the overwhelming majority of its citizens, has run out. With upwards of 800 dead from the virus’s resurgence, leniency is not on Premier Daniel Andrews’ agenda.

How relieved our own Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, must be that she has not had to face anything like the death toll of her Labour counterpart across the Tasman. And, how thankful, that she and Police Commissioner, Andy Coster, have been excused the grim duty of cracking-down hard on illegal protests. At least until very recently, the New Zealand authorities have been able to secure public compliance exclusively through the power of moral suasion. Resort to force has, so far, been deemed unnecessary.

For how much longer, however, can this happy situation endure? After the mass rally which took place in Auckland’s Aotea Square on Saturday, 12 September, the Prime Minister, Director-General of Health and Police Commissioner must all be wondering.

Organised primarily by Advance New Zealand (Jami-Lee Ross) and the Public Party of New Zealand (Billy Te Kahika) the rally attracted somewhere between 1,500 and 5,000 protesters. In flouting the rules severely limiting the size of public gatherings under Level 2, their purpose was to demonstrate to the country their unwillingness to accept that the Covid-19 virus constitutes a threat of sufficient seriousness to justify either restricting personal liberty, or damaging the economy. These impositions, they insist, confirm the reality of a global conspiracy against our rights and freedoms. Evil elites are intent on enslaving us, they say. A tyrannical world government is planned. And, may God forgive them, leading New Zealand politicians are part of the plot.

The extraordinary danger posed by gatherings of such prodigious size, involving persons holding such extraordinary views, hardly requires spelling-out. The Saturday rally had the potential to act as a super-spreader of Covid-19. It may yet turn out to have been a catastrophe in the making.

What to do? Demanding Police action against political parties active in the current election campaign is a big ask. Especially so, given the official blind eye turned to the breaking of Level 2 rules by Black Lives Matter protesters across the country in early June.

The size of the ask grows even bigger when we consider whether provoking some form of Police intervention may not be part of Advance NZ’s and the Public Party’s election strategy. If your party’s claim is that the New Zealand Government has become tyrannical, then what better way of proving it than encouraging the ugly scenes unfolding in Victoria to be repeated in the parks and streets of New Zealand?

Commissioner Coster will also be wondering whether any such hard-line Police response can be assured of unflinching government support. After all, the historical precedents are not encouraging.

Confronted with a group of radicals and revolutionaries undergoing secret weapons training in Tuhoe country back in 2007, the New Zealand Police organised a raid on the tiny Bay of Plenty settlement of Ruatoki. The imagery of heavily-armed police officers, many of them kitted-out like soldiers, rounding-up women and children, generated a ferocious public backlash. In the weeks and months that followed the public relations disaster of the Ruatoki Raid, the Police found themselves politically and legally abandoned.

The purpose of the raid: apprehending potential guerrillas and terrorists; was forgotten. Assailed by the radical Left, Helen Clark’s government quietly distanced itself from the controversy. Many young journalists were content to relay the Left’s version of events uncritically. The Courts threw out key elements of the Prosecution’s case. The accused found themselves transformed into persecuted heroes, while the Police were portrayed as neo-colonial racists. The career of Howard Broad, the Police Commissioner of the time, and a strong advocate for integrating Treaty of Waitangi principles into New Zealand policing, was blighted by Ruatoki.

Commissioner Coster will not want to share his predecessor’s fate. If his officers are asked to enforce the rules keeping New Zealanders safe, then their Government must undertake to do no less for them.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 18 September 2020.