Disinformation From The Left.

Dangerously Persuasive: When Hamas unleashes terror in Southern Israel, and the State of Israel unleashes hell in retaliation, disinformation is important. Which is why, by way of example, the Instagram message released a day ago by Pere Huriwai-Seger on behalf of the Aotearoa Liberation League is important.

DISINFORMATION has been part and parcel of the political process since, well, forever. It was only in the Nineteenth Century, however, that the need to create narratives advantageous to one’s own cause, and disadvantageous to one’s opponents, gained access to technologies enabling disinformation to be communicated at great speed and on a massive scale. With the dawning of the Twentieth Century, even more startling technological innovations upped the effectiveness of disinformation by several orders of magnitude. The old adage: “A lie will be half way around the world before Truth has pulled his boots on”; became a straightforward description of reality. By the Twenty-First Century, technology had advanced to the point where the separation of truth from falsehood required the adjudication of experts – and the ability to distinguish fake expertise from the real thing.

When people talk about disinformation today, it is almost always from within a left-wing narrative framework. The villains behind the disinformation tsunami allegedly inundating the civilised world are identified as white supremacists, misogynists, transphobes, anti-vaccination zealots, and fundamentalist Christians.

In normal circumstances, the pet-hates of leftists don’t carry very much weight. Unfortunately, the life of the world stopped being normal in January 2020, as it became clear that a novel coronavirus – Covid-19 – was about to ignite a global pandemic. Fearful that the small but very vocal clusters of anti-vaccination zealots, located in just about all Western nations, would undermine the public health and immunological measures vital to fighting the virus, public servants began establishing anti-disinformation units to identify and counter the lies being spread about Covid-19, and, more importantly, the vaccines developed in record time to bring it under control.

In those countries with centre-left national and/or state governments, most particularly the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, politicians and activists moved swiftly to extend the brief of these disinformation units to encompass just about all of the Left’s pet-hates. The situation was not improved by the intervention of national security agencies alarmed at the volume of Russian and Chinese disinformation pouring onto Western social media platforms.

From the perspective of the Left, this conflation of Far-Right disinformation with the disinformation emanating from authoritarian nation states would prove to be enormously helpful. A pro-censorship position, which at least some of the mainstream media might have challenged, could now be presented as a matter of national security. In New Zealand, willingness to buy into this aspect of the anti-disinformation project was aided by the still raw memories of the Christchurch Mosque Massacres. Far-Right lies could produce deadly consequences, argued the Left. Free speech should not be considered an unqualified good, not when it empowers “bad actors”.

What the New Zealand Left – notoriously ignorant of its own, and the international movement’s history – finds it almost impossible to accept is that disinformation (or, as it was once, more honestly, known: “propaganda”) was, and is, every bit as rampant on the revolutionary left, as it was, and is, on the reactionary right. Indeed, modern disinformation/propaganda was more-or-less invented by Willi Münzenberg, a German political impresario, commissioned by the Communist International to spread the Bolshevik’s revolutionary creed across the West. Tactics we take for granted today: front organisations, activist celebrities, newspapers, magazines, plays, movies, and phonograph records – all with an easily digestible political sub-text, were Münzenberg’s inventions. In the early 1920s, the Right had nothing to match “Willi’s Wurlitzer”.

Not that the state-subsidised Disinformation Project would ever acknowledge the fact, but the effectiveness of New Zealand’s right-wing disinformers is well below that of their left-wing rivals. Better educated, more articulate, technically more proficient, and – most importantly – working with, not against, the grain of New Zealand’s official “progressive” ideology, New Zealand’s left-wing activists’ political and cultural production throws that of the Right into the shade. Their output can be found on Facebook, Instagram, X and Tik-Tok – global platforms often denied to the Right by Silicon Valley’s “progressive” billionaires. Freed from the need to hawk their ideological wares in the murky swamps of Telegram, the Left’s disinformers/propagandists have no need for false identities. Operating freely, under their own names, they have ready access to the hearts and minds of millions.

Not that very many New Zealanders know or care what the Left is saying. Indeed, political speech only becomes important in moments of national and international crisis. In the middle of a global pandemic, disinformation is important. When Russia invades Ukraine, disinformation is important. When Hamas unleashes terror in Southern Israel, and the State of Israel unleashes hell in retaliation, disinformation is important. Which is why, by way of example, the Instagram message released a day ago (22/10/23) by Pere Huriwai-Seger on behalf of the Aotearoa Liberation League (a front organisation comprised of Pere and his wife Sarah) is important.

With film-star good looks and a compelling verbal style, Pere commands the viewers attention from the moment he authoritatively disabuses them of any notion that what is currently unfolding in Gaza is not their fight. New Zealand, he informs them “has troops involved”. An alarming “fact” if one’s knowledge of New Zealand’s role in the Middle East is poor – i.e. most of the New Zealand population. That Pere flashes up a media release explaining that New Zealand has eight military personnel serving in the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation in no way excuses his claim that the country has troops involved. In the minds of his viewers his words will have conjured up images of Kiwi soldiers rubbing shoulders with members of the Israeli Defence Force. It’s misinformation shading into disinformation.

Pere’s pace is brisk, and just seconds later he is informing his viewers that New Zealand has “long supported the colonisation of Palestine”. This is historical nonsense – and malicious nonsense at that. He states as a fact that New Zealand “invaded” Palestine and “seized it for Britain” in 1917. Curiously, he neglects to inform his viewers that the New Zealand Mounted Rifles was merely one unit in the British Expeditionary Force waging war against the Ottoman Empire, of which Palestine was a mere province. According to Pere, the province was handed over to “Zionist terrorists”. Curiouser and curiouser, since Ottoman Palestine was actually handed over to the British by the League of Nations as a “mandated territory”, and remained in British hands until 1948.

But Pere is just getting warmed-up. While they were busy making Palestine safe for Zionism, argues Pere, the Kiwis treated the Palestinian people “horribly”. He cites the Surafend massacre of 1918 as proof.

What happened at Surafend wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t happen out of the blue. Troopers of the NZ Mounted Rifles and the Australian Light Horse went to the village of Surafend to secure the surrender of the Palestinian Arab who had shot dead a New Zealander, Trooper Leslie Lowry, after stealing his kit-bag. Their demand refused, the Anzacs attacked the men of the village (having evacuated the women and children to a place of safety) killing between 40 and 200 Arabs, and setting their houses on fire. The Anzac perpetrators received a tongue-lashing from the British commander, Allenby, but none of them were ever punished.

Had Pere homed-in on the Surafend massacre right from the start of his video, he could have presented a picture of New Zealand’s complicity in British, and later American, imperialism that was not only persuasive by truthful. Instead, by surrounding the Surafend massacre with a string of disinformative statements, the whole four-minute video becomes an exercise in the most blatant propaganda. And not just any propaganda, Pere’s falsehoods are the falsehoods of Hamas and their Iranian backers – whose cause Pere equates with the cause of Māori nationalism in Aotearoa. Presumably, what Hamas terrorists did to the Jewish inhabitants of Southern Israel is what decolonisation looks like.

Imagine the reaction of the Disinformation Project if they had found a video presentation promoting right-wing disinformation and hate on such a scale. A video dripping with Islamophobic hate in the same way Pere’s drips with annihilationist hatred of Israel. Such a video would have been presented to the mainstream media as evidence of the danger posed by radical political extremism; of the need to take decisive action against such horrific hate speech.

And the mainstream media would have lapped it up.

This essay was originally posted on The Democracy Project website on Monday, 23 October 2023.

Opting Out Of The Coalition Of Containment.

The dove is never free - Leonard Cohen 

That there has been no outcry against the decision of the Australian government to purchase eight nuclear-powered submarines from the United States is astonishing. These formidable weapons of war are intended to patrol the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans – and their strategic choke-points – and should have occasioned loud protests from “nuclear-free” New Zealand.

RIGHT NOW, New Zealand is in a very awkward geopolitical position. Heedless of its vital economic relationship with China, the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific region are pushing New Zealand into a growing coalition of containment aimed at weakening the Chinese state and economy.

The most obvious outcome of this diplomatic pressure (and in all likelihood its purpose) will be a sharp deterioration in the Chinese-New Zealand relationship. Most probably, Chinese displeasure will be expressed through restrictions on New Zealand exports. Not that the United States and its allies will make good any consequential losses to New Zealand’s economy. The Coalition of Containment’s sole purpose in precipitating such a break is to erase the irritating question-mark beside New Zealand’s name on its list of “trustworthy” allies.

New Zealand’s national security apparatus, whose loyalty to the people of New Zealand, as opposed to the decision-makers in Washington, London and Canberra, has always been open to doubt, has been pushing the Labour Government hard in the direction of Uncle Sam’s Coalition of Containment. Its efforts have, as usual, been seconded by all the usual suspects in the mainstream news media. (As well as some interesting recruits from the blogosphere!) The resulting upsurge in Sinophobia must be a source of considerable satisfaction to China’s enemies in New Zealand. It is unusual, these days, to hear a kind word spoken publicly about China – without the guilty party being subjected to the most vehement reproof.

That the Left has allowed itself to be drawn into this anti-Chinese discourse is especially disappointing. There was a time when the machinations of US imperialism were subjected to consistent and sophisticated critique by New Zealand communists and socialists, and even one or two intelligent members of the Labour Party. So effective were these critiques that the left-wing arguments advanced against such imperialistic interventions as the Vietnam War were able to win massive public support. The political upshot of such campaigns was a weakening of New Zealand’s relationship with the United States and its allies. The high-point of the Left’s influence on New Zealand foreign and defence policies came in 1986, when New Zealand withdrew/was excluded from the ANZUS Pact.

What passes for the Left in 2023, however, is, for the most part, content to echo the principal talking-points of US imperialism and its Nato accomplices. The obvious fiction that China is an aggressive power seeking global domination is repeated ad nauseum, along with the absurd charge that the Chinese government is overseeing a genocidal campaign against the Uighur population of Xinjiang. (It is a curious exercise in genocide that leaves twice as many Uighurs in Xinjiang today as there were 50 years ago!) It is no accident, however, that this “softening-up” of an historically ignorant Left, addicted to emotionally-charged international campaigns, preceded the creation of the Australian, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) military relationship in 2021.

That there has been no outcry against the decision of the Australian government to purchase eight nuclear-powered submarines from the United States is astonishing. These formidable weapons of war are intended to patrol the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans – and their strategic choke-points – and should have occasioned loud protests from “nuclear-free” New Zealand. At the very least, this present Labour Government might have been expected to gather the small nations of the South Pacific behind it in a concerted diplomatic effort to uphold – and enforce – the 1986 anti-nuclear Treaty of Rarotonga.

If New Zealand continues upon its current diplomatic trajectory its economically vital relationship with China cannot help being put at risk. Certainly, the pressure, both from Canberra and Washington, shows no sign of decreasing. Statement-by-statement, in language that demands much but offers little, Wellington is putting more-and-more distance between itself and Beijing. China is hoping that the hard, cold realities of making its living as a very small nation-state in a very large world will continue to keep New Zealand out of the flash new military leg-irons being fastened around the Indo-Pacific region by the United States.

But, hope is unlikely to be enough. Beijing needs to make New Zealand an offer it can’t refuse if it is to prevent the pinkie-finger of the Anglo-Saxon fist from clenching-up tight alongside its bigger brothers. A change of government in October could be just the opportunity Beijing is looking for.

Faced with mounting infrastructural and climate-related problems, and committed to reducing state spending, what might a National-Act coalition not agree to if presented with Chinese promises of massive investment in transport, housing, and climate adaptation/mitigation projects? Roads of national significance, electrification of the railways, extensive and intensive housing developments, taming rivers and hillsides: China’s done it all before, all over the world. Why not here?

And why stop there. Large-scale investment in renewable energy projects would set New Zealand up for a green re-industrialisation of the economy. Chinese companies will not be the only ones seeking-out nation-states with plentiful, cheap and reliable “clean” energy to offer investors in a post-carbon world.

Too much? Not when one considers that New Zealand 1.0 was built, almost entirely, out of British capital. Why shouldn’t New Zealand 2.0 be the creation of massive Chinese investment? Across the broad sweep of human history, imperialism has always been colour-blind.

Such a shift would, of course, entail a diplomatic revolution greater even that New Zealand declaring itself nuclear-free. Canberra, Washington, London and Ottawa would be livid. Accusations of treachery would be hurled at New Zealand by its former allies and, doubtless, all kinds of clandestine efforts would be set in motion to destabilise – even topple – its wayward government. Outright intervention would, however, be unlikely. It is difficult to persuade the world that China is the greatest threat to peace in the Indo-Pacific, when US Marines are splashing ashore on New Zealand beaches.

In the face of New Zealand’s diplomatic realignment, its South Pacific neighbours might also find it expedient to adopt a new stance vis-a-vis the neo-colonial objectives of the USA and its English-speaking allies. Pacific leaders might feel moved to inquire exactly what the United Kingdom thinks it is doing – again – in this part of the world. Were New Zealand to propose the creation of a South Pacific navy, dedicated to protecting and defending the resources within each member-state’s Exclusive Economic Zone, it might be surprised at the level of interest.

Especially if China offered to supply the patrol vessels.

Such a nightmare scenario could, of course, be easily avoided if the United States was willing to offer what China was ready to negotiate with New Zealand 15 years ago – a Free Trade Agreement. It has always been the easiest and, ultimately, the least costly option for the Americans: agree to take whatever New Zealand can send them – just as Great Britain did for the best part of a century. Just as China is doing right now.

But that would require US Imperialism to do what it has never done before: put the word “give” ahead of the word “take”.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 4 August 2023.

The Right Divide

A Left Wing Party? You Must Be Joking! With the election of the Fourth Labour Government in July 1984 it became increasingly evident that the ideological dividing line in New Zealand ran not between National and Labour but between the Right of the Labour Party and an increasingly diverse and variegated Left.

 

THERE’S A REASON Labour finds the presence of political parties to its left so uncomfortable. It’s the same reason an ageing actor feels so uncomfortable sharing the stage with a more dynamic and younger rising star. The ability to compare and contrast is deeply subversive of undeserved reputations.

 

Labour’s uneasiness with political diversity also largely explains its apparent inability to abandon First-Past-The-Post thinking. From Labour’s point of view, FPP is the ideal electoral system. It virtually guarantees that a nation’s politics will be dominated and defined by two parties: one representing “The Left” and the other “The Right”.

 

The choices for electors are thus radically simplified. In much the same way that Radio NZ still grossly oversimplifies the discussion of New Zealand politics by subsuming the myriad subtleties and complexities of Right and Left in the orthodox political commentary of Matthew Hooton and Mike Williams.

 

From the perspective of Labour’s parliamentary caucus, the great advantage of reducing New Zealand’s politics to this essentially binary formation is that it allows them to pretend that the ideological dividing-line separating right-wing from left-wing New Zealanders runs between the National and Labour parties.

 

The maintenance of this plausible, but mistaken, perception has become critical to the preservation of New Zealand’s enviable reputation for political stability. The two major parties have devoted tremendous effort to promulgating the pernicious fiction that the extraordinary upheavals of the 1980s left the fundamental structure of New Zealand politics essentially unchanged.

 

The validity of the historically indisputable Left/Labour–Right/National dichotomy had been subject to academic challenge since the late 1950s, but with the election of the Fourth Labour Government in July 1984 it became increasingly evident that the ideological dividing line in New Zealand ran not between National and Labour but between the Right of the Labour Party and an increasingly diverse and variegated Left.

 

The proof of this lay in the fact that switching National for Labour, or Labour for National, made no significant difference to the way the country was run. The dominant right-wing faction of Labour’s caucus ensured that the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s would undergo no significant alteration by any government over which they held sway.

 

It was this effective neutralising of democracy which more-or-less guaranteed the introduction of MMP. The latter’s arrival should also have exposed the fiction that Labour MPs, simply by virtue of their Labour Party membership status, could be excluded from the ranks of those who opposed a radical revision of New Zealand politics. Unfortunately, the binary thinking so deeply-ingrained in our political system encouraged left-of-Labour parties like the Alliance and the Greens to persist with the pretence that National and its allies constitute the primary political target.

 

Ironically, David Cunliffe’s election as Labour leader, by the left-wing majority of his party, has made the perpetuation of this pretence easier, not harder. The right of Labour’s caucus which viciously opposed Cunliffe’s candidacy were, nevertheless, permitted to survive his victory, remaining well-positioned to thwart any attempt to match their new leader’s left-wing rhetoric with an equally left-wing strategy of outreach and accommodation with parties to Labour’s left.

 

Accordingly, these past two months have witnessed the Labour Right plotting in plain sight to exclude the Greens from any meaningful role in a Cunliffe-led Labour Government. Their “the more things change, the more they’ll stay the same” strategy has, however, been thrown into disarray by the intervention of Kim Dotcom’s money and Hone Harawira’s strategic dexterity. The lavishly funded and potentially decisive force now assembling to the left of the Greens under Hone Harawira and Laila Harré has forced the Labour Right onto the offensive.

 

Keep it up, guys! Long may the radio interviews, tweets and Facebook postings of Kelvin Davis, Phil Goff, Chris Hipkins, Trevor Mallard and Stuart Nash reverberate through cyberspace. New Zealanders have suffered for far too long from the Labour Right’s masterful misdirection. It’s time we realised that the paths they urge us to avoid are the paths to follow.

 

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 6 June 2014.

No Comparison: Why Tame Iti Has No Role In "Smith's Dream"

Bogus Equivalence: As anyone who's actually read C.K. Stead's novel Smith's Dream, or seen Roger Donaldson's Sleeping Dogs will tell you, the desperate political situation prevailing in their fictional New Zealand bears absolutely no resemblance to the real New Zealand of either 2007 or 2012. Sam Neil's heroic "Smith" has nothing in common with Tame Iti or his embryonic Maori militia.

THE POSTER featured at the top of this posting indicates how very far from reality the Far Left in this country has drifted. So far that they can no longer even distinguish the salient differences between C.K. Stead’s 1971 novel Smith’s Dream (which Roger Donaldson turned into the 1977 New Zealand film Sleeping Dogs) and Tame Iti’s embryonic “private militia”.

In Stead’s/Donaldson’s fictional setting, New Zealand finds itself in the grip of an authoritarian dictatorship - complete with secret police, imprisonment without trial, torture, military tribunals, executions and lethal violence meted out to protesters on the streets. Not surprisingly, this leads to the formation of an armed resistance movement, which in turn spurs the government to invite in American "advisers".

Were any of these factors present in 2007? No.

So, the equating of Stead’s/Donaldson’s fictional New Zealand with New Zealand as it really was in 2007 is completely bogus. No one was being fatally beaten in the streets by murderous riot police. No one was being tortured. No one was being tried and sentenced to death by military tribunals. No American “advisers” were clambering through the New Zealand bush.

Yes, there was an unnecessarily heavy-handed raid on Ruatoki by armed police. But this was the culmination of a year’s worth of observation and evidence-gathering directed at apprehending a group alleged to be organising covert, military-style training camps in the Urewera Ranges, and undertaken on search-warrants lawfully issued. It resulted in the seizure of 18 firearms.

The persons arrested as a result of “Operation Eight” were not held incommunicado, denied access to legal advice and tortured until they confessed. Nor were they tried and executed in secret. On the contrary, they were given a fair trial in an open court and only convicted on a number of firearms charges. Two of the accused were jailed for two-and-a-half years. Their convictions and their sentences are now being appealed.

So, no. The "real life" Tame Iti is not the same as the fictional hero "Smith" played by Sam Neill. He was not fighting a murderous dictatorship. He was not being hunted down by US “advisers”. Nor were he and his followers being strafed and bombed by RNZAF Skyhawks.

What Mr Iti does appear to have been doing, however, was giving practical effect to the numerous discussions, extending over many decades, in which Maori nationalists and their far-Left Pakeha allies have weighed the pros and cons of organising a revolutionary Maori army.

Inspired by the Mexican “Zapatista” model, in which indigenous issues are fused with issues of environmental despoliation and globalisation, was Tame Iti attempting to turn the Ureweras into Mexico’s Chiapas province, and himself into Tuhoe’s own “Subcomandante Marcos”?

Finally, as bogus as it undoubtedly is, the poster’s comparison remains potentially very dangerous. People who construct a fantasy world, and then decide to live in it, very rapidly place themselves beyond the reach of arguments grounded in reason and evidence. And, as the images emerging from Syria over the past 24 hours make so tragically clear, those who forsake reason for violence are capable of doing just about anything.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

The Angel Of History

A Storm Called Progress: Paul Klee's Angelus Novus. The Angel of History is blown backwards into the future by the gales of historical change. Labour's critics challenge it to confront directly the accumulation of its past decisions - and their consequences. How else can the Labour Party, and the people who vote Labour, hope to change them?

ROBERT WINTER is a fan of Jerome K. Jerome, a fact which immediately distinguishes him as a man of taste and discernment. His blog Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow offers some of the pithiest political commentary to be found anywhere in the New Zealand blogosphere. Most of the time I agree with Robert, and he with me. Over recent weeks, however, we have not agreed. And since my every attempt to leave  a comment on his own blog has failed (Blogger has never really recovered from its meltdown of a few months ago) I am responding to his critiques here, on Bowalley Road.

ONE OF THE most common criticisms of Labour’s left-wing critics is that they are mired in the past. According to the party’s (dwindling) number of supporters and defenders, the watches of those who criticise Labour have all stopped. Some at 19:84, some at 19:91, others at 20:02. These critics are both fixed in and fixated by words and deeds that long ago passed into history. This, says Labour, is as destructive as it is unhelpful. The eyes of the Left, according to Labour and its followers, should be fixed upon the future: let the dead bury their dead.

At the same time (and somewhat paradoxically) Labour’s defenders also use history as a means of discrediting its left-wing opponents alternative narratives and policy-options.

“As I've suggested before,” writes Robert, “the world of social democracy a la 1935 is no more. We no longer have the same labour force, the same unions, the same systems and organisation of production, the same social mores, the same communities, or the same ability to operate within the protection of a nation-state. Above all, and this is underestimated as a factor by most, the hopes attached to alternative systems have, for now, been dashed - the Bolshevik model, from the Soviet Union to Cuba, has failed and we are now seeking new alternatives. That takes time. We may not like this, but it is a reality. Meanwhile, Capitalism, driven by its own imperatives, has moved on politically and economically, particularly on two fronts - the global impact and power of finance capital and the organisation of global production in value chains.”

This is the standard Blairite explanation – adopted by Labour and social-democratic parties from Australasia to Scandinavia. It is not, however, an analysis: it’s a description – and an excuse. It’s the right-wing social-democrats’ way of saying: “Capitalism’s become too big to tackle. All we can hope to do is smooth-off some of its sharper edges. There really is no alternative to the free market.”

But, as the former British Labour MP, Bryan Gould, explained more than two years ago:

“A government supposedly of the Left that feels unable to challenge market outcomes can have nothing to say – however it is dressed up, whatever cosmetics are applied – to those who look to it for social justice and a more integrated society.”

If social-democracy is not about challenging market outcomes (and the social inequality and injustice they generate) then what is it about? Sure, the shape and power of capitalism changes: but, so what? Capitalism was once about coal and steam-engines and machine looms. Then it was about oil, and electricity and the internal combustion engine. Its records were once produced by Bob Cratchits with pens. Then it was flappers with typewriters. As far back as 1848, Karl Marx and Fred Engels recognised capitalism as the most dynamic force on the planet.

Their celebrated description of capitalism: “Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty, and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air”; could have been written yesterday.

Stubbornly refusing to “melt into air”, however, are the relationships peculiar to capitalism. These are as solid as they ever were. And it is this, the edifice of domination, subordination and exploitation which holds capitalist society in place, that social-democracy seeks to challenge, shrink, modify and, ultimately, dismantle.

That’s what the First, Second and Third Labour Governments did here. Even the Fourth challenged, shrank, modified and dismantled, although not for any progressive purpose. But the Fifth (leaving aside the brief period it was goaded forward by its genuinely social-democratic coalition partner, the Alliance) was largely content to leave the capitalist edifice unchallenged. From the labour market to broadcasting, welfare to global warming, the ‘reforms” of the Clark-led government were tentative, half-hearted and almost totally ineffectual.

Of course we can’t go back to 1935 – or 1972. But we can decide to follow the same social-democratic principles, and pursue the same objectives, as Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk. We can declare that any society which denies ordinary working people a meaningful role in shaping their collective future is not a democratic society. We can also say that any party which refuses to respond to working-class exclusion by “putting people first and money second” is not – and never can be – a Labour Party.

In 1940, on the run from the Nazis, the German-Jewish philosopher and social critic, Walter Benjamin, recalled the impact of a work of art by Paul Klee:

"A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."

We are driven forward only by what lies behind us. 

This post is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Sorry Bomber (Some Thoughts On Martyn "Bomber" Bradbury's Call For A New Left Party)

Revolutions aren't made on television, Bomber, they're made on the street. And have you met the people who live on that street!

ONE’S FELLOW CITIZENS can be a terrible disappointment, Bomber. You will discover this the moment you cross the Rubicon from political observer to political participant. "The People", God bless ‘em, especially when encountered individually, are not always hewn from that heroic material so beloved by 18th and 19th Century revolutionaries.

Standing on their doorsteps, Bomber, it’s easy to become profoundly disillusioned with the human-beings whose votes decide your country’s future. Regardless of their location in the social hierarchy, and irrespective of their role in the processes of production, individuals all-too-frequently behave in ways utterly at odds with their objective self-interest. Parliamentary campaigners for the Left will regale you with stories of anti-feminist women, racist Maori, pro-capitalist proletarians and anti-welfare beneficiaries.

"There better be wisdom in crowds," grumbles the weary candidate following a particularly gruelling canvassing drive, "because there’s bugger-all in the average voter!"

Even worse than the voters with no conception of their own self-interest, are the voters who just don’t care. If you can get past the vicious dog chained-up in their front yard, and make your presence known over the blare of their massive sound system, your party-political spiel elicits nothing more than a bemused shake of the head.

"Not interested, mate", they’ll drawl, shutting the door firmly in your face. If their mailbox wasn’t already stuffed-full of junk mail, you’d leave them a pamphlet – or slip your card under the door. But that low growl, emanating from the Hound of the Baskervilles straining against his chain just a few metres to your right, suggests that it might be wiser to move on to the next house in the street.

As often as not – the neighbours are even worse.

But, of course, if you’re really serious about forming a New Left Party, Bomber, you’ll soon be experiencing all these things first hand. And don’t for a minute think there’s some way of avoiding the bruising experience of face-to-face canvassing – cos there ain’t.

The people you’re planning on drawing into the electoral process: the state-house tenants struggling to raise a family on two minimum wages; the young Maori solo-mum trying to keep it together on the DPB; the sickness beneficiary doped up to the eye-balls on lithium (because this country doesn’t really run to a decent mental health system); none of these folk read Tumeke, Bomber, or Bowalley Road, or The Standard, or Kiwipolitico. They don’t read newspapers either, or watch Citizen A. They just might pick up snatches of talk-back radio, or catch the odd TV-news bulletin – but I wouldn’t count on it.

So, to win them over you’ll have to knock on their front doors, introduce yourself, and attempt to engage them in political discussion. Which won’t happen, because while you’re launching into your spiel, they’ll be asking themselves: "What does this prick want from me? What the fuck is he talking about?"

Standing in front of them, Bomber, you’ll come across as so completely alien: so far removed from their bleak, narrow, hard-scrabble and often violent world; that you might as well have beamed down from another planet.

The barriers to effective political communication: functional illiteracy; cultural impoverishment; sheer exhaustion: each of these factors, on their own, Bomber, is enough to prevent the anomistic underclass from receiving your message. And if – as is likely – the person you’re addressing is of a different ethnicity, then your communication difficulties will be radically compounded.

So, if the underclass is politically inaccessible to the Left (which is, I’m afraid, the brutal message of the Mana by-election) then what about the working-class? Well, I’ve got news for you, Bomber, and, as Jim Anderton is fond of adding: "It’s all bad."

In fact, you should have a chat with Jim about winning and holding the support of working-class voters. Because you know what, Bomber? He was the only member of the NewLabour Party and the Alliance who ever really mastered the art.

Why? Because Jim never, ever, ever, by the slightest word or deed, gave the voters of Sydenham/Wigram reason to suppose that he considered himself, or his political and moral values, to be better than their own. In this, he remains their true representative. Like so many of them, he takes a conservative stance on abortion and illicit drug-use. But, also like them, he is prepared to embrace radical economic solutions to entrenched social problems.

It’s all about respect, Bomber. The giving of it, and the receiving of it. Respect – and respectability – lie at the heart of Anglo-Celtic working-class culture. Jim Anderton gets that. It’s why Labour could never reclaim Sydenham/Wigram from him. No matter how jarring some of their opinions on issues relating to race, gender and sexuality might be, Jim Anderton would never disrespect the people whose votes he was soliciting. He’d never call them "rednecks".

Can you say the same, Bomber? Not really.

Which leaves you politically situated slap-bang in the middle of the only political market which the "post-modern" Left has truly made its own: young(ish), well-educated, middle-income and upper-middle-income, Pakeha voters. And that market, as I’m sure you need no reminding, Bomber, is now the happy hunting-ground of both the Labour and the Green parties.

What I would say to you, Bomber, (in case you do need reminding) is that in order to win the votes of more than the ever-dwindling band of political activists who draw their ideological inspiration from the left-wing philosophers and politicians of the 19th and early-20th centuries, a New Left Party would have to offer the voters of Auckland Central, Wellington Central, Port Hills and Dunedin North more-or-less the same policies as Phil Goff and Russel Norman.

That’s the problem with the voting public, Bomber. They will insist on ignoring the Left's advice! I like the way Bertold Brecht put it in his famous poem "The Solution", written after the East German workers’ revolt of June, 1953.

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

When you work out how to do that, Bomber, please let me know.

Getting the Inside Out

Time to turn Labour Inside Out: In a challenging blog-post, Labour Policy Councillor, Jordan Carter (above) offers a way out of the party’s ideological stalemate.

"WHAT LABOUR MUST DO", says Labour’s influential Policy Council member, Jordan Carter, in a 17 January posting on the blogsite Just Left, is "turn itself inside out."

"For better or worse," says Carter, "the fifth Labour government was a baby boomer government. The political methods of the 70s and 80s were those which ran it: it was tightly managed and focused. I get the sense though that people are looking now for something a little different. Some in Labour look at Key’s hands-off approach and see a weakness. I see a strength. The rise of ICT, the end of ‘deference’ towards authority, and growing generations of people who are as comfortable online as offline mean that a political party that is centralised and top down cannot really capture the public imagination."

This is a challenge of no mean measure – not only to the Labour leader, Phil Goff (a classic representative of the "baby boomer" generation) but also to the top-down style of governance perfected by and inherited from Helen Clark. It follows, and provides a measure of ideological cover to the open Caucus rebuke which Wellington Central MP, Grant Robertson, and Party President, Andrew Little, delivered to Goff following his controversial "Nationhood" speech to Grey Power Palmerston North on 26 November 2009.

Robertson’s and Little’s warning shots across Goff’s bow were generally interpreted as proof that any serious attempt to divert Labour down the path of social conservatism will be strenuously resisted. In reality, all that the knee-jerk reaction of the party’s social-liberal wing confirmed was that the debilitating intellectual lock-down of the Clark years has yet to be lifted.

Like that eerie rock video from the mid-90s, in which an ethereal young woman moves through city streets holding high a placard saying: "Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt", the social-liberals’ hair-trigger sensitivity to the slightest philosophical challenge reveals a political party that is not only fresh out of ideas, but frightened of finding new ones.

It is this debilitating ideological stalemate that Carter’s gutsy posting seeks to address:

"What Labour must do is turn itself inside out … we also have to invite people in to join with us and help shape what we are doing next … We need to be the party that people see as grassroots based, and where they know that if they want to raise an issue or a concern, it will filter through to what our policy is …We have to do this if we are to be relevant, and if we want to win there is nothing more important than being relevant."

But, is Carter’s call for Labour to radically democratise itself a serious one? Because, historically-speaking, it was the ten years of democratic radicalisation between the election of Jim Anderton as Labour Party President in 1979 and the split which gave birth to his New Labour Party in 1989 that led to the "centralised and top-down" political machine Carter is now urging his party to move beyond?

There is no disputing the sense of openness and excitement which Anderton’s five-year tenure in the presidency brought to the party. Membership swelled, conferences grew livelier and more assertive, and the policies which "filtered through" to Labour’s Policy Council demanded increasingly radical social and economic changes.

The irony, of course, was that as Labour’s rank-and-file were moving steadily to the Left, the Parliamentary Labour Party was moving steadily to the Right. The unleashing of "Rogernomics" in 1984 ignited a firestorm of opposition within Labour’s organisational wing that engulfed – and eventually divided – the whole party.

Carter is too young to remember what a radically democratised Labour Party looks like: the regional conferences where hundreds of delegates passionately argued their case as the media waited outside; the annual conferences where long queues of speakers lined up behind the microphones to debate contentious remits in the full glare of the television lights; and where non-MPs like Margaret Wilson, Rob Campbell, Rex Jones and Pat Kelly became household names.

To rebuild such a party, Carter and his comrades would first have to re-draft Labour’s current constitution: a product not of the 70s and 80s but of the "new managerialist" 90s; and purpose-built to de-fang and demobilise the party’s rank-and-file. The committee- and workshop-based structures, in which the MPs and their hand-picked "voices of moderation" hold sway, would need to make way for the raucous plenary democracy of the conference floor, and the ability of Policy Councillors (like Carter himself) to rip the radical guts out of rank-and-file remits long before they reach that conference floor, curtailed.

And, as if these changes aren’t dangerous enough, Labour would also need to increase its membership by a factor of at least five: actively recruiting a new generation of young New Zealanders every bit as bolshie as their parents and grandparents, but armed, in the 21st Century, with all the anarchic potential of the Internet – from organising websites and personal blogs, to Facebook and Twitter.

Such an influx of new members – most of them gloriously unaltered by the neutering experience of the party’s university branches – would instantly put a great many of Labour’s existing members’ noses out of joint. As would any attempt to reassert the rights of the Party over those of its parliamentary wing.

That said, Carter’s formula for reinvigorating Labour’s "brand" would definitely "work". And, pretty soon, "relevancy" would be the least of his problems!

The full-scale democratisation of a mainstream political organisation in the age of the Internet has the potential to revolutionise the practice of democracy – as Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign for the White House, and the Republican "Tea-Baggers" counter-attack – have so dramatically illustrated. For the first time in 70 years, ordinary citizens possess the means to stage a successful end-run around the traditional gate-keepers of national politics: party bosses and the news media.

If that’s the sort of change Labour’s up-and-comers really are looking for, then here’s a test. Throw all the party’s organisational resources behind the Unite trade union’s petition for a Citizen’s Initiated Referendum to lift the Minimum Wage to $15.00 per hour – and shame Labour’s MPs into leading the charge.

The Unite campaign offers vast potential for Goff and his caucus to demonstrate "the statecraft of the party". It might not turn Labour "inside out" – but it would at least get the insiders out on the street.

This essay was originally published in The Independent of 28 January 2010.

Spy vs Spy

Following Nicky Hager's revelations in The Sunday Star-Times of police infiltration of domestic protest organisations, and acknowledging the two very interesting responses to his article from Liberation and Against the Current, I re-publish here my "Making A Contribution", article, published in The Independent of 14 February 2001. It occasioned some bitter left-wing reaction at the time, which, to my mind at least, betrayed an extraordinary degree of naivete on the part of the Left in New Zealand.

If your intention is to overthrow the existing order, you should not be surprised – nor outraged – when it takes steps to protect itself.

NEW ZEALAND’s Security Intelligence Service guards its secrets well. Only rarely is the public permitted even a glimpse of its internal workings. Outside of the Beehive’s Ninth Floor, the intentions and operations of the Service remain a mystery. Inquiries from journalists are politely turned away, and inquisitive MPs are referred to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, a carefully chosen clutch of senior politicians, chaired by the Prime Minister, and legally prevented from commenting on any matter "relating directly to the activities" of the Service. This is probably as it should be. A security service unable to guard its secrets would hardly be worthy of the name.

Sometimes, however, things go badly wrong, and matters relating directly to the activities of the Service are thrust, blinking, into the bright light of day. The most notorious breach of SIS secrecy occurred on July 13th 1996, when David Small, a lecturer in Education at the University of Canterbury, surprised at least two SIS agents in the process of burgling the home of anti-free-trade activist Aziz Choudry.

As far as most New Zealanders were concerned, the story of the Choudry break-in was relatively straight-forward. Concerned that Choudry and his fellow dissidents might be planning to disrupt the ministerial meeting of APEC, then taking place in Christchurch, the SIS detailed an unspecified number of its agents to mount what is known in the trade as a "black bag" operation. They were to gain entry to Choudry’s home and search for anything indicating intended or real acts of "espionage, sabotage, terrorism, and subversion". This dramatic infringement of Choudry’s rights could have been justified by the SIS on the grounds that it was "making a contribution to New Zealand’s international well-being and economic well-being" – a new set of responsibilities which came into force on July 1st 1996 - less than a fortnight prior to the black-bag operation in Choudry’s home.

The consequences of this botched operation were considerable. Having failed to have their complaints against the SIS upheld by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, and unable to persuade the conservative National-NZ First Government to mount a public inquiry, Choudry and Small enlisted the support of top Auckland barrister, Rodney Harrison, who agreed to sue the SIS on Choudry’s behalf for trespass and unreasonable search. Rather surprisingly, they won, and in 1999 Choudry was awarded an unspecified – but rumoured to be large – sum in compensation.

What did not emerge from the trial was anything resembling an official explanation of the break-in. The Prime Minister, Mrs Shipley, declared she was ready to go all the way to the Privy Council to protect the "national security" content of SIS records. Mrs Shipley’s government was also required to pass legislation protecting the SIS’s ability to mount black bag operations in pursuit if its national security obligations.

What Mrs Shipley could not prevent, however, was the then Leader of the Opposition, Helen Clark, blabbing out the real reason for the SIS’s surveillance of Choudry to North & South political journalist, David McLaughlin.

"They burgled his house, yes, but not because of him", Clark told McLaughlin. "He had visitors who were of interest and when you’ve got people coming to New Zealand on visitor’s visas who have got links with groups who could have an interest, someone will make inquiries."
And who was Aziz Choudry’s visitor? All we were told at the time was that his name was Alejandro Villamar, and that he was a member of RMALC – Mexican Action Network on Free Trade.

It is important to note at this point that Choudry, Small, and their entire GATT-Watchdog network, had made no locatable public reference to Villamar prior to the 1999 North & South revelations. In a media release dated 20th October 1997 they declared that the 1996 break-in "confirms concerns that critics of the government’s free-market policies are now fair game for the SIS." Choudry was quoted as saying that the SIS’s action "puts the lie to assurances contained within the legislation and reiterated by the Prime Minister that remaining within the law is a guarantee of freedom from SIS operations and that the SIS would not be used against legitimate political dissenters."

So why no reference to the presence of Villamar? Surely the fact that a foreign national was staying with Choudry at the time of the break-in was relevant to the case? It beggars the imagination to suggest that neither Choudry nor Small were capable of putting 2 and 2 together to make 4. A Mexican activist against free-trade turns up in Christchurch at the same time as a meeting of APEC is taking place, bunks down with a prominent member of the New Zealand anti-free-trade movement, and – bingo! – the house is broken into by the SIS. What’s going on here? Is it possible that Alejandro Villamar is something more than a "legitimate political dissenter"?

Well he is certainly more than "Dr Alejandro Villamar, the Mexican academic" referred to by David Small in an article for N.Z. Political Review back in April of 1999. Research by this writer has identified Dr Villamar as the Director of Research for Natural Resources and Fisheries for the Foreign Trade Committee of the PRD – Partido de la Revolución Democrática – Mexico’s main opposition party. One of Dr Villamar’s key tasks is the tracking of foreign investment in Mexico’s forestry sector.

Dr Villamar is also associated with ACERCA – Action for Community and Ecology in the Rainforests of Central America. In an article for the World Rainforest Movement Bulletin dated August 1998 he states: "The increased activities of the maquiladora industry [production facilities established along the US-Mexican border to take advantage of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement] have resulted in an enormous need for packaging paper used in shipping industrial goods for export. Mexico currently imports this packaging from the US and Canada. In response to pressure from the maquiladora industry, the Mexican government is now paving the way for the large-scale pulpwood plantations in order to provide industry with raw material to produce cheap pulp and paper."

According to a July 17th 1999 article from ACERCA, published on the Corporate Watch website: "Huge foreign-owned paper companies have acquired large tracts of land in southern Mexico for the purpose of growing eucalyptus and palm trees which have been genetically altered to yield pulpwood with short growing times. Evidence suggests that much (or most) of this fibre will end up as packing materials for products assembled in the maquiladoras and then shipped out of the country."

The same article identifies two of those companies as International Paper and Fletcher Challenge Forests. In a joint venture with the Westavco Corporation and Monsanto, IP – the owners of the New Zealand company Carter Holt Harvey – and FCF were said to be in the process of establishing a forestry biotechnology company to produce and market genetically engineered tree seedlings. According to the article, this new company would be based in Chiapas, a province in the Mexican south-west, and home to the "Zapatistas" - one of the most sophisticated indigenous rights movements on Earth.

It is not known if Dr Villamar has any direct links with the Zapatistas, but, according to an article by Tracey Eaton of the Dallas Morning Post dated August 27th 1999, he is no stranger to radical peasant activism. According to Eaton, a Mr Alejandro Villamar is the principle defender of a jailed peasant activist named Rodolfo Montiel.

Montiel, whose case has been taken up by Amnesty International and the Sierra Club, was jailed on weapons and other charges in May of 1999 after organising farmers against logging operations near their village. Authorities in Guerrero State, where Montiel was active, have accused the 45 year-old farmer of being a member of the EPR – the Popular Revolutionary Army. His allies deny this, accusing the authorities of torturing Montiel in custody and attempting to frame him as a drug dealer and insurrectionist. "Rodolfo is definitely not a member of the EPR," says Villamar, who had been working with Montiel’s organisation since February 1999, "that’s just a pretext".

It is scarcely surprising that New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service should be interested in such a colourful character as Dr Alejandro Villamar. After all, the July 13th 1996 break-in to Choudry’s house took place only two-and-a-half years after the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Led by their mysterious "Sub-Commandante Marcos", the Mayan Indian rebels staged their armed insurrection on January 1st 1994 to coincide with the coming into force of NAFTA. RMALC – of which Villamar is a key member – was in sympathy with the Zapatista rebellion, endorsing its aims – if not its methods.

With the CEO of International Paper – already a significant player in the New Zealand economy through its investment in Carter Holt Harvey – engaged in important negotiations with the Mexican Government throughout 1995-96, and with one of this country’s largest corporations, Fletcher Challenge, gearing itself up to make long-term investments in the Mexican pulpwood industry, it is arguable, at the very least, that Dr Alejandro Villamar was a suitable subject for surveillance.

Finding out what this radical Mexican was doing in New Zealand, and discovering exactly what information he was exchanging with one of this country’s most vociferous opponents of free-trade, might even qualify as "making a contribution to New Zealand’s international and economic well-being".