Weaponising Illegal Immigration.

Human Destabilisers: Russia now has a new strategic weapon – migratory waves of unwelcome human-beings. Desperate people with different coloured skins and different religious beliefs arriving at, or actually breaching, the national borders of Russia’s enemies can wreak as much havoc, culturally and politically, as a hypersonic missile exploding in the middle of a Ukrainian power station.

THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT has uncovered what it believes to be a new layer of mendacity in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Thousands of kilometres to the south of the fighting in Ukraine’s eastern provinces, deep in the anarchic wilderness of Sub-Saharan Africa, there’s been a grim addition to the criminal infrastructure of human-trafficking and people-smuggling. Russians.

Displaying that formidable mixture of state and private interests the world has learned to recognise in the Wagner Group’s fearsome mercenaries, new groups of highly organised Russian smugglers are hard at work. Unquestionably, these men are motivated by the huge profits to be made out of human suffering and desperation. But, they have not set up shop in these lawless lands entirely of their own volition. Somebody sent them there.

Moscow may not have intentionally propelled a vast wave of Syrian refugees in the direction of the European Union back in 2015. Indeed, it was most likely the German Chancellor’s, Angela Merkel’s, open arms of welcome that caused so many tragic columns of humanity to come bursting through Europe’s border fences in search of “Angela’s Country”. But Moscow looked on with considerable interest as this great wave of refugees broke over the nations of Western Europe.

Startled, at least initially, by the extraordinary welcome extended to the refugees by Europe’s most innocent and idealistic citizens, Russian cynicism was all-too-swiftly confirmed by the vicious racist backlash unleashed against the newcomers. Russia saw Germany riven by animosities its leaders had believed long buried. It watched the rise of far-right political parties disturb the civilised equilibrium of the Federal Republic. With a mixture of horror and delight, Moscow watched the eager ghost of Nazism break free of the stones piled upon its tomb.

Putin’s advisers now had a new strategic weapon to work on and perfect – migratory waves of unwelcome human-beings. Desperate people with different coloured skins and different religious beliefs arriving at, or actually breaching, the national borders of their enemies could wreak as much havoc, culturally and politically, as a hypersonic missile exploding in the middle of a Ukrainian power station.

The first inkling that Moscow had drawn a devastating lesson from the “Syrian invasion of Europe” came at the border of Belarus and Poland in 2021. Operating through his most trusted lieutenant, the Belarusian President, Alexander Lukashenko, Vladimir Putin arranged for Middle Eastern economic refugees, hungry for the peace and abundance of Europe, to be flown from their homelands and bussed to the frigid forests straddling the border of Belarus and Poland. “Over that fence lies freedom and prosperity!”, cried the freezing refugees’ minders – pointing westward.

The Poles, all-too-familiar with mendacity of the Russian bear, were having none of it. Crossing the border in significant numbers, the refugees would find themselves swaddled in the proudly humanitarian laws of the EU. The Polish government decided that under no circumstances could that be allowed to happen. Batons, tear-gas, and the use of water cannons in sub-zero temperatures ensured that the refugees did not make it across the fence.

Two years later, with Europe united against Russian aggression in Ukraine, the next great human wave of refugees is coming up out of the South, crossing the Sahara Desert, setting sail in frail and dangerously overcrowded boats from the coast of lawless Libya for the toe of the Italian boot – where gangsters every bit as ruthless as their Russian confreres are waiting to welcome them ashore. Twenty thousand illegal arrivals this year alone.

Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first woman prime minister, may now be regretting the strong stand she and her country took against Russian aggression. As the leader of Brothers of Italy, a party of the Italian far-right, she is well aware of the political utility of illegal immigrants. Without them, and the racist tempers they inflame, she and her coalition could not have won power. Meloni promised to turn back the boats, but still they come: more and more. Putin has made a liar of her.

One can only speculate as to whether the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has been made aware of exactly who the gangster wolves driving Africa’s immigrant lambs over Europe’s borders are working for. Meeting this week with his AUKUS partners in San Diego, did he pull aside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and whisper:

“Tell me again, Tony, how Australia stopped the boats.”


This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 17 March 2023.

The Italian Job.

The Ring-In: Italy's supposedly apolitical President, Sergio Mattarella, objecting to the victorious populist coalition’s choice of the eurosceptic, Paolo Savona, as Finance Minister, collapsed the government-formation process. Undaunted, Mattarella appointed an interim Prime Minister of his own choosing: a former high official of the International Monetary Fund, Carlo Cottarelli (above). Italy’s repudiation of the Euro, and even its departure from the European Union, cannot now be discounted.

RECENT EVENTS IN ITALY raise some disturbing questions about the possibility of executing radical policy reversals in this country. While New Zealand’s constitution is a considerably looser affair than Italy’s, it is still worth pondering what might happen here if a newly-elected, about-to-be-sworn-in government was promising to roll back the gains of neoliberalism. Before attempting an answer, however, it is worth re-capping what has happened in Italy.

Back in March, Italian voters went to the polls to elect a new legislature. The results of that election were reasonably clear: the traditional parties of both the left and the right suffered major losses and the two leading populist parties, the Internet-based Five-Star Movement and the anti-immigrant La Lega (The League) made significant gains. After several weeks of intense negotiation, the two populist parties presented a ministry led by Giuseppe Conte to the supposedly apolitical President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, so that he could swear them into office.

Rather than bestow his formal blessing on the new government, however, the President objected to the populist coalition’s choice of Paolo Savona as Finance Minister. Savona was an outspoken critic of the European Union’s rigid economic policies and Mattarella was unwilling to entrust such a person with Italy’s economic management. Not surprisingly, Conte refused to comply and the coalition parties withdrew from the government-formation process altogether.

Undaunted, Mattarella appointed an interim Prime Minister of his own choosing: a former high official of the International Monetary Fund, Carlo Cottarelli. Mattarella’s decision to ignore the will of the Italian people and appoint a notorious neoliberal technocrat as their prime minister has sparked both a political and a financial crisis. Italy’s repudiation of the Euro, and even its departure from the European Union, cannot now be discounted.

Could such a blatant attack on democracy occur here? Does our lack of a written constitution protect us from a similar intervention by the executive arm of government?

The short answer, unfortunately, is – No.

The German jurist, Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) summed up the fraught issues associated with a democratic system in crisis (he was writing about the doomed Weimar Republic of the early-1930s) by posing a key question. Who has the authority to identify the presence of a crisis, or emergency situation, serious enough for the executive power to declare an Ausnahmezustand, a “state of exception” in which the normal functioning of democracy is suspended lest its continuance put at jeopardy the security and/or survival of the legally constituted order? “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception”, declared Schmitt.

In the New Zealand context, Schmitt’s formulation would encourage the view that if a situation ever arose where the political and financial security of the realm were about to be put at risk by a yet-to-be-sworn-in government committed to implementing policies inimical to that security, then the Governor-General would be justified in wielding her reserve powers to prevent such a government taking office. As the sovereign’s representative, she would be entitled to decide that the election result had precipitated circumstances of such exceptional severity that a temporary suspension of New Zealand’s democratic norms was justified.

The Governor-General would not, of course, be making such critical constitutional decisions in a political vacuum. The moment it became clear that a government of transformational radicalism was in the offing, and that its leaders were absolutely determined to carry out their reform programme, the principal defenders of the status quo would mobilise all their resources to stop them.

The first to act would be the major financial institutions. These would set in motion a rapid devaluation of the Kiwi dollar and instigate a precipitate drop in share prices on the NZ stock exchange. These real-world effects would provide the mainstream news media with all the excuse it needed for a no-holds-barred assault on the parties readying themselves for government.

Very soon after the media began campaigning, surrogate voices speaking on behalf of the major right-wing parties would raise the possibility of vice-regal intervention. They would be joined in this effort by spokespersons from all the major right-wing interest groups: Federated Farmers, the Employers and Manufacturers Association, Chambers of Commerce.

Simultaneously, conservative youth organisations would unleash a whole series of social-media campaigns full of hair-raising disinformation about the reform parties’ intentions so as to arouse maximum public anxiety. Mass street demonstrations would follow which, if answered by the followers of the reform parties, would be marred by widespread violence and property destruction. If the reform parties declined to rise to the bait, then agent provocateurs could be hired to do the job.

Finally, the various agencies of national security would intervene with “hard evidence” of the reformers’ subversive intentions. Real or not, these revelations would lift the intensity of right-wing opposition to a whole new level. However reluctantly, all “responsible” opinion would now be urging the Governor-General to act.

Anxious that the ongoing political and financial crises not be allowed to deepen, the Governor-General would, with equal reluctance, agree to exercise her reserve powers. The “caretaker” Prime Minister from the previous government would be invited to remain in office pending new elections.

Needless to say, the much-maligned, misrepresented and now deeply unpopular reform parties would suffer decisive electoral defeats. The “state of exception” could then, with great solemnity, be declared over.

All of which leads to the inescapable conclusion that if Grant Robertson didn’t already exist, Jacinda would have to invent him. It’s one thing to promise “transformation” when none of the powers-that-be believe you; quite another when they do.

Just ask the Italians.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 31 May 2018.

Italy Beset By An Impious Spirit Of Misrule.

Masque Of Folly: Politically and ideologically, Italy's parliamentary elections resembled the sort of riotous carnivals for which Italian cities became notorious during the Eighteenth Century. Everybody was in costume; every face was masked; nothing was as it seemed; and the whole mad procession was presided over by an impious spirit of misrule.

WHAT’S WITH THE ITALIANS? Viewed from the perspective of a country located about as far from Italy as it is possible to get on a spherical planet, its people appear to have taken leave of their senses. Politically and ideologically, last Sunday’s parliamentary elections resembled the sort of riotous carnivals for which Italian cities became notorious during the Eighteenth Century. Everybody was in costume; every face was masked; nothing was as it seemed; and the whole mad procession was presided over by an impious spirit of misrule.

There is, however, justification for Italy’s apparent madness. What happened on Sunday was the Italian electorate’s entirely understandable response to a corrupt political class which, for the past 70 years, has perfected ever-more outrageous strategies for preventing ordinary Italians from getting what they want.

For more than 40 years Italy was ruled by a single political party, the Christian Democrats, which, in collusion with the country’s leading capitalists, the Catholic Church and organised crime bosses, kept the United States happy by preventing the powerful Communist Party of Italy (the largest communist party in the western world) from taking power democratically.

Oh, yes, we of the English-speaking countries like to joke about the revolving door of Italian politics and its seemingly endless procession of jowly, horn-rimmed bespectacled prime ministers. Less is said, however, about the corruption and manipulation basic to the perpetuation of a permanent anti-communist political regime dedicated to thwarting the aspirations of the Italian working-class.

Certainly, we English-speakers have witnessed nothing-like the exercise unleashed by the Italian magistracy following the collapse of the Soviet Union (and with it the credibility of communism) in 1991. The so-called “Mani Pulite” (Clean Hands) investigations brought to book so many senior members of the Italian political class – most especially the leaders of the anti-communist parties – that people began to refer to the world of politics as “Tangentopoli” (Bribesville) and wondered whether there was even one honest official left in the whole country.

The answer to that question appeared to be “No”. Because “Bribesville”, in the person of Italy’s “Mr Media” – Silvio Berlusconi – struck back at the “Clean Hands” investigations, accusing Italy’s relentless magistrates of wearing “red robes” (i.e. of being pawns of the Communist Party).

Berlusconi’s genius was to gather together against the Left all that was historically disreputable in Italian society: the defensive conservatism of the Italian family; the clientelism fundamental to making one’s way in Italian society; the disdain of Italy’s “civilised” northern provinces for the people of Italy’s “undeveloped” south; and, most worryingly, the resurgent ideology of Italian fascism. “Forza Italia” (Go Italy!) was the Christian Democracy Party reborn as a combination of football supporters club and anti-political crusade.

Did right-wing Italians know that Berlusconi was conning them? Of course they did. But, being conned was preferable to finally facing-up to Italy’s all-too-obvious economic and social decline, and the political putrefaction at the heart of its national life.

As a strategy for defeating the Italian Left it was nothing short of brilliant. To succeed, left-wing parties require an electorate which believes fervently in the possibility of a better future. By the time Berlusconi was finally forced from office, that crucial pre-requisite had been pummelled into a pervasive and despairing cynicism about all forms of political engagement. Increasingly, Italian politics was driven by the issues that most enraged the electorate: illegal immigration; the redistribution of the north’s wealth to the impoverished south; the growth of an unaccountable political bureaucracy more responsive to the urgings of Brussels than Rome; the inability of anybody to actually change anything.

Small wonder, then, that a shady stand-up comedian, Beppe Grillo, has pushed his Internet-based “Five Star Movement” to the front of the political pack. Or that “The League” – formerly the Northern League – has surged ahead of Forza Italia by promising to drive 600,000 illegal immigrants into the sea. Or that the parties of Italy’s increasingly decrepit status-quo have been soundly beaten. Or that there is currently no reasonable prospect of Italy’s mutually allergic political parties coming together to form any sort of responsible government.

Fittingly, it was the Italian communist, Antonio Gramsci, who penned the best description of Italy’s predicament: “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.”

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, 9 March 2018.