Who Will Fight For Democracy?

May The Force Be With Us: With New Zealanders under 40, nostalgia for a time when politics worked gains little purchase. Politics hasn’t swerved to any noticeable degree since the 1980s, becoming in the Twenty-First Century a battle between marketing strategies, not ideologies. Young New Zealanders critique political advertisements in the way their parents and grandparents once critiqued the content of the major parties’ election manifestoes.

THE TIMING couldn’t have been better – or worse – depending upon which side of the political divide you position yourself. First, Trevor Mallard allows letters to be sent out to Winston Peters, Matt King, and (reportedly) other former MPs, trespassing them from Parliament Grounds for two years. Then, just 24 hours after that story breaks, Hobson’s Pledge inserts a full-page ad’ in The Herald spoofing the Star Wars franchise and announcing an “Attack On The Votes”.

Putting to one side the double standards of The Herald: whose editorial team, in spite of ruling an ad’ from the group Speak Up For Women (featuring nothing more inflammatory than the dictionary definition of “woman”) too much for its readers to bear, was nevertheless prepared to wear whatever harm Hobson’s Pledge’s graphic intervention might inflict on the body politic; the ad’ does reflect the growing public unease at this government’s commitment (or, more correctly, lack of commitment) to core democratic principles.

At present, most of that unease is concentrated in the older age-groups of the population. These are the New Zealanders who came of age at a time when the two main political parties represented clear and distinct approaches to defining and securing the public good.

The votes cast by New Zealanders in those far-off days steered the nation leftwards or rightwards in ways that must seem quite odd to those accustomed to the unchanging neoliberal parameters of MMP. That the National Party won more frequently than Labour was disappointing but not disheartening to Labour’s supporters. They understood that when the electoral planets did finally come into alignment for their party, big changes would follow. Changes which, historically, National was more likely to come to terms with than overturn.

In short, older New Zealanders can still remember when politics worked. More to the point, they can remember when even those who placed themselves on the right of the political spectrum accepted that what Martin Luther King called “the great arc of history” was bending in the direction of justice. They, or their parents, had been brought to the very edge of the moral precipice over which right-wing extremism had attempted to drag humanity. People who still thought that way – even after Auschwitz – were kept at the outermost margins of political life. The vile content of the letters they sent to the nation’s editors never saw the light of day. Their fascistic ravings were routinely filed in the nearest rubbish bin.

With New Zealanders under 40, however, all this political nostalgia gains little purchase. Politics hasn’t swerved to any noticeable degree since the 1980s, becoming in the Twenty-First Century a battle between marketing strategies, not ideologies. Young New Zealanders critique political advertisements in the way their parents and grandparents once critiqued the major parties’ election manifestoes. The “look” and “tone” of a political leader counts for much more than any ideas they might have. What matters most is that the leader of “your” party doesn’t come off looking and sounding like a “dick”.

“Democracy” no longer enjoys the universal admiration it elicited from people all over the world when its stood over the broken bodies of fascism and militarism at the end of World War II. As Dame Anne Salmond reminded Newsroom’s readers just the other day, Article 1 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights admits “no ifs, no buts, no exceptions” when it declares:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

But, if these words carried the unchallengeable ring of truth for the parents and grandparents of today’s younger voters, those same younger voters are more likely to consider them an extremely dubious set of philosophical propositions. Where, for example, does the “spirit of brotherhood” leave the women of the world?

“Democracy” in the Twenty-First Century offers electorates almost nothing in the way of alternative economic policies. Economics is no longer deemed a suitable subject for the sort of robust political contestation that distinguished the political parties of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In the Age of Neoliberalism, the economic principles by which a nation is governed have become fixed. Politicians do not challenge these principles, restricting themselves to debating which party is best equipped to implement them most effectively and efficiently.

For young people on the losing side of the economic – that is to say class – struggle, it makes absolutely no difference whether Labour or National is in power. Neither party would dream of stepping beyond the bounds of neoliberal orthodoxy. No matter which political formation occupies the Treasury Benches, housing does not become more affordable, poverty is not alleviated, unions remain peripheral, and Climate Change is not seriously addressed. As the Anarchist slogan puts it: “Why bother voting? – The politicians always win.”

The situation we face in 2022 bears comparison with the years following World War I. The much-vaunted concepts of democracy and progress had presided over a slaughter without historical parallel – and for what? The enlargement of the British and French empires? The elevation of American capital to global pre-eminence? The obscene wealth of wartime profiteers? Mass unemployment and homelessness for those who had survived the horrors of the trenches?

The stench of the old doctrines and the old values was worse that the stink of cordite and rotting comrades. Small wonder that veterans responded so enthusiastically to the demagogues of the far-Left and far-Right who denounced democracy as a busted flush.

As in the 1920s and 30s, the most radical political ideologies of the Twenty-First Century are dedicated to the nature of human identity and the possibility of human transformation. Ethnicity and nationality remain the central obsessions of the Far-Right, while the possibility of transformation continues to drive the Left. Where the Soviets dreamt of creating a wholly new kind of human-being – homo sovieticus – the modern identarian Left dream of the evolutionary leaps made possible by the elimination of oppression and privilege.

Dreams on this scale cannot be achieved by the tawdry compromises of democratic politics. The key objective of both the Far-Right and the Far-Left is to conquer the political apparatus and harness it to the all-important task of producing human transformation. The modern ideologue fears nothing more than the democratic mobilisation of ordinary citizens for the modest purposes of achieving all those ordinary things that make life safe and comfortable. Safety and comfort are Kryptonite to the radical political personality.

Guided more by intuition than ideology, Hobson’s Pledge “gets” the totalitarian implications of a political project driven not by what people actually want, but what they should want. Its choice of the Star Wars franchise to hang its publicity campaign on is a shrewd one. For what is George Lucas’s fantasy if not ancient mythology, with all its archetypal heroes and villains, tricked-out in the dazzling accoutrements of space-age technology?

If “Episode 1” of “The Democracy Wars” was the occupation of Parliament Grounds, and Trevor Mallard’s furious response to the mob menacing his marble halls; and “Episode 2” is Labour’s “Attack On The Votes”; then the third episode, due for release towards the end of 2023 can only be – “The People Strike Back”.

But, if Hobson’s Pledge and its allies are to defeat the curious blending of ethno-nationalism and transformative identarianism that constitutes Labour’s “Empire”, then its ageing leadership will first have to convince young New Zealanders that Democracy is worth fighting for.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of  Thursday, 5 May 2022.

Watching Without Love: The Ominous Implications Of "Hobson's Pledge".

Massive Resistance: The people behind Hobson's Pledge do not appear to have given any thought to what would happen to New Zealand if their programme was implemented in full. Can they really be so naïve as to believe that the nation's bicultural heritage could be legislatively dismantled without tipping the country into the most bitter civil strife since the land wars of the 1860s?

 

LET US SUPPOSE, purely for the sake of argument, that Hobson’s Pledge speaks for the majority of New Zealanders. That Captain Hobson’s famous response to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, “Now we are one people”, continues to reflect the bedrock of the Pakeha electorate’s understanding of New Zealand’s essential character.

 

Let’s further suppose that Hobson’s Pledge achieves all of its objectives. That, in an orgy of majoritarian recklessness, Parliament repeals every piece of “race-based” legislation. Affirmative action programmes are discontinued. All references to the Treaty of Waitangi and its “principles” are expunged from the statute books. Iwi representation on Crown entities is ended. Special Maori representation on local and regional councils disappears. And, finally, the Maori seats, a feature of New Zealand’s electoral landscape since 1867, are abolished.

 

Now let’s try to imagine what would be happening across New Zealand as this majoritarian assault on New Zealand’s bicultural heritage was taking place?

 

Because, rather surprisingly, no such imaginative exercise appears to have been part of Hobson’s Pledge’s deliberations. It’s as though its members believe that the implementation of its programme could be introduced without anyone, Maori or Pakeha, making any serious attempt to prevent it. Even though nearly all the people whose faces appear on the Hobson’s Pledge website look old enough to remember the 1981 Springbok Tour, how to handle the inevitable public opposition to their programme is not explained.

 

This is either a manifestation of Hobson’s Pledge’s political naivety, or evidence of a much darker purpose. If a general election delivers a majority committed to enacting Hobson Pledge’s programme, then public acceptance, and acquiescence, is simply taken for granted. It will be the law of the land, and the rule of law must be upheld. At any cost.

 

New Zealand has already been given a glimpse of how high that cost might be. On 5 May 2004, the streets of Wellington were filled with Maori protesting at the imminent passage of the foreshore and seabed legislation. Estimates of the demonstration’s size vary, but there were certainly enough angry activists on the streets that day to have trashed New Zealand’s capital – if the word had been given. That the word was not given is due, in no small part, to the existence of the Maori Seats, and to the opportunity they offered Tariana Turia and her confederates for lawful and peaceful redress.

 

Consider the response of the late Sir Paul Holmes to the images of that historic hikoi: “No New Zealander, frankly, could have watched proceedings today without a sense of pride, without being gripped by the heart, could have watched it without love.”

 

Would ‘pride’ and ‘love’ be the watchwords on the day a New Zealand parliamentary majority prepared to relegate the status of the Treaty of Waitangi to “a simple nullity”? To outlaw special Maori representation? To abolish the Maori seats? Or, would the streets of the nation’s capital, and every other city in the country, be filled with tens-of-thousands of angry citizens? Not all would be Maori, alongside the tangata whenua there would be an equal number of equally distraught young New Zealanders: all of them as determined as their Maori brothers and sisters to prevent the extinguishing of Aotearoa’s bicultural dream.

 

Those New Zealanders old enough to remember the clearing of Bastion Point in May 1978 will also recall just how far the operation stretched the coercive forces available to the Crown. Hundreds of Police and NZ Army personnel were required to ensure that the removal of just a handful of protesters was accomplished without serious injury or loss of life. This country simply does not possess the resources to enforce the passage of Hobson’s Pledge’s programme without resort to deadly force. To make it happen, the state would have to order police and soldiers to kill their fellow citizens.

 

Would they do it? Would police officers use deadly force on crowds that, in a nation this small, are bound to contain friends and relatives? Can the old kupapa tribes who still make up a large part of the NZ Defence Force, still be relied upon to kill their fellow Maori in large numbers – for the Crown? And, if they can, where would that leave us? Could we still call ourselves one people?

 

Hobson’s Pledge has forgotten that Captain’s Hobson’s words were uttered in the act of solemnising an agreement that bound together two peoples. Maori at Waitangi did not agree to hand over their lands, forests and fisheries and simply disappear. But that, in the end, is what Hobson’s Pledge is asking them to do – without a fight.

 

The Settler Government of the 1860s asked Maori to do the same. They refused then, and they refuse now. And, in this century, Pakeha can’t call on 12,000 imperial British troops to make it happen.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 4 October 2016.

"Hobson's Pledge": Dangerous Message, Harmless Messenger.

Not Enough Mongrel: Don Brash lacks the aggressive personality required to successfully prosecute the cause which “Hobson’s Pledge” seeks to advance. He is a fundamentally decent and unfailingly polite individual, entirely lacking in the brutal instincts so essential to successful demagoguery. In the current political and media environments, Brash’s old world courtesy and his readiness to grant his opponents a fair hearing are interpreted as signs of weakness. And the weak are irrelevant.

 

THE FIRST THING to say about “Hobson’s Pledge” is that its message will resonate with hundreds-of-thousands of Pakeha New Zealanders. The second thing is that the organisation is likely to be both well-funded and well-resourced. There have always been plenty of donors ready to bankroll the proposition that there should be no “race-based privilege” in New Zealand. The third thing is that Dr Don Brash is the wrong man to lead it.

 

Brash lacks the aggressive personality required to successfully prosecute the cause which “Hobson’s Pledge” seeks to advance. He is a fundamentally decent and unfailingly polite individual, entirely lacking in the brutal instincts so essential to successful demagoguery. In the current political and media environments, Brash’s old world courtesy and his readiness to grant his opponents a fair hearing are interpreted as signs of weakness. And the weak are irrelevant.

 

Crucial to the success of similar political movements overseas has been their leaders’ open contempt for the beliefs and values of the political and media elites. They have no respect for either group, and delight in attacking and humiliating them in the most brutal public fashion. As a present member of New Zealand’s financial elite, and a former political leader, Brash is simply too enmeshed in “the system” to engage in such open warfare against it. Indeed, he would probably defend Hobson’s Pledge as an affirmation of the system’s core beliefs and values. It’s why he is so quick to deny the inevitable accusation of racism – a charge of which he honestly believes himself to be innocent. He simply doesn’t understand that his sensitivity on the issue is muddying the clarity and power of the Hobson’s Pledge message.

 

On Saturday’s edition of The Nation, for example, Brash allowed the programme’s presenter, Lisa Owen, and the Labour MP, Louisa Wall, to hector and talk over him in ways that made him appear vulnerable and weak. The sort of people attracted to Hobson’s Pledge are not interested in polite discussion and the scoring of debating points. They’re looking for someone to articulate their rage. Someone ready to challenge not only the elites’ interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi, but also to “take on” the media personalities who defend it. In short, they’re looking for a New Zealand version of Donald Trump.

 

Were such an individual to emerge, the political effect would likely be on a par with Brexit and the many other anti-immigrant eruptions across Europe. The elites’ defence of the Treaty and the complex legal, bureaucratic, academic and political consensus arising out of its re-emergence in the 1980s, is at serious odds with the prejudices and resentments of a very large number of Pakeha – especially those living in provincial New Zealand. One has only to recall the overwhelming rejection of the proposal to establish dedicated Maori seats on the New Plymouth City Council to appreciate just how large.

 

Audrey Young, writing in yesterday’s (1/10/16) NZ Herald argues that: “It is hard to see the new Brash vehicle getting anything like the traction he got in 2004. New Zealand has moved on from the bitter days of the foreshore and seabed. Maori are participating more actively in the economy. Genuine treaty settlements are being concluded with pace. Try-ons at the Waitangi Tribunal are seen for what they are.”

 

But it is precisely the elites’ arrogance: their airy confidence that, to quote Sir Geoffrey Palmer: “Insulation from the ravages of extreme opinion has been achieved. The settlements have become mainstream.”; that infuriates Pakeha opponents of the Treaty consensus.

 

It’s what lay behind the extraordinary response to Brash’s in/famous “Orewa Speech”. Not so much the rather mildly expressed content of the address itself, but the fact that it represented such a gaping breach in the formerly solid wall of elite opinion on how best to conduct race relations in New Zealand. That John Key has, over the past ten years, been able to repair the breach, largely through his relationship with the Maori Party, and the indefatigable efforts of his Treaty Settlements Minister, Chris Finlayson, in no way means that the desire to see it re-opened has gone away.

 

It is difficult, therefore, to avoid the conclusion that the instant and aggressive rejection of Hobson’s Pledge by virtually the entire political class, and the reinforcement of that rejection across the mainstream news media, constitutes some pretty loud whistling in the dark. Privately, they must be thanking their lucky stars that the people behind Hobson’s Pledge, unable to find their very own Donald Trump, have had to settle for Don Brash.

 

How long those stars will go on protecting the elites is another question altogether. Because he, or she, is out there, just waiting, in James K. Baxter’s prophetic words:

 

To overturn the cities and the rivers

And split the house like a rotten totara log.

Quite unconcerned he sets his traps for possums

And whistles to his dog.

 

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Sunday, 3 October 2016.