There’s Method In Shane Jones’s “Racist” Madness.

Kicking The Hives Of "Ngati Woke": Shane Jones knows that the most effective way to build support for a radically revisionist “Population Policy”, is to provoke the initiators and defenders of New Zealand’s existing population policies into demonstrating their bitter opposition to any serious, broad-based debate about the country’s current immigration settings. 

WHAT IS SHANE JONES trying to do? In speaking so insultingly about the Indian student community he must have known he’d attract the ire of the people he calls “Ngati Woke”. Was he being provocative just for the hell of it, or did he have a more coherent political motive for courting accusations of racism and xenophobia?

While it is always unwise to overestimate the thoughtfulness of politicians, many of whom do not think through the consequences of their off-the-cuff public utterances, I do not believe that Shane was simply blurting. In my view, there is some pretty solid method to his allegedly “racist” madness.

Matt McCarten was fond of telling his comrades in the left-wing Alliance that under MMP it really doesn’t matter if you piss off 95 percent of the voters, so long as 5 percent of them want what your offering. It would seem that the same blunt analysis is currently driving NZ First’s electoral strategy. In practical political terms this means that the party will do whatever it takes to stay in the game – no matter how disruptive or potentially divisive.

At the heart of this new strategy lies what Jones has identified as NZ First’s “Population Policy Debate”. The party is clearly determined to home-in on New Zealanders’ rising anger over immigration. The evidence is mounting that New Zealand’s unaffordable housing crisis; the cost blow-outs in its public health system; the pressure on its schools, and the difficulty so many unskilled workers have in lifting themselves out of wage poverty; may all be traced back to the unprecedented flood of immigrants pouring into New Zealand over the past two decades.

The fact that the country’s population is set to top 5 million this election year, five years earlier than predicted; and that Statistics NZ is predicting an “Asian” population of between 1.2 and 1.4 million by 2038, has alarmed many Pakeha New Zealanders. Their fears have been further stoked by demographic projections indicating that over the next 20 years the European population of New Zealand will fall from its current 70 percent to 66 percent. Given that, 20 years ago, Europeans made up 80 percent of the New Zealand population, the trend is very clear. Racially-charged anxieties are rising, and NZ First – as it has done so successfully in the past – intends to exploit them ruthlessly.

The most effective way to build support for a radically revisionist “Population Policy”, is to provoke the initiators and defenders of New Zealand’s existing population policies into demonstrating their bitter opposition to any serious, broad-based debate about the country’s current immigration settings. NZ First is aiming to build a persuasive political narrative around the idea that the startling changes to New Zealand’s demographic profile are the result of a 34-year-old conspiracy involving this country’s intellectual, bureaucratic and political elites.

At the heart of this conspiracy, NZ First will argue, was the elites’ disgust at what they saw as this country’s de facto “White New Zealand Policy”. The framers of what would soon emerge as New Zealand’s brand new “multicultural” population policy, acknowledged the Pakeha majority’s strong preference for maintaining the existing ethnic balances in New Zealand society, but chose not to treat it as determinative. The majority, they argued, was racist and wrong: it should not be trusted – or heeded.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, NZ First leaders like Shane Jones will argue, the initiators of this new Multicultural New Zealand policy were equally unwilling to consider the preferences of the indigenous Maori population. Notwithstanding their passionate anti-racist rhetoric, the multiculturalists would have been aware, right from the start, that their policy, if successfully applied, would eventually result in immigrant communities expanding continuously until they overwhelmed (at least numerically) the Maori population.

“What does it really say about the elites’ actual commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi,” NZ First will ask, “that they have been willing to oversee a process which, according to Statistics NZ’s 2017 projections, will see ‘Asians overtake the Maori in ethnic share within the next five years, and will make up more than one in five – or 22 per cent – of the population by 2038’?”

These questions have the potential to unleash the same sort of populist-nationalist fervour that brought the world Brexit and Trump. They evoke exactly the same feelings of having been excluded from the policy conversations that mattered; the conversations that resulted in devastating changes to the life-worlds of ordinary people. NZ First’s strategy is clearly to bring these conversations out into the “public square” where everyone can hear them, and where their originators can be challenged and interrogated.

Crucial to the strategy’s success will be the gathering of examples of elite spokespeople deriding and dismissing those who dare to breach these policy taboos. Jones’s comments regarding Indian students were obviously designed to elicit just such a response – and they succeeded brilliantly. Just consider the following sentence from a Newsroom opinion piece headed “Why Jones is wrong about Indian students”, released yesterday (3/3/20) under the names of the University of Otago Vice-Chancellor, Harlene Haynes, and Otago Professor of International Relations, Robert Patman:

“Today, all states are confronted by security, economic and environmental challenges that do not respect territorial borders and cannot be resolved by populist-nationalist politicians promising to ‘take back control’ of national sovereignty in New Zealand or anywhere else.”

Clearly intended as a slap-down, the opinion piece played directly into Jones’s and NZ First’s hands. It will be held up as powerful proof of the elites’ scorn for ordinary people’s concerns. Not only that, it will serve as a demonstration of just how much of a lock multiculturalism has on academia, the media and mainstream politicians.

In this regard, National is especially vulnerable. An important element of its election strategy involves the electoral destruction of NZ First and the incorporation of its vote into National’s tally. But, just consider what would happen to National’s support among older anxious Kiwis, if NZ First was to highlight the fact that upwards of 75 percent of Chinese-New Zealanders vote National.

Suddenly, National’s strong support for the Multicultural New Zealand policy would take on a very different complexion. Suddenly, they would be charged with keeping the immigration flood-gates open for selfish electoral purposes. To hell with the kids who cannot get so much as a toehold on the property ladder! For every 10,000 adult Chinese migrants, National nets 7,500 votes. Ain’t “diversity” grand!

All those woke journalists working so assiduously to rid Parliament of Winston Peters and NZ First may yet be given cause to rue their actions. It was the veteran political journalist, Richard Harman, who only a few days ago responded when asked, on a RNZ podcast, to account for the relative mildness of populism’s influence on New Zealand politics, by observing that:

“Maybe we owe Winston Peters some thanks for this. New Zealand First, back in the nineties, picked up on those populist, nationalistic themes that we’re now seeing expressed in a much more extreme fashion [overseas]. We’re relatively lucky that our populist party – New Zealand First – has behaved in a very democratic and quite reasonable way over the years.”

That may be about to change.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 5 March 2020.

The Response - Not The Call.

The Equal And Opposite Reaction To Bernie: Call yourself a “democratic socialist” and everyone who feels threatened by democratic-socialism will mobilise against you. The anti-Sanders mobilisation has taken some time to resolve itself into a single challenger, but former Vice-President Joe Biden’s, runaway victory in South Carolina has finally cleared the centrists’ path to the nomination.

WATCHING THE SLOW descent of Bernie Sander’s campaign is a depressing reminder of democratic (and Democratic) political realities. The most brutal of these is that Newton’s Third Law of Motion applies with equal force to politics as it does to physics. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Call yourself a “democratic socialist” and everyone who feels threatened by democratic-socialism will mobilise against you. The anti-Sanders mobilisation has taken some time to resolve itself into a single challenger, but former Vice-President Joe Biden’s, runaway victory in South Carolina has finally cleared the centrists’ path to the nomination.

No matter how thrilling Sanders’ wins in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada may have been, the brute arithmetic of the primary process remained constant: the combined strength of his opponents was always greater than his own. As the captains and the kings of the Democratic Party centre depart, with Pete Buttigieg leading the way this afternoon (2 March 2020) the inevitability of a single opponent standing athwart Bernie’s path to the nomination is now clear.

“Super Tuesday” (Wednesday, 4 March NZT) will winnow the field with even more force than South Carolina. The departure of Amy Klobuchar and (probably) Mike Bloomberg, will leave the field clear for Biden’s folksy homilies. Elizabeth Warren will likely remain in the race, drawing votes from Sanders in expectation of being rewarded with the Vice-Presidential nomination. At some point well short of the Democratic Party Convention in Milwaukee (July 13-16) Sanders’ campaign will falter and fade away. Many on the left of the Democratic Party will settle for the half-loaf that is Biden-Warren – especially if it means driving Donald Trump from the White House.

“No! No! No!”, the Sandernistas will cry. “That must not be allowed to happen!” But the angry protests of these young, idealistic progressives will not avail them. At some point in electoral politics, the moment comes when you must remove your fingers from your ears, open your eyes, and take in the terrifying spectacle of your enemies’ tanks rolling towards you. Whether you believe in it or not, the Third Law of Political Motion is very, very real.

Why is the Democratic Party leadership so terrified of Sanders becoming the nominee? Because they know the size and ferocity of the forces his nomination for the Presidency would unleash. Sanders supporters rail against the Democratic establishment – accusing them of doing everything within their power to undermine their candidate. And that’s true. They are. Not because they’re against Medicare For All, or even the Green New Deal, but because the billionaires Bernie denounces, whose enormous power and wealth are directly threatened by his policies, will move heaven and earth to keep him, and them, out of the White House.

Democratic Party stalwarts, the people who have spent years navigating the treacherous waters of the United States’ political system, have priorities very different from Sanders’ most vociferous supporters. They are only too aware that even if, by some miracle, Bernie won the White House; the Almighty is most unlikely to add a second miracle to the mix.

Yes, a President Bernie Sanders could achieve some important gains by Executive Order, but he couldn’t deliver Medicare For All, or a Green New Deal, or the writing-off of student debt, or any of the other radical measures he is promising, without solid majorities in both the House of Representative and the Senate. Truth to tell, securing the passage of such radical legislation would be a long shot even with substantial majorities in both houses of Congress. Without them, however, Bernie’s programme is a pipe-dream. As unrealistic as expecting the God of History to deliver the Democratic Party not one, but two, political miracles at the 2020 elections.

Stripping away all the ideological bunting, there is only one unequivocally popular prospect the Democratic Party can hold out to the American electorate: a White House cleansed of Donald Trump and all his evil brood. But, bringing together an electoral coalition powerful enough to secure Trump’s defeat in the Electoral College will not be easy. Far from offering voters the bitter rhetoric of class war, the Democratic Party’s candidate will need to speak the language of inclusion, reconciliation and national renewal.

The sentiments of America’s Founding Fathers should be turned against the constitutionally illiterate Republican incumbent. Recalling for voters all the great and redemptive moments of American history, the Candidate should then invite them to contrast the moral strength of America’s best leaders with the abject moral squalor of its worst.

Bernie Sanders and his followers have done the United States the inestimable service of bringing together all the planks necessary to construct the most progressive Democratic Party platform in a generation. To implement the Sandernistas’ progressive dreams, however, the voters of United States must first be persuaded to abandon the ruin of unreasoning and mutually destructive partisanship. First and foremost, America needs a healer.

If History has taught us anything, it is that revolutions inevitably open up new wounds – even in those rare instances when they succeed in closing up old ones. Always, the true believers cry: “Let Justice be done – though the heavens fall!” But what sort of justice has ever emerged from the ruins of paradise?

Let the equal and opposite reaction to Donald Trump’s hate be love. Allow him to initiate the action that will bring his administration down. The Democratic Party can only win in November by being the response – not the call.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 3 March 2020.

Changing The Climate – One RNZ Broadcast At A Time.

Wise Words: “To retain its taxpayer-guaranteed revenue, RNZ must also retain its most precious commodity: public respect and support. That can be imperilled by poorly thought out judgements, including assuming that it should set the political climate.” - Pamela Stirling, Editor, NZ Listener.

THE LISTENER LONG AGO ceased to be a cultural talisman for progressive New Zealanders. Ever since the apparently indestructible Pamela Stirling took charge and transformed the magazine she’d once denounced as “the house journal of the Alliance” into the house journal of the National Party. Recently, however, a couple of sentences from “The sound and the fury”, the Listener editorial team’s assessment of the RNZ Concert debacle (22 February 2020) struck me as unusually perceptive.

“To retain its taxpayer-guaranteed revenue, RNZ must also retain its most precious commodity: public respect and support. That can be imperilled by poorly thought out judgements, including assuming that it should set the political climate.”

That climate-setting quip should have prompted a double-take from RNZ’s bosses. Its clear intention was to alert them (gently) to the fact that some of its key producers’ and editors’ more recent judgements have raised a few important eyebrows – and not in a good way. There is a growing feeling among those whose education was vouchsafed to them in the years before our universities became customer-driven businesses, that RNZ has taken up an ideological position at some distance beyond either its listeners’, or the general public’s, comfort zones.

A telling example of RNZ’s determination to set the political climate was broadcast on the public broadcaster’s Checkpoint programme of Wednesday, 26 February 2020, in which RNZ reporter, Nita Blake-Persen, secured prime placement for her story “NZ Super costs up as NZ retirees on $100k passes 30,000”.

It is difficult to assign any other motive for producing this sort of story than a desire to fan the flames of intergenerational warfare. Singling out high income-earners over 65 (whose annual contribution to the IRD, based on a minimum salary of $100,000 is a bracing $23,920!) was certainly inflammatory. Ms Blake-Persen’s analysis also hints strongly that the abandonment of the universalist principles underpinning NZ Superannuation may have to be accepted as unavoidable collateral damage in the aforesaid war between the generations.

More disconcerting, is what appears to be a lack of sensible editorial oversight of Ms Blake-Persen’s story. Having read her copy, did Checkpoint’s editors, Pip Keane and Catherine Walbridge, not warn Ms Blake-Persen to calculate the total tax contribution of the 31,048 New Zealand superannuitants earning more than $100,000, and then compare that figure to the $608 million paid out to them by way of NZ Superannuation? A pretty sensible precaution, I would have thought, given that if the 31,048 older Kiwis so provocatively singled-out by Ms Blake-Persen proved to be net contributors to the state’s coffers, then her whole story falls flat on its face.

Which is exactly what we discover when we subtract NZ Super payments totalling $608,000,000 from Income Tax payments of $717,600,000 (31,048 x $23,920). Far from being greedy Boomer leeches bleeding their hapless GenX offspring dry, these workers are contributing a net $134,668,160 annually to the public purse!

All of which raises some disconcerting questions about RNZ’s overall ideological agenda, and on whose behalf it is being run? Did Ms Blake-Persen’s highly tendentious story make it on to the airwaves simply because nobody thought to check it? Or, is it evidence of a broader RNZ agenda to shame and blame the older generation for having the temerity to be born a couple of decades before its younger reporters and presenters? It would be tempting to dismiss this suggestion as Boomer paranoia had the RNZ Board and its CEO not demonstrated so unequivocally their readiness to sacrifice older listeners for a “younger demographic” in relation to RNZ Concert.

One of the economists quoted in Ms Blake-Persen’s story is Shamubeel Eaqub. According to this participant in the management consultancy firm Sense.Partners:

“The reality is that we don’t want to penalise people for working into old age and neither do we want to penalise people for accumulating wealth, but we have to be consistent in our understanding that actually when we look out to the next 20 to 30 years, our system of taxation and our systems of supporting old age and superannuitants probably isn’t sustainable.”

Oh, what a multitude of sins can be concealed beneath a little qualifier like “probably”! Even Ms Blake-Persen felt obliged (maybe there was a smidgen of editorial input after all?) to mention the apple-cart-upsetting finding of the Interim Retirement Commissioner, Peter Cordtz, that “the current cost [of NZ Superannuation] was sustainable for the next 30 years”. You pays your money and you makes your choice, apparently: the management consultant who has a problem with our current tax and pension systems; or, the guy who told us the former is more than equal to supporting the latter.

It will be interesting, BTW, to see whether the newly appointed Retirement Commissioner, Jane Wrightson, upholds Cordtz’s finding on the sustainability of NZ Superannuation. It is to be hoped that his pronouncements weren’t inspired by the, sadly, not unreasonable fear, that the new boss would soon be touting the same “we can’t afford it” nonsense as the old boss.

In the meantime we can only sit back and admire Ms Blake-Persen’s propaganda skills. Imagine the outrage among that “younger demographic” when they discover that a body of overpaid Boomers, equal in number to the entire city of Blenheim, is living high on the hog while they sweat away in the salt mines of Neoliberalism! Imagine their fear and loathing when presented with such doom-laden factoids as: “Last year, NZ Super cost $14.5 billion and that cost is increasing by more than $1b each year. By 2024 it's predicted to cost the country nearly $20b a year.” (A figure, BTW, that places us well below the current pension costs of many European states when measured as a percentage of GDP.) Or that – Quelle horreur! – “Inland Revenue figures showed 2500 people were getting Super payments while on incomes of more than $300,000”.

Just imagine it! $300K a year!

Once again, however, there is no mention of the Income Tax paid annually on that sum to the IRD: a trifling $89,920! Which is more than four times the $21,380 paid annually to an individual New Zealander aged 65+ and living alone.

What a pity Ms Blake-Persen didn’t round out her story by seeking comment from an old-fashioned democratic-socialist who has campaigned for years to see those earning $300K p.a. socked with a much more progressive rate of income tax. He or she could have explained how steepening the progressivity of New Zealand’s Income Tax would once again make possible all the things the members of Ms Blake-Persen’s generation missed out on.

Then we could all have agreed that it’s not the year you were born in that counts, but the responsibility of every generation to so organise society that young and old, alike, are able to receive their fair share of its bounty. That would be a political climate worth setting – and definitely preferable to the ideological climate RNZ’s bosses seem hell-bent on heating-up.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 28 February 2020.

Is Racism Irrational?

Method In Our Madness? When a liberal-democratic society encounters racism its first impulse is to shut it down – not interrogate it. But, is this wise? Is it reasonable to assume that a phenomenon as powerful, pernicious and persistent as racism is entirely without purpose? Surely, there must be, as Shakespeare puts it: “method in [this] madness”?

IS IT TRUTHFUL and, more importantly, is it helpful, to describe racism as irrational? Intellectually speaking, isn’t characterising this form of human behaviour as irrational just a sneaky way of letting ourselves off the hook? When somebody is being irrational we tell them to calm down and come back to their senses. Our own senses being safely accounted for, we seldom think to question our own assumptions. Similarly, when a liberal-democratic society encounters racism its first impulse is to shut it down – not interrogate it. But, is this wise? Is it reasonable to assume that a phenomenon as powerful, pernicious and persistent as racism is entirely without purpose? Surely, there must be, as Shakespeare puts it: “method in [this] madness”?

Certainly there is an extremely powerful evolutionary “method” in our response to human-beings with whom we are unfamiliar. Our “reptilian” brains kick into action immediately upon encountering anyone who looks and sounds different to our own family/clan/tribe. It does this without bothering to consult the more ruminative parts of our brain. In the dangerous world of our distant human ancestors there simply wasn’t time to ruminate. Fight or flight is the only decision to be made when one’s survival is at stake, and it must to be made in a nanosecond.

This instinctive wariness of the “Other” can, of course, be socially reinforced. If a tribe has, historically, been subjected to the constant attacks of another tribe, then its children will be taught from an early age to recognise the members of that tribe and to treat them with the greatest circumspection. If circumstances permit, these enemies of the tribe may be attacked, tortured and killed. If not, then they should be fled from with all speed and the alarm raised.

Consider, though, where we now find ourselves. Already we have conceded that there are circumstances in which the Other may be viewed, quite legitimately – and perfectly rationally – in a negative light. To discriminate (i.e. to distinguish one thing from another) is no sin. Not when your life may depend on how skilled you are at distinguishing enemies from friends.

You can see where this is going – can’t you? The more complex the society, the more complicated the process of distinguishing enemies from friends becomes. The enemy formerly recognisable by the weapons he carried and/or the decoration of his body, is now to be distinguished by the house of worship he attends, or the books he keeps in his bookcase.

Such complexity is multiplied considerably when the wealth and power of one’s own people has come to depend upon the labour power and/or resources taken forcibly from people in other parts of the world. To enslave someone is to make them your enemy – if not forever, then, at the very least, until the moment you set them free.

In such fraught circumstances, is it rationality – or something else – that identifies the advantages of enslaving people who are as readily distinguishable from their masters as day is from night, and black is from white? Moreover, wouldn’t rationality also argue in favour of fearing the people you have for so long oppressed? If the tables were turned, wouldn’t you be ravenous for revenge? Wouldn’t you do everything you could to seize all the wealth and power made possible by your blood, sweat and tears? It may, or may not, be rational to hate what we fear – but it is very common.

And, in the context of our own history, wasn’t it rational for the British colonisers to first weaken the indigenous Maori (by selling them grog and muskets) then to lull them into a false sense of security (by promising to recognise the authority of their chiefs) and then to dispossess them (by unleashing war upon New Zealand’s tangata whenua the moment the Crown had built up the population and infrastructure necessary to defeat them)? And isn’t it equally rational, more than a century-and-a-half later, for the tangata whenua to seek to reverse their dispossession by challenging the Pakeha descendants of those settlers/thieves to make good the enduring harms and injustices inflicted by the colonisation process?

To describe racism as madness is to fundamentally misunderstand its method. To be a racist is to be either the protector of your people; or, the ruthless defender of everything your people has taken from others.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 28 February 2020.

Wake Up Call.

Will She, Or Won't She?  Jacinda’s white vestments may look impressive on the cover of the international edition of TIME magazine, but every day Labour’s relationship with Winston Peters and NZ First continues, her ability to go on wearing them back home in New Zealand – without exciting derision – diminishes.

IT WAS SUCH a comforting dream. The idea that Jacinda Ardern had somehow inspired a new and vigorously hybrid political faith contained so much hope. That, NZ First, a wholesome manifestation of New Zealand’s best conservative traditions, could reliably anchor a Labour-Green government determined to reanimate the reformist traditions of “King Dick” Seddon and Mickey Savage. As if, by some special historical dispensation, Jacinda and the rest of us – the “democratic public” of New Zealand – could enjoy the best of both worlds.

And then I woke up.

NZ First, as presented to the electorate by its redoubtable leader, Winston Peters, is, indeed, the embodiment of the best of this country’s conservative traditions. We are encouraged to believe that it will always be fiercely protective of New Zealand’s British inheritance: Representative Democracy and the Rule of Law. Equally, however, NZ First declares its unwavering allegiance to the achievements of New Zealanders themselves: the creation of a robust capitalist economy and, out of the wreckage of the Great Depression, a just and caring society.

If only.

Behind Peters’ masterfully patriotic sales-pitch, it would seem that there has always existed a hidden but unbreakable connection to a very different New Zealand. This New Zealand, the one in which NZ First conducts its practical political business, is the New Zealand of the quid pro quo. A nation of mutual back-scratchers. A country whose heraldic device depicts a golden coin encompassed by two open palms. A deeply corrupt New Zealand, which endures only because New Zealanders have trained themselves not to recognise corruption – not  even when it’s staring them in the face. (Which is, of course, why we’re known as the least corrupt nation on earth – because, so great is our discipline, that we report less corruption than any other nation on earth!)

That he has been able to operate so successfully and for so long in this other New Zealand strongly suggests that Peters is a politician without illusions. Over a parliamentary career spanning more than 40 years, he has come to see more clearly than most of his colleagues how the country really works. He understands that New Zealand capitalism has never been strong enough to function effectively without massive state support. That this dependence inevitably gave rise to a political culture of unabashed favour-seeking, cronyism and special pleading. That rampant corruption flourished in New Zealand because the country’s trade unions were willing to look the other way in return for state protection, and because its news media understood, without having to be told, what could be reported, and what could not. (Peters’ furious outbursts against the news media have generally been triggered by the latter’s refusal to stick to the agreed script in relation to himself and his party.)

Peters’ defection from National and his subsequent creation of NZ First was prompted by the massive disruption of “old” New Zealand’s deeply ingrained (if unacknowledged) culture of corruption by the neoliberal economic and social reforms of the 1980s and 90s. Peters was enraged by what he correctly perceived to be the cynical denunciation and deliberate destruction of the protected national economy by the local shills for global, free-market capitalism. He hated the way these “Quislings” sold their country off to the highest foreign bidder. His exposure of Neoliberalism’s new rules of engagement via the “Winebox Scandal” was motivated primarily by his determination to demonstrate the deeply compromised character of the new regime and its defenders – and they have never forgiven him for it.

The fatal flaw in Peters’ thinking – and therefore in the political conduct of NZ First – is that he has always sought to rescue his country’s fortunes by restoring the status quo ante. This meant re-creating a state-supported economy made up of importunate capitalist clients ready to offer Cabinet Ministers (and/or their parties) whatever it took to secure – and keep – their indispensable political patronage.

Peters and his colleagues perfected the art of appearing to be the foes of neoliberal capitalism while keeping hidden from the electorate their determination to restore the crony capitalism of the pre-Rogernomics era. His intention was always to attract the support of sufficient National Party and Labour Party politicians to secure his own, and his party’s, re-entry to the places where the deals – and the prices of the deals – were struck. He was convinced that New Zealand’s neoliberal revolution, like all revolutions, would ultimately prove unable to resist the tendency of fundamental economic and political realities to reassert themselves.

The fundamental fact remains: New Zealand capitalism cannot prosper without the active support of New Zealand’s politicians. Peters and NZ First have always been determined to prosper from that fact.

But, if NZ First sought to prosper from the re-establishment of crony capitalism, Labour and the Greens could hardly do so – not without fatally compromising their “transformative” ambitions. No matter how imminent a three-part rendition of the Hallelujah Song might appear, Jacinda’s broad new political faith has always been more apparent than real. The longer the present coalition government endures, the more opportunities for clientelism to become entrenched will present themselves. NZ First has never made a conspicuous display of resisting the temptation to exact a price for making things happen, or not happen. And with every stalled initiative and thwarted policy commitment, the Labour leader’s broad political faith takes on more and more of the appearance of a tawdry religious huckster’s travelling road-show.

Jacinda’s white vestments may look impressive on the cover of the international edition of Time magazine, but every day Labour’s relationship with Winston Peters and NZ First continues, her ability to go on wearing them back home in New Zealand – without exciting derision – diminishes.

It is time for the Prime Minister to wake up.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday 25 February 2020.

Little's Hate Speech Laws Will Destroy This Government.

High Risk Call: Insensitive though it may seem to even pose the question: how will the electorate respond to what the Prime Minister’s opponents will undoubtedly characterise as an attack on New Zealanders’ freedom of speech? At more than twelve month’s remove from the terrible events of 15 March 2019, will Jacinda’s inspired “They Are Us” formula be enough to turn aside the free speech defenders’ counterattack?

ANDREW LITTLE has confirmed that the Coalition Government will announce changes to New Zealand’s free speech laws before the election. Clearly, Jacinda Ardern has not been able to persuade her Justice Minister that introducing “hate speech” laws is a sure-fire election loser. Or, perhaps the Prime Minister also believes that attacking freedom of speech is an election-winning strategy.

The timing of Little’s announcement is interesting. It points to a dramatic weakening in the position of Labour’s coalition partner, NZ First. For the first time since the Coalition’s formation in October 2017, Winston Peters finds himself and his party dependant on the good will and protection of the Prime Minister.

The Serious Fraud Office’s decision to launch an investigation into the NZ First Foundation has prompted multiple demands for Jacinda to stand Peters down for the duration. She has been called “weak” for refusing to discipline her Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and he is very aware of the political rewards that would flow to the Prime Minister if she decided to give in to his critics’ demands.

If she did give in, Peters knows that any threat to “pull the plug” on the Coalition in retaliation would be met with a cool “go on then”. Being seen to have forced a snap election over the SFO investigation would seal NZ First’s fate. The electorate would punish Peters and his party mercilessly. Jacinda and the Greens, on the other hand, could present themselves to the country as the principled and courageous defenders of “clean” politics. What would undoubtedly be suicide for Peters and NZ First could end up being the making of his erstwhile coalition partners.

All of which adds up to a radically changed power dynamic on the Beehive’s Ninth Floor. From here on out, what Jacinda and her “progressive” colleagues want, Jacinda and her “progressive” colleagues are going to get. Three weeks ago Peters would have shaken his head coldly at the very thought of introducing anti-hate speech legislation prior to the election. Today, he has bowed his head meekly and walked away. The Coalition’s “handbrake” has been released.

Returning to my earlier speculation about Jacinda’s actual position on hate speech, I can’t help recalling how strongly she reacted to the pain and suffering of Christchurch’s Muslim community. I am minded, also, of her passionate advocacy for her own “Christchurch Call”. In the bitter aftermath of the Christchurch Massacre, the Prime Minister promised New Zealand’s immigrant communities her protection. Tougher gun laws were Step One. A ban on hate speech could very easily be Step Two.

Insensitive though it may seem to even pose the question: how will the electorate respond to what the Prime Minister’s opponents will undoubtedly characterise as an attack on New Zealanders’ freedom of speech? At more than twelve month’s remove from the terrible events of 15 March 2019, will Jacinda’s inspired “They Are Us” formula be enough to turn aside the free speech defenders’ counterattack?

Those in the Prime Minister’s professional and personal entourages will be adamant in their insistence that being seen to move against hate speech is not only the right thing to do, but that it will also reap Labour a rich harvest of votes – not least from New Zealand’s 57,000 Muslims. The brutal question which must be asked, however, is whether or not winning the support of the 1 percent of New Zealanders who subscribe to the Muslim faith can sensibly be counted as an unqualified addition to Labour’s overall Party Vote; or whether it will be more than offset by the defection of those New Zealanders opposed to Labour’s restriction of free speech? The next, equally brutal question is: “Where will those votes go?”

The obvious, and worrying, answer is: “They will go to the Right.”

It is one of the greatest tragedies of contemporary “left-wing” politics: that its practitioners have allowed themselves to become identified, irretrievably, with the suppression of free speech. Most particularly, with the suppression of the free speech of persons identified as “right wing”, or, more ludicrously, as “Nazis” and “fascists”. Worse still, they have secured this “de-platforming” by threatening to unleash violence and disorder if these individuals are permitted to speak. They have thus supplied local government, university and corporate leaders with the “health and safety” justification for shutting these speakers down. Free speech advocates refer to this tactic as “The Thug’s Veto”.

Little’s reaffirmed commitment to introducing legislation aimed at curbing hate speech will, therefore, be received by right-wing New Zealanders as a direct assault upon their personal liberties. Labour and its Green allies will be accused of using the power of the state to demonise and silence their political opponents.

The Right will not take this lying down.

It is, however, doubtful whether Little has given much thought to what making bitter enemies of the entire Right might lead to. While National and Act – especially Act – will be content to fight the issue at the level of abstract principle, those further along the right-wing spectrum will not hesitate to link Little’s hate speech legislation with those it is intended to protect. The very white supremacists the Left has vowed to extirpate will present Little’s laws as proof positive of the Labour/Greens’ surrender to the demands of multiculturalism in general – and of Islam in particular. Such linkages can only pose a grave threat to the safety of all New Zealand’s immigrant communities. The very ugliness that hate speech laws are intended to hide will be even more openly and defiantly displayed.

And this, sadly, is the problem which the advocates of hate speech legislation all fail to appreciate. That people cannot be forced into abandoning their erroneous, hurtful and/or dangerous opinions. They can only be argued out of them.

Does Andrew Little truly believe that hate speech laws would have stopped Brenton Tarrant? His murderous rampage was inspired not by the rantings of some fool on 4Chan, but by his close study of the centuries-long struggle between Islam and Christianity in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Are the hate speech laws to be set wide enough to capture the wrongful interpretation of history? Will they extend to banning trips to the European battlefields where the Ottoman armies were checked by Christian knights? And if they are, how will that help to persuade people that what Little is proposing is anything more than the thin edge of the wedge of totalitarianism?

Our current laws forbid the incitement of actual physical harm, and will punish those who wilfully defame their fellow citizens. Attempting to pass laws against the giving of offence, however, is a fool’s errand. Far from eliminating offensiveness, such laws will only encourage and intensify it. Harm cannot be prevented, but it can be healed. Building trust and amity between peoples is achieved by starting conversations – not by shutting them down.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 21 February 2020.

China Immune To The Infection Of Democracy.

The Democracy Virus: China’s authoritarian political system enables a level of social surveillance and control that liberal democratic societies cannot match. The Chinese Government makes full use of the latest digital technology to both punish – and reward – its citizens. The plans it formulates cannot be challenged, or hindered. Where else could a million human-beings be “re-educated” into sullen obedience? Where else can whole cultures be rendered invisible? (ABC Image)

“A MINOR RELIGIOUS INFECTION”, no statement captures more succinctly China’s problem with world – or the world’s problem with China. The words themselves appear in a leaked document setting forth in grim detail the reasons for the detention of 300 Uighurs and other Muslims in China’s benighted Xinjiang province. Other justifications for incarcerating an estimated one million Uighurs in China’s very own “Vocational and Educational” archipelago include: “used to wear a long beard”; and, “used to wear a veil”. Tellingly, not even the past tense can save you in Xinjiang.

Does the Chinese Communist Party leadership in Beijing understand how poorly the idea that religious belief constitutes a form of “infection” is likely to be received by the overwhelming majority of human-beings belonging to one or the other of the world’s great faith communities? Reading these words in the context of China’s ongoing struggle against the COVID-19 viral epidemic is certain to amplify global displeasure.

When people of faith around the world discover that the Chinese authorities regard the guiding principles of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam as dangerous diseases, whose followers must be isolated from the uninfected population, restored to ideological health, and only then released; they will be dumbfounded. But, not for long. This news will generate rage and resentment on a scale no rational political regime would willingly countenance.

And yet, the Chinese Government remains adamant that its Uighur policy is not only fully justified, but also politically effective. It will not hear a word spoken against its Xinjiang strategy – or, at least, not by those whose opinions it is in a position to monitor – and contain. That this refusal to respond to world opinion might threaten such cherished Chinese initiatives as One Belt, One Road, does not appear to have occurred to those in charge of the Uighur policy. Nor has the mounting evidence of attitudes towards China hardening, all across the world, been sufficient to prompt a regime change of heart.

What is it, exactly, that Beijing fears? What is of more concern to them than the world’s increasingly negative opinion of the Chinese Government? The answer is brutally simple: what the Chinese Government fears most; and certainly much more than global public opinion; is losing control.

China has witnessed the extraordinary derangement of American politics which was set in motion by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Accordingly, it is determined to dry up the waters of religious extremism in which terrorist organisations like Al Qaida and ISIS floated.

They have also observed, in the EU countries and Britain, the dangerous socio-political pressures produced by mass immigration, along with the divisive multicultural policies it generates. In the People’s Republic, it is the Han Chinese who migrate en masse to the territories of their nation’s ethnic minorities – not the other way around. Cultural homogeneity is both the short and long term objective of the Chinese Government. China’s future is envisaged as monocultural, not multicultural. It is national unity that the Chinese Communist Party seeks – not cultural diversity.

These goals, like the Party’s militant and uncompromising atheism, sit uncomfortably with the expectations of Western elites. It was, for many years, their fond expectation that free trade and free-markets would set up the conditions in which China’s transition to liberal democracy became inevitable. Few now believe that such a transition is imminent. The Chinese looked on grimly as the former Soviet Union was stripped and humiliated by the West. If these were the consequences of embracing liberal democracy, then the West could keep it.

In truth, the Chinese Communist Party has made a high-stakes historical wager. It’s betting everything China has achieved since 1949 that liberal democratic excess will undermine the social, political and cultural cohesion of Western Capitalism long before it overturns “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”.

This is not as risky a wager as Westerners might think. China’s authoritarian political system enables a level of social surveillance and control that liberal democratic societies cannot match. The Chinese Government makes full use of the latest digital technology to both punish – and reward – its citizens. The plans it formulates cannot be challenged, or hindered. Where else could a million human-beings be “re-educated” into sullen obedience? Where else can whole cultures be rendered invisible?

Yes, all these policies put China off-side with the rest of the world. The thing is: China doesn’t care.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 21 February 2020.