Just Visiting.

Disputed Title: Regardless of whether you’re defending the USA from citizen-aliens; guarding Aotearoa against insufficiently Māori Māori; or upholding the “principles, traditions, and ideals” that define New Zealand as a nation; the one thing you absolutely must be sure of is that the people who are “just visiting” your country, cannot impose their will upon those whose treasure it has been all along.

THERE’S A MEMORABLE SCENE in “The Good Shepherd”, a movie about the early years of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson (a character modelled on the real-life counter-spy James Jesus Angleton) and he is talking to Joseph Palmi, a Mafioso (played by the inimitable Joe Pesci) who asks him an interesting question.

Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something ... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the [Blacks], they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?

Edward Wilson: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

Sixteen years ago, “The Good Shepherd’s” screenwriter, Eric Roth, had his hero, Edward Wilson, give voice to a political idea that has only grown stronger among the sort of people who founded, and largely staffed, the CIA in the 1940s and 50s. Not the hyphenated Americans alluded to by Joseph Palmi, but the descendants of the original English and Scots-Irish settlers of the thirteen British colonies which, eventually, became the United States of America.

But, if the open expression of this idea was confined to the better sort of Republican country-club for most of the post-war era, it has – thanks to Donald Trump – escaped. Virtually everything that distinguishes Trumpian populism may be traced back to those two crucial questions: Who is a real American?, and, Who is “just visiting”? All of the hatred directed at ethnic minorities, women, and the gender divergent is explicable only when set in the context of the historical and constitutional expansion of who can be an American citizen.

Moreover, if American political commentator, Brynn Tannehill, posting on the US website, Dame is to be believed, the Edward Wilson understanding of who “owns” America, may, in just a few decades, be the unabashed conventional wisdom of the American Right. Tannehill quotes Larry Ellmers of the ultra-conservative Claremont Institute – with chilling effect.

According to Ellmers, few Americans are willing to accept that:

[M]ost people living in the United States today – certainly more than half – are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term […..] They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else.

Inasmuch as most of the political trends and tropes of American politics tend to end up on these shores eventually – and, thanks to social-media, rather sooner these days than later – it would seem sensible to anticipate similar ethno-nationalist sentiments becoming a feature of New Zealand politics.

Fuelling such attitudes will be the sort of statements that got Kelvin Davis into hot water a few weeks ago. Annoyed by the political stance taken by Act MP and Wahine Māori, Karen Chhour, Davis accused her of viewing the world through a “vanilla lens”. Like Edward Wilson, Davis gave every appearance of regarding all those who followed the original inhabitants of Aotearoa as “just visiting”.

(It is worth noting, at this point, that Wilson’s creator, Roth, made no mention of Native Americans, the people who really were the continent’s first arrivals!)

Should the idea become widely accepted that those who share Davis’s opinions of late arrivals “do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined [New Zealand] as a nation and as a people”, then the behaviour of ultra-conservative Pakeha will become every bit as provocative – and dangerous – as the behaviour of extreme Māori nationalists.

Because, of course, these otherwise antagonistic groups have two very important imperatives in common: both must be absolutely committed to gutting democracy and extinguishing liberty. How could they not be, when those who do not share their views of the world possess a great many more votes than they do?

Regardless of whether you’re defending the USA from citizen-aliens; guarding Aotearoa against insufficiently Māori Māori; or upholding the “principles, traditions, and ideals” that define New Zealand as a nation; the one thing you absolutely must be sure of is that the people who are “just visiting” your country, cannot impose their will upon those whose treasure it has been all along.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 16 December 2022.

Mission Impossible?

Will This Country Self-Destruct? “So more than half of our mission is already accomplished! Nothing beats neoliberalism for dissolving the bonds of community and leaving in their place a collection of selfish individuals. And nothing beats multiculturalism and the creation of isolated ethnic enclaves for fostering economic and cultural division.”

HOW WOULD YOU set about unmaking a country? If you were in the same position as “Mr Phelps”, listening to a tape-recorded message at the beginning of every episode of the 1960s TV series Mission Impossible, and this was your appointed task, how would you do it?

The first question asked of your “Impossible Missions Force” is straightforward enough: “How old and how strong is this state?”

The answer supplied does not fill you with confidence that this mission will be easy.

“It’s not that old, but it’s pretty strong. In fact, it’s said to be the oldest continuously functioning democracy on earth. It was the first to enfranchise its indigenous people. The first to enfranchise its women. And among the first to enfranchise all of its men.”

Seeing your shoulders sag, another member of the team pipes up with the information that for many years the country was referred to as “the social laboratory of the world”. Its progressive legislation was admired and copied around the globe.

“Fantastic!” you exclaim. “I suppose the next thing you’ll tell me is that the place boasts a homogeneous population, is unblemished by extremes of wealth and poverty, guarantees every person a house and a job, along with health care and education, all provided free of charge by the state.”

You notice immediately that your team has brightened. With obvious relief, the same bright spark replies:

“Now, if you had asked that question 50 years ago, the answer to just about all of your questions would have been Yes. From the mid-1980s on, however, two crucial decisions have produced a profound series of changes in this nation. The first was the decision to open up its economy to the full force of globalisation by implementing a series of extremely radical neoliberal reforms. The second, much less well known, was to dramatically re-orient the country’s immigration policy. Rather than continue with a regime dedicated to preserving the ethnic and cultural status quo, the government of the day opted to transform the country into a multi-ethnic and multicultural society.”

“Brilliant!”, you exclaim – this time without the slightest trace of irony. “So more than half of our mission is already accomplished! Nothing beats neoliberalism for dissolving the bonds of community and leaving in their place a collection of selfish individuals. And nothing beats multiculturalism and the creation of isolated ethnic enclaves for fostering economic and cultural division.”

“It gets better”, another team member responds. “Just before the introduction of neoliberalism and multiculturalism, the indigenous people, whose lands were taken to provide the economic foundation for the colonial society which took off rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century, embarked on a cultural and political renaissance, using as their battering-ram a hitherto ignored treaty negotiated more than a century earlier to facilitate the colonisation process.”

“Perfect!” You exclaim, slamming your right fist into the palm of your left hand. “And, let me guess, the left-wing intelligentsia bought the whole kit and caboodle?”

“Well, yes, that goes without saying,” says the bright spark. “What makes this country different, however, is that the anti-colonial ideology of the indigenous people has been taken up with bewildering speed by the judiciary, the civil service, the universities, large numbers of the country’s leading artists and writers, the news media, and most of the political class. The formerly moribund treaty is now officially recognised as the nation’s ‘founding document’ – guaranteeing ‘partnership’. A recent report, presented to the incumbent government by a collection of scholars, even goes so far as to recommend a revolutionary restructuring of the state. A new constitution of ‘co-governance’ is proposed, involving the indigenous people and the descendants of the original colonisers ruling together.”

You study the faces of your Impossible Missions Force.

“And the voters have simply gone along with this? Everybody in the country is just deliriously happy with the idea of sharing power with the people their ancestors conquered way back in the nineteenth century? Happy, too, presumably, to return all the land and resources they stole to construct – what did you call it? – ‘the social laboratory of the world’?”

“Actually,” murmurs the bright spark, “the elites’ grand plan hasn’t been publicly disclosed yet.”

“Jeez!”, you exclaim. “This mission just went from being ‘impossible’ to a walk-in-the-park! All we have to do is tell them!”

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 27 August 2021.