Our Dark Shadow: Analysing The Platform’s Profile of the Protesters.

Errant Voices: The people in the big cities didn’t get it. Why were “these people” so anti-social? Why had they so little inclination to serve the “collective good”? It never occurred to the well-heeled, well-housed and well-educated beneficiaries of neoliberal capitalism that while it was giving them everything, it seldom showed “these people” anything other than its anti-social face. As for the collective good, well, what was that?

THE PLATFORM has made an invaluable contribution to the increasingly fraught “debate” about the Anti-Vaccination Mandate Protest in Parliament Grounds. By commissioning Curia Research to create a rough profile of the protesters, the new website has facilitated the substitution of reliable poll-data for journalistic reckons. Now, at last, the public has at least some of the information needed to render an informed judgement. That the mainstream news media saw no merit in commissioning such an exercise testifies to its steady retreat from the principles of independent journalism.

The picture painted by Curia Research is of a protest crowd drawn overwhelmingly from rural and provincial New Zealand: Fully 67.6 percent of the persons questioned came from somewhere other than Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Rural dwellers made up 7.7 percent of the crowd; those living in provincial towns 18.9 percent; and provincial city-dwellers the remaining 41 percent. The latter figure is almost double the actual number of New Zealanders living in provincial cities.

This skewed provincial representation is significant. What it tells us is that the people participating in this protest have a great deal in common with the Americans who supported Donald Trump. They, too, hailed from places seldom visited by the metropolitan elites. Cities and towns that once boasted thriving industries and buoyant economies, but which, over the past 35 years, have seen far too many factories – along with the small businesses that serviced them – shut down and fail. Communities that once boasted public hospitals, polytechnics, post-offices and banks – not to mention their own proudly independent newspapers – have been stripped of key infrastructure and left to rot.

For many years, however, the primary victims of this neglect continued to vote for the parties of change: Labour, the Alliance, the Greens and NZ First; in hopes that their lives would be made better. Curia Research reveals that very close to 50 percent of the protesters occupying Parliament Grounds voted for one of Labour, the Greens and NZ First in 2020. This finding is powerfully reminiscent of the significant number of 2016 Trump voters who had backed Barack Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. Hell hath no fury, it would seem, like a voter scorned, disappointed and betrayed.

That nearly 30 percent of the protesters voted for Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party in 2020 also suggests that at some point the Prime Minister said or did something that shattered their allegiance to her and the Team of Five Million she purported to lead. Given that the dominant reason/s for their presence outside Parliament is their strong opposition to Vaccine Mandates, one might reasonably speculate that it was Ardern’s reneging on her promise not to introduce vaccination mandates and passes that provoked these protesters into deserting the Labour Party.

That the consequences of refusing to be vaccinated appear to have fallen most heavily on occupations dominated by women: retail, hospitality, teaching, nursing, aged-care, midwifery; would also explain why Curia Research reports women making up 55 percent of the protest crowd.

Another factor relevant to the number of women participating in the protest could well be that in the rural and provincial communities ravaged by the economic impacts of neoliberalism it has, overwhelmingly, been women who have held together the threads of community and mutuality. Mothers, daughters and wives who had once been encouraged to look upon the State as their friend, have – decade after decade – been given every cause to see “the government” as their enemy.

The explanation for 27.2 percent of the protest crowd identifying as Māori is, almost certainly, much the same.

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, in Māori communities scattered across the provincial landscapes of the North Island, jobs, and the social cohesion that came with them, were laid waste by the neoliberal revolution. Without the industries that paid for it, key infrastructure has similarly decayed and disappeared.

Māori families left behind had two choices: depart for the big cities; or, stay put and work out another way to survive. The same Pakeha state that had stripped their iwi and hapu of their land, was now guilty of stripping them of their jobs, their incomes, and their dignity. What loyalty could they possibly owe to such a state? What reason could they possibly have to trust it – or its political representatives?

It is here that the other dominant theme recorded by Curia Research’s pollsters – Freedom – weighs-in so heavily. Abandoned, overlooked, ignored and despised, the people on the receiving-end of neoliberalism’s cold indifference had tragically – but unsurprisingly – internalised its ruthless individualistic ethos. Devalued and declassed, driven to the margins, they had nevertheless contrived to survive on their own terms and according to their own lights. If the state had no need for them, then they were happy to return the compliment. Theirs may have been a lean freedom – but it was hard-won, and would not be surrendered without a fight.

And then came Covid, and in its wake a state that would no longer leave them to their own devices. Suddenly, they were included in the “Team Of Five Million”. Suddenly, the state which had turned its back on its obligations to look after the people’s welfare was demanding that the people honour their obligation to keep it safe. Suspicious, but also secretly thrilled to once again be counted among the just, the outsiders and outcasts of the provincial lumpenproletariat did as Jacinda asked.

But the requirement to vaccinate – or be turned into a second-class citizen – turned out to be a bridge too far. The state which, just months before, had pronounced itself their friend was reverting to type. Now it was “No Jab, No Job”. Now they were being turned away from the pub. Now the state was coming for their hard-won, hard-scrabble freedom. The only thing of real value left in their downsized lives, seemed at imminent risk of being ripped from their hands.

The people in the big cities didn’t get it. Why were “these people” so anti-social? Why had they so little inclination to serve the “collective good”? It never occurred to the well-heeled, well-housed and well-educated beneficiaries of neoliberal capitalism that while it was giving them everything, it seldom showed “these people” anything other than its anti-social face. As for the collective good, well, what was that?

“These people”, whom the big city-dwellers struggle so hard to understand, are the people they have made. If they don’t care about their fellow citizens’ rights and freedoms, it’s because their “fellow citizens” never taught them how.

Did the algorithms of the social media giants have a role to play in this protest? Yes, of course. Are the dangerous inhabitants of the darkest corners of the Internet feeding the protesters’ anger? They are. But people are only made ready to swallow Big Lies by too few attempts to feed them Big Truths.

Who is it who gathers at the seat of our democracy? They are the feral children of our greed and indifference. Who is it who pounds upon Parliament’s doors? Our own dark shadow that, no matter how hard we try to break free of it, refuses to be left behind.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 22 February 2022.

Working Towards The Führer.

All Together Now! In terms of the inviolability of the new neoliberal establishment, it mattered very little whether Labour or National was in power. And, since cabinet ministers from both sides of the aisle clearly regarded ideological boat-rocking as being every bit as career-terminating as state sector CEOs, there was scant incentive to entertain any alternative definitions to what constituted “good governance”. In the years since 1984, therefore, it has made much more sense, personally and politically, to “work towards the [neoliberal] führer”.

AN “AFFRONT TO DEMOCRACY”, was the State Services Commissioner’s characterisation of the state bureaucracy’s decision to spy on political activists. Few would disagree. That multiple state agencies felt entitled to contract-out the gathering of political intelligence to the privately owned and operated Thompson & Clark Investigations Ltd reveals a widespread antidemocratic disdain for citizens’ rights within the New Zealand public service. The alarming revelations of the State Services’ inquiry raise two very important questions: How did this disdain for democratic norms become so entrenched? And what, if anything, can Jacinda Ardern’s government do to eradicate it?

The dangerous truth, in relation to the first question, is also painfully relevant to the second. The effective abrogation of democratic norms in New Zealand dates back to 1984 and the events which the former CTU economist and ministerial adviser, Peter Harris, characterised as a “bureaucratic coup d’état”. In was in July 1984 that elements within the NZ Treasury and the Reserve Bank, taking full advantage of the relationships they had been cultivating for at least a year with the parliamentary leadership of the NZ Labour Party, initiated the detailed and extremely radical economic policy programme which came to be known as “Rogernomics”.

This programme, set forth in “Economic Management” – the book-length briefing paper for the incoming Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas – had received no mandate from the electorate. Indeed, the ordinary voter had no inkling whatsoever that the Labour Party of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk was about to unleash a programme considerably to the right of Margaret Thatcher’s and Ronald Reagan’s. The authors of “Economic Management” were not, however, interested in obtaining a democratic mandate for their proposed reforms. In fact, they strongly suspected that submitting their ideas to the voters was just about the surest way of securing their emphatic rejection.

Since the mid-1970s the conviction had been growing among big-business leaders and high-ranking civil servants living in the wealthiest capitalist nations, that democracy had gotten out of hand; and that unless the scope for democratic intervention in the economy was radically reduced, then the future of capitalism could not be guaranteed. Free Market Economics, as it was called then, or Neoliberalism, as we know it today, was, from the outset, incompatible with the social-democratic principles that had underpinned western policy-making in the post-war world. It could only be imposed, and kept in place, by a political class sealed-off from all manner of pressures from below. If that meant gutting the major parties of the centre-left and right; purging the civil service, academia and the news media of dissenters; and crushing the trade unions – then so be it.

Once it became clear that the free-market “revolution” was not about to be halted in its tracks, all those with an ambition to rise within the new order made haste to learn its rules and spared no effort in enforcing them. This phenomenon: of absorbing and implementing an antidemocratic regime’s imperatives was described by British historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw, as “Working Towards The Fuhrer”. Kershaw lifted the phrase from a speech delivered in 1934 by the Prussian civil servant, Werner Willikens:

“Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above everything which he intends to realize sooner or later. On the contrary, up till now, everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Fuhrer. Very often and in many spheres, it has been the case—in previous years as well—that individuals have simply waited for orders and instructions. Unfortunately, the same will be true in the future; but in fact, it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough. But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future, one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.”

The behaviour of New Zealand civil servants and their private sector contractors conforms very neatly to Kershaw’s thesis. In terms of the inviolability of the new neoliberal establishment, it mattered very little whether Labour or National was in power. And, since cabinet ministers from both sides of the aisle clearly regarded ideological boat-rocking as being every bit as career-terminating as state sector CEOs, there was scant incentive to entertain any alternative definitions to what constituted “good governance”. In the years since 1984, therefore, it has made much more sense, personally and politically, to “work towards the [neoliberal] führer”.

Certainly, Kershaw’s “Working Towards the Führer” thesis would explain the behaviour that has so disturbed readers of the State Services Commission’s report like Victoria University’s School of Government academic, Chris Eichbaum. Namely, why so few of the people involved in this “affront to democracy” displayed any awareness that they were behaving unethically. If Neoliberalism, like the Third Reich, is not a force which can be legitimately contradicted or criticised, then obviously any person or group engaging in activities inimical to the implementation of state policy is bound to be considered an enemy of the system.

Not that the neoliberal order will ever acknowledge its political imperatives so honestly. A large measure of bad faith continues to operate within the system. It has to – otherwise the still useful façade of human rights and democratic consent will rapidly fall apart.

Ministries and other state entities reach for the private investigator rather than the police officer because the latter is still (at least in theory) accountable. By contrast, the paper and/or electronic trails left by the likes of Thompson & Clark are considerably more difficult to track than those carefully logged in an official Police investigation. What’s more, the unofficial and private aggregation of “evidence” against the State’s “enemies” opens up the possibility of their unofficial and private punishment.

That job the activist lost, or failed to get. The bank loan that was refused. Simple bad luck? Or something else?

The most sinister aspect of the “Working Towards The Fuhrer” phenomenon is that any obstacles or objections encountered along the way will be taken as evidence of forces working against the führer. Popular resistance to neoliberal objectives is never taken as a sign that those objectives might be ill-advised, counterproductive, or just plain wrong. Rather, it is taken as proof that those responsible for organising such resistance are dangerous and irrational opponents of beneficent policies to which there are no viable alternatives.

It appears never to have occurred to Gerry Brownlee, for example, that the rising levels of desperation and anger among the Christchurch clients of the state-owned Southern Response insurance company – feelings that were manifesting themselves in threats to life and property – might be evidence of massive failures on the company’s part. John Key, similarly, refused to accept that oil and gas exploration might constitute a genuine threat to New Zealand’s (and, ultimately, the entire planet’s) natural environment.

Was Simon Bridges, when he introduced legislation outlawing waterborne protests within 2 kilometres of the oil and gas industry’s drilling platforms, doing no more than working along the lines and towards the goals of his leader?

As above, so below: the law of hierarchy is immutable. Thomson & Clark may have been the tool in the hands of ruthless public servants “working towards the führer”, but the masters of those servants were the neoliberal politicians from both major parties who, ever since 1984, have been tireless in their defence of the neoliberal order against its most fearsome foe – the New Zealand people.

The question, therefore, arises: If the Coalition Government demonstrates the slightest willingness to move against the servants of that neoliberal order (as Greater Christchurch Regeneration Minister, Megan Woods, by forcing the resignation of the Chair of Southern Response, has arguably done already) will the same forces that subverted Labour in 1984 set in motion the measures necessary to bring down Jacinda Ardern’s “issue motivated group” in 2020?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 21 December 2018.

Revolution And Bureaucracy.

Going Forward: "Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy." - Franz Kafka. Painting by Bosc d'Anjou

EVERY REVOLUTION is both rescued and undone by the bureaucrats required to keep it alive. Sweeping away the old order is the easy part. The hard part is establishing a new order that will not fall apart at the first hint of political, economic and/or social trouble. A revolutionary bureaucracy must be more than resilient, however. It also needs to create the organisational architecture favourable to its long-term survival and growth. Unfortunately, these bureaucratic structures have a tendency to ossify. Imperceptibly, the new order becomes the old order and a new generation of revolutionaries begins to stir.

The dramatic economic reforms introduced by the Fourth Labour Government and its Finance Minister, Roger Douglas, were described by the political journalist, Colin James, as  “The Quiet Revolution”. In quick succession, New Zealand floated its currency, opened its borders and eliminated the subsidies which kept so much of its economy afloat. The Labour Government then proceeded to “corporatize” New Zealand’s publicly-owned industries: a process which saw tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders lose their jobs.

In the space of just a few months, the old economic and social order which National’s Rob Muldoon had struggled so hard to preserve was swept away. Not the least remarkable aspect of the “Rogernomics Revolution” was that it was accomplished without recourse to state-initiated violence.

Realising that what was being attempted in New Zealand was a carbon-copy of the economic programme imposed upon 1970s Chile by General Pinochet, one senior trade unionist warned the Labour Government that to carry through such radical reforms it would have to put troops on the streets. He was wrong. And the reason he was wrong was the breakneck speed with which the bureaucratic structures required to make the “free-market” revolution work were erected.

The explanation for the revolution’s rapid implementation lay in the fact that it was conceived by a tightly-knit group of senior bureaucrats located principally in the Reserve Bank and Treasury. Detailed blueprints for the new economic order they were seeking had already been drawn up. All these revolutionary bureaucrats lacked were the politicians needed to build it. In David Lange, Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble, Michael Bassett and Mike Moore they realised they had found them.

Only one significant obstacle to the revolution’s success remained in place – the public service ethos of the old bureaucracy that was being dismantled. A full and successful transition to the revolutionaries’ new economic system, driven by the imperatives of the free-market, would not be possible until the ingrained values of the old state-interventionist system it was replacing had been destroyed.

The State Sector Act 1988 was designed to do just that. Modelled on the administrative principles of the private sector, the new, free-market bureaucracy was led by Chief Executives on lucrative five-year contracts. Working on the assumption that the production of policy advice was no different from the production of baked beans, these new state-sector bosses could be recruited without risk from the private as well as the public sector. That being the case, it was considered prudent to source the new public sector mandarinate from those countries in which the free-market revolution had already triumphed.

Unofficially, it was also considered vital that these new free-market bureaucrats be strong enough to forestall the one eventuality that could undermine the new regime – the election of a left-wing government determined to roll back the free-market revolution of 1984-1993.

In the past, the “politicisation” of the public service had been about politicians “persuading” their bureaucratic advisors to do the government’s bidding. Under the new regime, this was turned on its head. The trick, now, was to “persuade” any cabinet ministers still foolishly clinging-on to left-wing ideas that their careers couldn’t possibly flourish until they finally accepted that the free-market revolution was irreversible.

If history teaches us anything, however, it is that nothing is irreversible. Mounting evidence of free-market capitalism’s failure has stimulated new economic thinking both here in New Zealand and around the world. The successors of those bureaucrats who facilitated the free-market revolution of the 1980s and 90s are now being asked to oversee its dramatic deconstruction. The eventuality they most feared, the election of a left-wing government determined to return the market to its proper place, has come to pass.

State Services Minister, Chris Hipkins, is demanding wholesale “transformation” of the public sector.

Vive la revolution

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 22 June 2018.

Our Path To The Future Is Blocked By The Past.

And The Truth Shall Set You Free: Moving beyond the thirty-year-old neoliberal order in New Zealand can only be achieved by confronting and disproving its explanations and excuses for the inequality, poverty and powerlessness it perpetuates.

LET’S ASSUME, for the sake of argument, that there’s a change of government in September. Some combination of Labour, the Greens and NZ First (or, perhaps, since Winston’s on a roll, Labour and NZ First alone) cobbles together the necessary parliamentary support to form a government. What will confront them?

The simple answer is: The Past. A government elected on the strength of public misgivings about rampant homelessness and the lack of affordable housing; out-of-control immigration; and a despoiled natural environment; will be presented with thirty-year-old government machinery designed specifically to make effective state intervention as difficult as possible.

Any attempt to deploy this machinery in pursuit of social and economic objectives for which it was not designed is highly likely to end in failure – and, quite possibly, disaster. Arrayed against a government in which only a handful of ministers possess Cabinet experience will be a bristling phalanx of public servants, National Party appointees, corporate and special interest lobbyists and public relations firms – all of whom have a vested interest in preserving the status quo.

Not only will these groups warn the incoming government that their election promises cannot be delivered, but they will make sure that their advice somehow falls into the hands of the news media. The new government will, accordingly, find itself squeezed in a vice. From one side will come the pressure of their officials. From the other, a relentless barrage of media questions demanding to know why they are refusing to heed official advice.

The question to be asked, then, is whether or not Andrew Little and Grant Robertson, Winston Peters and Shane Jones, James Shaw and Julie Anne Genter are sure enough of their convictions, not only about what must be done, but also about how it is to be achieved, to convincingly out-argue both their officials and the news media?

When, after staggering into their minister’s offices under the weight of multiple reports, studies and surveys, the representatives of Treasury, MFAT, MBIE and MPI advise the new progressive government that its programme will wreck the economy and/or bankrupt the nation, how will Labour, NZ First and the Greens respond? Will they be able to offer their own stack of reports, studies and surveys in rebuttal?

The short answer is: “No, they won’t.”

What’s more, there will be a number of ministers in the new government (hopefully a minority!) who wouldn’t rebut their officials even if they could. For these politicians, simply becoming a Cabinet Minister will be enough. The fat ministerial salary; the chauffer-driven limousine; the deferential chorus of “yes, Minister”, “no, Minister”, “of course, Minister!”: these are the only attributes of power that really matter. Give these careerists a rubber stamp and they can be relied upon to use it diligently and without asking awkward questions.

If New Zealand was able to boast a selection of well-funded and professionally-run left-of-centre think tanks: outfits resembling the Washington-based Brookings Institution, or Demos in the UK; then a reforming government would be able to enter office bearing policy weapons of equivalent firepower to those wielded by public and private sector play-makers. Unfortunately, New Zealand lacks a George Soros-type benefactor of progressive organisations. Such effective think-tanks as do exist in this country are wholly owned and operated by the Right.

What, then, is a progressive government to do? How are the Past’s elite regiments of defenders to be disarmed and demobilised?

One possible answer is to offer the voters a three-year inquiry – or, series of inquiries – into how we got ourselves into our current predicament, and how we should set about getting ourselves out of it. Crucially, this mega-inquiry would prioritise the evidence of ordinary New Zealanders. It would solicit especially the stories of those who found themselves at the sharp end of thirty-years-worth of economic and social “reforms”. The inquiry would also make a point of investigating and exposing the prime beneficiaries of those changes. Not only would Kiwis finally get to discover who the winners were, but also how they won, and what sort of institutional arrangements must be kept in place if they’re to go on winning.

What’s being proposed here is a variant on the Truth and Reconciliation exercise undertaken by the Nelson Mandela-led government of post-Apartheid South Africa. There was, of course, no disputing the suffering that black South Africans had endured at the hands of their white racist overlords. New Zealanders, however, lack such a clear-cut cast of villains upon whom to focus a people’s inquiry. For us, it is more a case of discovering whether thirty-years-worth of answers about the way this country should be run have been truthful; and whether the excuses for thirty-years-worth of inaction on accumulating socio-economic injustices are valid.

Having interrogated the Past, such a government would be uniquely well positioned to confront the future.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 2 May 2017.