Category Archives: An inclusive society

In Samoa, a fight for democracy.

Posted on by
2

New Zealand coverage of the attempt to overturn the results of Samoa’s national elections in April, when the opposition FAST Party won a one seat majority in parliament thanks to support from an independent MP, has largely been mindlessly anodyne. Take for example the unfortunate choice of words in the RNZ report (re-published in the NZ Herald) on the contested election: “the FAST party of Fiame Naomi Mataafa was expected to secure a majority of seats, overthrowing the long-ruling Human Rights Protection Party and making Fiame Samoa’s first female prime minister.”

There is no “overthrowing” going on in Samoa, at least not by FAST. That would be a coup, putsch or “golpe,” and that would involve a violent blocking of the constitutionally legitimate and electorally validated political succession process.

Instead, what has happened so far is a (yet unfinished)) constitutional and therefore legal rotation or succession in elected government between the defeated incumbent Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) led by Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Neioti Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi and the victorious former opposition, a splinter break-off from the long ruling government of Mr. Malielegaoi (the irony of the party name will be ignored here). After dominating Samoan politics since 1982 and with the last 23 years in power in its present form (where it continuously placed legal obstacles to the formation of competing political parties), the HRPP and PM Malielegaoi are a lame duck caretaker administration until the new parliament is convened and the FAST government installed. After a series of legal challenges by HRPP involving a provision that 10 percent of parliament be female (which would mean adding one more appointed female seat to parliament and create a 26-26 MP deadlock that forces a new election), the Supreme Court ruled in favour of opposition that no new seat need be created and validated the results of the April 9 polls, opening the way for the sitting of a new parliament no more than 45 days after the election. That was to happen today.

Instead, the Malielegaoi government has blocked the move to sit a new parliament as per the Court’s order.

This is a troublesome move. Blocking rotation in government after a legitimate election is a very real attempt to overthrow the voter’s mandate. On Saturday Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi, the Head of State appointed by the Malielegaoi government in 2017, declared that parliament would not re-open today. He stated the reasons for his decision would be given “in due course” and left Apia for his home village several hours drive away. On Sunday the Samoan Supreme Court heard an emergency challenge to the Head of State’s proclamation and found it to be unlawful. The Samoan Attorney General, representing the caretaker administration, walked out on the proceedings. Because it was held on a Sunday, PM Malielegaoi claimed that it contravened “God’s will” and was therefore illegal (there is no constitutional provision against holding court hearings on Sundays). The Supreme Court rejected the accusations of irregularity and reiterated that the new parliament should be seated on the basis of the April 9 results. Instead, the Speaker of the House, a member of the HRPP, shuttered the doors of the Maota Fono, claiming that he follows the orders of the Head of State, not the Supreme Court. Coincidentally or not, the website for the Samoan Observer, the country’s main media outlet, has gone off-line. The stage is set for an authoritarian usurpation.

To be clear: political democracy is based on the principle that election losers accept adverse results in exchange for getting to compete again at pre-set intervals under fair conditions. Rotation in government is considered to be an intrinsic part of democratic governance and intrinsically good because it allows opposition parties to learn how to govern and allows former government parties to refresh and gain perspective when in opposition, all while vying for electorate support. That competitive pressure is considered to be what keeps the political process healthy if not entirely honest. 

In other words, either one accepts the principle of the honest loss or one is anti-democratic. The April elections were honest and the HRPP lost–by a very small margin, but it lost nevertheless. Hence, for the HRPP the choice today is to be democratic or dictatorial. Unhappily, what is appears to be going on in Samoa is not an attempted coup by the FAST party after its victories in the April election and in the Supreme Court. Instead, it is a variation on an (attempted) “constitutional” coup carried out by the defeated HRPP.

That brings up the issue of force and outside intervention. The Samoan Police have surrounded the parliament grounds (where FAST are staging a sit-in), but it remains unclear as to who they are are loyal to. Perhaps under the circumstances we should be thankful that Samoa does not have a military. But if the Police are loyal to the Head of State (who is a former police officer as well as an ordained minister) rather than the Samoan Constitution, then the authoritarian “auto-coup” could be successful.

There is more. Under the terms of the 1962 Friendship Treaty signed between Samoa and New Zealand, NZ is duty-bound to come to Samoa’s aid in a time of crisis. As unpalatable that may be given NZ’s history with Samoa and however unforeseen this particular crisis may be, it falls within the scope of the Treaty. But its invocation depends on an official request from Samoa so the issue is who has the legal right to issue that request should they deem it necessary to do so.

Given the circumstances, a legal request can only come from the legitimately elected government that has Samoan Supreme Court sanction. That would be a FAST-led coalition. But it runs the risk of provoking large scale unrest between political factions if the Samoan Police side with HRPP and people decide to take matters into their own hands with street violence. That then raises the question of the nature of any NZ intervention if the Friendship Treaty is invoked. Given NZ-Samoan history, a minimal amount of force should be used, with the NZDF (if need be) only used in a support role for NZ Police intervention units.

Most importantly (and pressingly), diplomacy can avoid invocation of the Treaty and thereby help avert intervention. MFAT needs to be on the case now because it is quite possible that other foreign actors with vested interests in Samoa seize the opportunity to extend their influence in it by favouring one side or another in the impasse. So diplomatic urgency is required for three compelling reasons: 1) to avoid invocation of the Friendship Treaty as a means of resolving a political dispute; 2) to preserve Samoan democracy in the face of authoritarian resistance from within; and 3) to prevent extra-regional (and non-democratic) actors to influence how the political process plays out.

The Samoan diaspora can help in this regard by signalling support for democracy. Although Samoan expats cannot vote in their home elections (thanks to Tess Newton Cain for the head’s up), it would be helpful if expats voiced support for the political system rather than a partisan preference given a contentious outcome. That could assist in easing partisan and social conflict in their homeland.

At the end of today the new FAST majority was sworn into office by the Supreme Court in the Supreme Court building rather than parliament because they were locked out of the Folo by the Clerk and Speaker of the House, both HRPP minions. The farce–some say typical of recent Samoan politics– is now about symbolism rather than the substance of political change, as if the location of the investiture ceremony and who gets to sit where when it comes to exercising governmental authority matters for the exercise of elected sovereign power. To his credit, the sitting Police Commissioner has taken an agnostic stance about the political shenanigans and seems disposed to adhere to constitutional edicts and respect for the rule of law. If that is the case, no foreign intervention is necessary and Samoan bureaucrats do not need to look to a particular building for their instructions when it comes to the continuity of State business. All that is needed now for a peaceful transition that reaffirms Samoans commitment to democracy is for foreign governments to recognize the realty of the situation. Word to the wise: It is all over but the HRPP shouting, and the sooner that they shut up or are ignored, the better for Samoa things will be.

As is often said: time to move on. The next days will tell if Samoa takes a political step forward or backwards. Best then, to illuminate and encourage the path ahead.

The unmentioned C word.

Posted on by
7

Right-wingers have been making much ado about so-called “cancel culture.” In this most recent version of their culture wars strategy, they have updated the anti-Political Correctness (PC) narrative to whine about liberals and lefties “canceling” conservative voices via advertiser, store and product boycotts, public shaming, counter-protests and the like. This is seen as a violation of free speech and the right to express opinion, however distasteful or unpopular. Besides the hypocrisy of accusing others of doing exactly what conservative have done to any number of views that they dislike (say, when others use flags and other patriotic symbols in “disrespectful” ways or substitute “traditional” symbology with newer heraldry, “desecrate” religious icons, sit or kneel during national anthems, refuse to address “nobility” by their titles and use vulgarity and obscenities in lyrics), the rightwing conveniently forgets that there is a third unmentioned word that starts with “c” that causes cancel culture censorship: consciousness.

More precisely, it is the lack of consciousness in expression that gets censored, not words by themselves. Words have weight and weight has impact. Words can lead to deeds a consequential result or as a reaction. One must be mindful of this when choosing words in the public space. That is where the concept of consciousness or lack thereof comes in.

In order to explain this better, let me turn to Spanish because the concept of consciousness is much better developed in that language. As an aspiring juvenile delinquent growing up in Argentina I was often admonished to “tener conciencia” of my actions. This is a common phrase that is best translated as “be aware” but which encompasses the past, present and future. One must have consciousness of how past and present actions have consequences for the future of ourselves, those around us and others with degrees of temporal and spatial separation from us. In English, the notion that the shadow of the future hangs (often darkly) over our present decision-making is one way of capturing one aspect of being aware in this “consciousness” sense of the term, but the concept has collective as well as individual dimensions embedded in it.

The basic idea is that one has to be conscious of the consequences of ones words and actions before engaging the public sphere. One cannot just blurt out or do anything that comes to mind without regard to the context and situation in which one is in (this a type of situational awareness not necessarily connected to personal or collective security). To do so is to invite negative consequences if the behaviour is inappropriate for the occasion. Whether it is or is not appropriate is not defined by the person doing the act but by those impacted by it, be it in the past, now, or in the future. For example, waving Rebel flags or hanging a noose at a Black Lives Matter rally evokes painful memories of past injustices carried forward and, given their symbolic history, constitute a present and ongoing implicit threat to non-white communities. Those who choose to wave such symbols may feel that it is nothing more than an expression of pride or resistance to transgressive usurpations of the proper order, but it is not them that define whether the displays are appropriate. Whatever their intention (and in many cases the intention is to deliberately provoke), it is how their actions are perceived and interpreted that matters. Be it a riot or a rear-end whuppin,’ the consequences of their acts are determined by their lack of or disregard for consciousness about the context and effect their acts have on the witnesses to them.

Likewise, expressions deemed appropriate in the past may come to be deemed inappropriate in future circumstances. For example, recently several Dr. Seuss books were pulled from shelves by the contemporary publisher, acting behalf of the author’s estate. The books in question were written as World War Two US propaganda and contained grotesque cartoon racial and ethnic stereotypes of Japanese, Germans, Italians (and even some allies). In the context in which they were written they were deemed appropriate because the objective was to demonise the enemy that was seen to be posing an existential threat to the nation. Japanese and German-American opinions and sensitivities were not considered because they were deemed to be a threat from within. However today such caricatures evoke an unhappy chapter in US history that only serves to perpetuate bigotry and racism, so the author’s family wisely chose to remove them from circulation. in my opinion this helps reaffirm Dr. Seuss’s reputation as a children’s book writer rather than tarnish it by keeping his propaganda work on equal footing. The latter can still be displayed in museums and in historical archives as examples of the extremes to which a nation will go when put under wartime stress, but as with Confederate symbols and nooses, they have no mainstream place in heterogeneous democratic societies based on principles of equality and fair play.

This is the heart of the matter. What liberals and lefties may wish to “cancel” are expressions that lack consciousness, or awareness of how said expressions affect others. The same is true for the Left, which can also lack awareness of the impact of certain forms of discourse and behaviour on others (especially if the intent is non-revolutionary but instead reformist in nature). This is different than performance art and other manipulations of words and symbols for dramatic theatrical effect (say, political satire). Here the (even if unconscious) objective is provocation without consequence. The trouble in this reasoning is that consequence is a given, especially when consciousness is absent at the moment of expression. And since consequences are often negative when consciousness does not obtain, those who decry “cancel culture” may be wise to engage in some self-reflection before they enter the public space in either word or deed.

Truth be told, what right-wingers are essentially doing is complaining about how they do not have impunity when it comes to expression; they cannot just say or do racist, bigoted or otherwise prejudiced things without consequence. Under the cover of freedom of expression, they maintain that they have the “right” to say whatever they want whenever they want without consequence. The trouble for them is that not only is the syllogism underpinning the logic of no-consciousness expression flawed on its merits, but their individual rights do not always, in every instance and context, supersede the collective rights of those around them. In other words, consciousness or lack thereof is a major determinant of the consequences that follow.

Left for another time is discussion about, having failed miserably to improve the material and social conditions of the majority of society when in power, contemporary right-wingers in liberal democracies fall back on culture wars as the first line of defence. That the culture being defend often happens to be racist, xenophobic, misogynist, patriarchal and bigoted does not matter. What matters is to keep up a relentless whinge that diverts liberal-left leaning movements and governments from the real policy issues that need to be confronted in the interest of progress and the common good.

Perhaps we need to “tener conciencia” of that.

A self-mutilation ritual.

Posted on by
10

It appears that rather than follow the not-so-sage advice offered here in KP a short time ago about how to save their future as a political party, the Republicans have decided to double-down on their Trumpist/MAGA bet. After the House Democratic majority stripped a recently elected QAnon freak from her committee assignments (I will not mention her name here) because of her deranged behaviour and speech (including calls to kill Democratic congresspeople and claims that the Rothschilds used a space laser beam to start California fires in order to make a profit and that the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings were faked), her GOP colleagues reaffirmed their support for her while rebuking the 11 of them who voted for Trump’s impeachment on grounds that he incited the January 6 insurrection in the Capitol building. The freak then held a press conference and announced that the Republican Party was “Trump’s party.” No Republican contradicted her and state Republicans in the home districts of the pro-impeachment GOP renegades voted to censure them.

This is going to end badly for the GOP. Corporate America and (prodded by lawsuits) even mainstream Rightwing media appear to realise the danger that the assault on Congress represents. Non-Republican rightwing extremists have infiltrated the MAGA ranks and exploited them for their own purposes. Conspiracy theory craziness has taken hold in the MAGA movement. Seeing this, some regretful MAGAites have defected once they realised that the Trump pipe dream was not going to become reality or that his claims about the stolen election were deliberate lies that cost taxpayers millions of dollars to refute (in the form of recounts and litigation). To be sure, there are still many who still worship the ground he walks on, but many more are glad to see the back of him and want it to stay that way.

Catering to the remaining MAGA base may solidify GOP support in hard Red states, but the rest of the country is turning Blue as demographics increasingly work against perpetuation of that base as a proportion of the population, much less as a cohesive voting bloc. Insurrectionists are bad for business as well as law and order, so for a party that claims that it is the champion of both, kowtowing to the violent maniac fringe is a losing proposition over the long term. The MAGA brand is turning to mud even if those loyal to it cannot see what is coming at them down the road.

There is the hitch. Most analysts now see the GOP as divided into three parts: a MAGA populist wing, a neo-con Reaganite wing and a bridge faction with feet in both wings that attempts to straddle the fence of specific policy issues (or want to have things both ways–conspiratorial crazy on the one hand and soberly responsible on the other). After the attack on the capitol, what many of the non-lunatic factions in the GOP fear is two things: being physically threatened or attacked by MAGA and QAnon extremists egged on by Trump and his acolytes if they do not accede to his wishes; and being “primaried” out of office by them with funding provided by the Trumpsters (“primaried” refers to the practice of putting up candidates against incumbents in party primaries so as to replace them with more ideologically aligned people).

The combination of physical and political threats has paralysed most of the GOP party leadership, who have opted for the default option of blaming Democrats for assorted ills while looking to them for the knock-out electoral blow on the lunatics in 2022. They understand that things have gone too far and they cannot prevent the MAGA wing from trying to take control of the party as a whole while Trump continues to agitate from the sidelines. So this is their state of play: hope that the Democrats win big in the congressional mid-terms so that they can purge the MAGAites from the party and return to some semblance of conservative normalcy. They know that the purge of moderate candidates in GOP primaries will likely lead to massive losses in the 2022 general election and the consolidation of Democratic control of the federal government for the near future. That allows the non-MAGA Republicans to clear house and get their affairs in order without the burden of having to govern, something that can set them up well for 2024 and beyond. People like Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney understand this well.

Of course, many of those immediately involved in the fray may not see things in this light and may continue the internecine fights over the heart and soul of the GOP well after 2022. The MAGA wing certainly see their future as wedded to Trump, and the Senate impeachment trial will go a long way towards determining which of the GOP factions will prevail over both the short and the long term. But as long as they are divided and the Democrats coalesce while in power and restore some semblance of respect, normality and competence to governing (not a sure thing but more plausible today than in the past because of the stakes at play), then the Republican Party is going to increasingly be on the outside looking in when it comes to national policy-making. And that will suit the lunatic fringe just fine, as they have been exposed as being uninterested in democracy if such a thing involves compromise, toleration, transparency, equality and mutual consent in the policy-making process. That, however, will only increase their marginalisation as a political force. They had their moment during the last four years and soon they will pay a political (and in some cases, criminal) price for their sins.

In the meantime, watching the Republican in-fighting is like watching someone repeatedly cut themselves. The difference is that self-mutilation is most often not fatal to the person doing it, whereas what is going on in the GOP has the potential to be terminal to the party as a democracy-supportive political institution.

Ready to be let down.

Posted on by
1

The Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on the Christchurch terrorist attacks has tabled its report with the Governor General and Minister of Internal Affairs. The Report will be introduced to parliament and released to the public before Christmas. In the lead up to its release the office of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet consulted with a number of people, myself included, on how to go about managing the release. My advice was for the heads of the security agencies mentioned in the Report–the SIS and Police in particular–to front-foot the release because there was much skepticism that the Report would be anything but a whitewash and cover up. I mentioned that if systemic, institutional as well as individual failures, biases and blindness were not mentioned then the Report would be seen as exactly that. Other people suggested deeper engagement with immigrant ethnic groups, Maori, and being as transparent as possible.

Alas, the latter does not look like it will happen if early word about the Report is true. Remember, by its terms of reference the Report’s public findings and recommendations will not identify government officials mentioned in it. Nor will it contain information that is deemed sensitive on national security grounds. So, along with other limitations that I mentioned in an earlier post about it, the RCI was hamstrung from the start.

To be sure, I have not read either the findings or the recommendations so can do nothing other than speculate about them. But what I have read so far is this: the evidence from the killer as to how he planned the attack will be suppressed forever because it constitutes a “how to” primer for murderous copy-cats that identifies exploitable holes, flaws and deficiencies in NZ’s counter-terrorism defences and the advantages and opportunities presented to him by the wider context in which he planned and prepared the attacks. Moreover, the names of government officials mentioned in the Report will not only be redacted from the public version, but will be suppressed for thirty years, again on national security grounds.

Already, word has leaked that the Report will note how the firearms purchase and vetting regime failed in this instance due to legal loopholes and human folly. This was always going to be an easy way out for the State because after the attacks the government immediately pushed through law reforms governing certain types of firearms such as those used during the massacres (now being challenged by rightwing parties and groups), while blaming officers on the low end of the Police totem pole for not properly doing firearms license background checks absolves the higher-ups of any complicity in the matter. Nothing about systemic or institutional biases, failures or blindness is to be found in that sort of blame game.

Needless to say, some are not happy with these developments. Both the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ) and Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand (IWCNZ) have expressed serious concerns about the suppression order’s impact on issues of transparency and accountability by the agencies and individuals whose actions or inaction may have contributed to the events of March 15, 2019. This is notable because the RCI remit specified that the views of the NZ Muslim community should be given great consideration, to the point that a special Muslim Reference Group was set up to advise the Commission (although its advice was non-binding on the RCI).

Now, in the wake of the news about the selective long-term suppression of findings, both FIANZ and IWCNZ have released their submissions to the RCI. These include lengthy expositions about the myriad ways in which the Muslim community has been stigmatised, harassed, surveilled, vilified and attacked since 9/11 in the NZ media and society, and about how government agencies were indifferent at best and hostile at worst to the community as a whole, systematically ignoring the community’s very specific details of hate-based violence directed at them and repeated appeals for help. These submissions noted the government’s focus on Muslims as potential jihadis, including so-called “jihadi brides” and the infiltration of their houses of worship and community activity centres by agents of the State.

The submissions were extensive and well-documented, using everything from international to local human rights legislation and witness testimonies to provide proof that the global “War on Terror” had a very real, disproportionate and negative impact on NZ Muslims regardless of their affinity for extremism (it should be noted that no Muslim has been charged, much less convicted of an ideologically-motivated act of violence in NZ before or after 9/11. Two individuals have been jailed for having jihadist literature, a couple of converts have been killed in drone strikes abroad and the bumbling Pakeha jihadist remains imprisoned in Syria).

Meanwhile white supremacists in NZ organised, recruited, trained and encouraged each other on line, including threats against local Muslims. Yet they apparently were either not considered to be sufficient enough of a threat to warrant closer official scrutiny, or the security community had other priorities, or, as has been said repeatedly by various sources, the killer “flew under the radar” in the build up to the attacks because he had no association with local neo-Nazi communities (oh, and he was Australian). He had no enablers, no accomplices, no acquaintances–no one at all who, in spite of his travels to conflict zones and expressed hatreds, had a clue of what he was planning to do. There was no warning.

Yeah, right.

That NZ’s two leading Muslim organisations have now come out with what were originally non-public submissions detailing what in retrospect were obvious alarm bells is an indictment of the RCI and proof that fears of a whitewash may turn out to be justified.

Others are not as pessimistic. Some believe that the RCI will recommend throwing what amounts to “blood” money at the victims, their families and the Muslim community in general while engaging in a “whole of government approach” (the new bureaucratic buzzphrase, apparently) to the problem of ethnic, religious and/or race-based extremism and violence in Aotearoa. Some think that although names and evidence will be suppressed, behind closed doors action will be taken to hold decision-makers to account. There is a belief that the RCI will in fact fulfil its duty and detail the systemic and institutional failures that contributed by commission omission to the attacks. I am not so sure.

It could be that the pre-public release of selected aspects of the Report is being done by officials to prepare the ground for its full release (by lowering expectations from the non-Muslim community), or has been done by someone on the inside who is not happy with the Report. Either way, it has set up a situation where the truth will be obscured by official shading of what can be publicly known.

The bottom line is this. Long term evidence suppression is valid based on national security concerns about revelations involving sources, methods, evidence of capabilities/vulnerabilities and sensitive foreign relationships. Invalid reasons for suppressing names and evidence involve efforts at face-saving, whitewashing or cover ups of individual and/or institutional malpractice, incompetence, bias, blindness or negligence.

From what has been released so far, there is reason to presume that the Report will tilt more towards the latter than the former, and as a result New Zealand will have missed its moment of opportunity to address and remedy what were the “whole of government” failures that contributed to the darkest day in its modern history. Instead, it might well turn out to be the official equivalent of a lump of Xmas coal delivered to the cause of official transparency and accountability.

That would be a shame.

Setting them up to fail?

Posted on by
9

There has been some excitement about the naming of Nanaia Mahuta as Foreign Minister and Peeni Henare as Defense Minister in the new Labour cabinet. At first glance neither one appears to have much experience or background in the portfolios that they are now responsible for, but Mahuta is the first female (and Maori) Foreign Minister, complete with a moko kauae. Henare, first elected in 2014, has been Minister for Civil Defense during the last year and half. He is also Minister of Whānau Ora. They comprise part of a cabinet that is considered to be one of the most diverse in NZ history and have received global attention as a result.

Mahuta first entered parliament in 1996 on the Labour list, then was elected in 1999 to the Te Tai Hauauru seat (beating Tuku Morgan), then transferred and won the Tainui/Hauraki-Waikato in 2002. She has been re-elected ever since and made a run for the party leadership in 2014. She was Minister for Customs, Youth Development, Local Government and Associate Minister for the Environment from 2005-2008 during the 5th Labour government and prior to her appointment as Foreign Minister was Minister of Local Government and Maori Development in the 6th Labour government (the first of which she retains). While in Opposition she served as the Labour spokesperson for Maori Affairs, Education, Energy and Conservation. She is also Associate Minister of Trade and Export Growth, Environment and Housing.

After 24 years in parliament, Mahuta surely knows her away around the Beehive and the domestic policy scene. But questions remain about her and Henare’s suitability for the positions they have been given. The breakdown of the questions goes something like this:

The symbolism of diversity is a powerful thing. However, beyond its symbolic value diversity in cabinet is a laudable goal only if it is accompanied by substance. The latter is defined as competence, background or experience in the policy areas for which the appointee is responsible, or the ability to learn fast. Diversity without substance is a cynical form of tokenism because it rewards those without merit in order to engage in empty symbolism as a PR tactic. It also sets up the appointees for failure if s/he is out of depth or is unable to overcome resistance from inside and outside of the Ministries for which they are responsible. That in turn serves to reinforce negative stereotypes about the ethnic, religious, racial or other groups to which they belong.

A big problem for ministerial neophytes of any persuasion is that they run the risk of bureaucratic capture by the agencies that they ostensibly oversee. Bureaucratic capture is a phenomenon where career bureaucrats surround a Ministerial appointee with everything from puffery and flattery to stonewalling and sandbagging in order to get the new leader to absorb and accept institutional logics as his or her own. This may include the “baubles” of office: getting to play with big boys toys in the case of Defense, and jetting off to exotic lands in the case of Foreign Affairs. All courtesy of the taxpayer. The syndrome is familiar.

Another problem is bureaucratic resistance or shunning. This phenomenon is when career bureaucrats endeavour to resist policy initiatives and change instigated by the new appointee by diluting or subverting the message within the institutional maze (which the new Minister is unfamiliar with), or simply ignore directives that do not suit or run contrary to their entrenched interests until the initiatives are dropped. This is an all-to-common problem in the intelligence and security field, where cadres of so-called “old boys” work hard to prevent real effective institutional reform from happening so long as they feel that the status quo works for them. The resistance to reform is less visible in Foreign Affairs because of the arc of modern diplomacy (multi-faceted, involving a variety of actors and subjects), but it remains in some institutional niches nevertheless.

In Foreign Affairs and Defence there is the additional problem that newly appointed Ministers must immediately engage with foreign interlocutors. Many of these foreign diplomats and military officials have great experience and often a considerable degree of cynicism when addressing areas of mutual interest. They very often have different cultural backgrounds, different ideological motivations, different economic interests and different ways of conceptualising the international order (say, being realist rather than idealist or constructivist in perspective). Without the shared cultural and ideological referents common to home, Ministerial neophytes thrust onto the world as the senior faces of NZ face formidable challenges unlike those found domestically.

The questions about Mahuta and Henare are therefore driven by concerns about their experience and competence when confronting these realities, and about whether their domestic experience can immediately translate into the skillset required to effectively engage both the internal (bureaucratic) and external (foreign interaction) aspects of their jobs.

Not surprisingly, some of the responses to those asking these questions have been to accuse them of being racist. That could well be true for some people, but the knee jerk, reflexive defensiveness of these reactions simply serves to obscure the reality of tokenism and overlook incompetence in the event that it does occur.

More reasoned rebuttals focus on Mahuta’s long career in parliament and the range of portfolios she has held over the years. Although Henare has a much shorter parliamentary career, he is seen as a competent quick learner in the areas in which he has previously been given responsibility. So the reasoning goes that even if they do not have deep experience in military-security matters and foreign affairs, both Mahuta and Henare are well equipped to rapidly get up to speed on their portfolios.

Beyond that, there is the domestic political side of the appointment equation to consider. Mahuta and Henare represent important Maori constituencies that Labour seeks to retain as a support base. Henare comes from a distinguished military lineage, so the symbolism of his appointment bestows mana on his office and in the eyes of many of his troops. Mahuta, known as “The Princess” in some circles, is Maori royalty. This might prove very useful when engaging Pacific Island nobility on matters of regional and mutual concern, and her familiarity with pomp and circumstance makes her a natural for ceremonial occasions when representing the State.

Other assessments of the appointments are mixed. There is a line of thought that posits that, on the one hand, the Mahuta appointment is a way of getting a long serving, important yet underwhelming MP out of the way via a golden parachute into a glamorous job while on the other hand a young, up-and-coming Maori MP is given his first shot at playing with the Big Boys. If they do not pan out, this reasoning holds, then no harm done because others will be running the show in any event.

That dovetails with the belief that PM Ardern is going to be the de facto Foreign Minister, using the leverage of her global celebrity to advance major NZ initiatives on the world stage while Mahuta works on what a knowledgeable friend of mine calls the “mice and rats” of foreign affairs. Mahuta will also be a visible indigenous symbol of the multicultural and polyethnic nature of NZ society. So, while Ardern does the heavy lifting in things such as climate change, non-proliferation and bilateral relations with the likes of the PRC and US, Mahuta can provide the ceremonial face of NZ diplomatic representation to the global community.

For Henare the issue is simple: translate his generally well-regarded work in Civil Defense into an understanding of the logistics and operational requirements of complex service organisations such as the MoD/NZDF that operate under relatively tight budgetary constraints and with significant institutional shortcomings when it comes to personnel, material and overall force readiness, and which recently have (in the case of the NZDF) suffered some serious incidents of professional and personal misconduct within both senior and junior ranks. That notwithstanding, much of what the NZDF does under MoD policy directives IS civil defense, be it in terms of disaster relief, humanitarian interventions and emergency engineering and transport. So the experience he has gained in his previous portfolio, even if relatively short, should well suit him for his new role. More to the point, none of this will interfere with how the NZDF leadership see and approach the world around them.

The most jaded idea being advanced is that, regardless of whether they are competent or not, both of these politicians will be the subject of bureaucratic capture. Senior managers and careerists in Mfat and MoD and NZDF will in fact run these agencies largely unimpeded by their respective ministers, who will cut ribbons, shake hands and bestow honours instead. A “Yes Minister” scenario will prevail, if you will.

Not all the reaction to these appointments has been negative or questioning. Many at home and abroad are celebrating the diversity represented in the new Cabinet and the individual achievements of Mahuta, Henare and their non-Pakeha, non-straight and/or female colleagues. The era of the straight white male in politics is seen as coming to an end, with NZ leading the way.

Perhaps that is true but it is not for me to say. Along with being called a racist for having broached some of the afore-mentioned questions on social media as well as being labeled a member of the Pakeha international relations and security community (I have to plead guilty to that one), I am loathe to tread further into the minefield that is identity politics in Aotearoa. Moreover, since I focus on matters of international and comparative polities and security, I cannot offer a knowledgeable opinion about appointments made to domestic-focused portfolios or about which of the scenarios outlined above is the closest to the truth. It seems likely that there is a mix of factors and reasons involved in these appointments, both opportunistic and sincere.

All I can hope for is that both of the new ministers are not being set up to fail and that even if their learning curves are steep, that they succeed in gaining command of the important instruments of State that they have been directed to lead. Time will tell.

On democratic rights and responsibilities.

Posted on by
12

The sight of MAGA morons holding anti-mask rallies and generally freaking out because they believe that their freedom is being curtailed by private and public entities demanding that masks be worn as a preventative to contagion from Covid-19 got me to wondering if those people truly understand what so-called democratic freedoms entail. It seems that the stupid is strong in the US–not just in the White House–and people simply confuse convenience or personal interest for “freedom.” Similarly, there are those in NZ who refused to accept the rules and regulations of the pandemic lockdown and complained that they too were being “oppressed” by a “totalitarian” police state. Not surprisingly, most of these people are on the right side of the political spectrum, where sophomoric interpretations of Ann Rand-style libertarianism overlap with alt-Right ethno-nationalism and other aberrations posing as political ideologies.

Given that I spent a long academic career reading and writing about both the theoretical and practical aspects of democracy and democratisation in previously authoritarian states, and worked in the security bureaucracy of a major democratic state, let me try to deconstruct into a simple primer what democracy really means when it comes to “freedom.”

Democracy as a social and political form can be seen as a two by two box with four cells. On one axis there are rights, which are individual and collective. On the other axis are responsibilities, which are also individual and collective. Rights can be formally enunciated and codified in Constitutions and a Bill of Rights but they can also be a matter of custom, usage and social norms that are are enshrined in civil law. Conversely, in some democracies such as those that use Roman Law systems, responsibilities are codified and rights are assumed: the law specifies what cannot be done rather than what can be done, with the latter being anything otherwise not prohibited.

What rights are conferred bring with them responsibilities when they are exercised. Take for example speech. An individual has the right to freely voice an opinion, but only so long as it does not cause injury to others. Yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater may seem funny to some, but disregards the responsibility to consider the context in which the yelling occurs. Likewise, hurling racist insults and threats may be part of everyday discourse for white supremacists hanging out in their trailer parks, but it is quite another thing for them to be directed towards people of color on the street. In both instances, the exercise of an individual right violates the responsibility to do no harm to others.

The balance between individual rights and responsibilities is crystallised in the act of driving a motor vehicle. People have a right to freedom of movement in democracies. But they do not have a right to drive a car. That is a licensed responsibility that entails learning rules and regulations, physical, practical and intellectual testing, and then behaving as responsible members of society when operating potentially lethal conveyances. Should they not, then the privilege of driving is curtailed or removed. The right to freedom of movement remains, but just not in a certain way.

Likewise, there are collective rights that are considered sacrosanct in democracies, be it of assembly, organization, or representation. Those also come with the responsibility to exercise those rights in way that do not injure or impede others from doing likewise. Peaceful protest against police brutality and systemic racism is one thing; a Klan or boogaloo boys rally is quite another. Forming unions, business associations and political parties is (theoretically) a democratic collective right. Forming irregular armed groups for the purposes of intimidation or insurrection is not.

As with individuals who in the exercise of their self-defined rights do harm to others, collective violence is a breach of peace, and social peace is what civilised societies are founded on. In some societies social peace is imposed by authoritarian measures (which can result in mass collective violence against unjust rule). In democracies it is achieved by voluntary adhesion to individual and collective notions of rights and responsibilities, which presumably avoids the need to take up arms against oppressive government.

That is the difference between rule by consent and rule by acquiescence: one is given voluntarily while the other is given under duress. The consent that underpins democratic societies is double-sided. It is consent to exercise rights and responsibilities, not one or the other.

That may no longer hold true.

It appears that, encouraged and supported by the proliferation of rightwing media, many have lost sight of the responsibility and collective sides of the democratic equation. Now, everything is about individual rights and nothing about individual or collective responsibilities. The erosion of the responsibility side of the democratic equation can be traced to the advent of what has come to be known as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism originated as an economic theory that posited that finance capital was the best allocator of resources in a society and hence needed to be unencumbered by laws and restrictions that impeded finance capitalists from operating in unfettered fashion. It morphed into a public policy approach–codified in the so-called “Washington Consensus”–that was based on the privatisation of public assets and the withdrawal of the State from its economic macro-manager role in society. The downsizing of the State as a physical and regulatory entity created space for “entrepreneurs,” who in turn carried the values of “free” enterprise and competition into society and resulted in emulative behaviour on the part of others. This led to the ideological expansion of neoliberalism as a social construct, where it is no longer confined to the economic realm but extends into conceptualisations of the proper social order and the role of individuals within it.

The result, to coin a phrase, is a form of hyper-individualism that on the one hand is manifest in survivalist alienation and on the other in predatory and cowboy capitalist practices in which enrichment and greed are considered attributes rather than vices. Solidarity is for suckers, and society prospers because the uncoordinated and unrestricted pursuit of freedom and profit by self-interested maximisers of opportunities, be they individuals, firms or collectivities, is believed to act as the invisible hand of the market in modern times. Or so they say.

Even though the practical benefits of neoliberal thought have proven mixed at best and much of its theoretical foundations repudiated, its impact on non-economic aspects of social life remain strong and wide-spread. With the megaphoning of its hyper-individualistic ethos in rightwing corporate and social media, it is a major reason why the notion of democratic responsibilities both individual and collective has been superseded by the exaltation of individual rights. In a sense, this is the lumpenproletarianisation of the democratic world.

There is more.

Given human nature, people are more inclined to prioritise their rights over their responsibilities. Different forms of democracy have been in part defined by the emphasis that they place on individual and collective rights. Liberal democracies put a premium on individual rights. Social democracies put a premium on collective rights. In all democracies the law primarily focuses on enforcing responsibilities of both types. Laws codify responsibilities down to minute detail and enumerate the penalties for failing to adhere or discharge them. To be clear: laws are inherently coercive, as they detail what is and is not permitted and use penalties and disincentives to enforce compliance. Although rights are recognised within the law, it is responsibility that laws are directed at because failure to be responsible as a member of society and a polity has deleterious effects on social order. Even so, there is a difference. Civil law includes various aspects of democratic rights, for example, property rights, along with its enforcement of responsibilities. Criminal law addresses transgressions of basic responsibility, both individual and collective, with the notion of rights being limited to those that strictly apply to suspects, defendants and those convicted and sentenced.

Enforcing individual and collective responsibility has long been the mainstay of democratic security policy. The police exist in to guard against individual and collective transgressions against individual and collective rights. That is, repressive state apparatuses (to put it in Althusserian terms) not only enforce the broad overall ideological project that is democracy as a social construct, but also punish those who challenge the responsibilities inherent in that project. For that to happen, the elected representatives of a democratic polity and the public bureaucracies that serve under them must agree and commit to enforcing responsibility as well as protecting rights. In other words, there must be an ideological consensus on the limits of rights and the extent of responsibilities in a democratic society.

The consensus on enforcing responsibility has eroded amongst the political class due to the same reasons that have undermined the balance between rights and responsibilities in society as a whole. That has allowed the expansion of what is considered to be an inherent “right” at the expense of what is a democratic responsibility. The arguments about “free” versus “hate” speech illustrate the erosion. The (mostly rightwing) contemporary champions of “free” speech believe that they can say anything, anywhere without concern for context or consequence. They reject the notion that the right to speak freely includes the burden of doing so responsibly. They do not care about causing offence or injury to others and complain when laws restrict their ability to do so.

This is symptomatic of the larger problem. Freedom is now equated in many circles as unfettered exercise of individual rights. Anything that constrains freedom so defined is considered an infringement on natural, God-given or universal rights, even if in fact the notion of democratic rights is a human construct that is materially and intellectual grounded in specific historical moments in time and place. In the US in 1776, democratic rights were reserved for white slave and land owning men, yet today the concept has been widened to include others (well, in theory anyway). In other words, there is nothing immutable about the notion of rights. They are a product of their times, as is the notion of what it is to be a responsible member of a democratic society.

Unfortunately responsibilities have become the unwanted stepchild in post-modern democratic societies. The erosion of notions of collective solidarity and death of empathy under the weight of ideological hyper-individualism have resulted in what might be called the “atomisation” of democracy where responsibilities are to oneself and chosen in-groups and rights are whatever one says they are.

Given the prevalence of neoliberalism as an ideological underpinning of many post-modern democratic societies, it will be difficult to reverse thirty years (and a generation) of its inculcation in the social fabric. Restoring the balance between democratic rights and responsibilities therefore entails a new form of counter-hegemonic project that works to promote the idea that “freedom” is as much a product of individual an collective responsibility as it is the exercise of individual and collective rights. The success of such a project will only occur when not only is neoliberalism replaced, but when the new ideological consciousness is internalised to the point of inter-generational self-reproduction. That is a tall order.

That does not mean that it cannot be done. Given the compound failures of governance and international economics in the lead up and responses to the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic, the post-pandemic world offers the opportunity to redefine basic notions of democratic citizenship. Unlike classic notions of counter-hegemonic projects, which always emanate from the grassroots and which are based on opposition to an elite-centric hegemonic status quo, the re-definition of democracy as a balance between rights and responsibilities can include enlightened government working from the top down. This can occur as part of a public education campaign and can be incorporated into school curricula that also emphasises sustainable development along with traditional “civics” notions of equality and fair play.

In fact, the re-valuation of responsibilities as well as rights and re-equilibration of the balance between them can easily piggy back on traditional notions of fairness and burden-sharing in pursuit of social peace. Neoliberalism is hierarchical at its core and therefore antithetical to the ideological myth of equality in democratic societies. A counter-hegemonic narrative based on a return to principles of equality and fairness embedded in the balance between rights and responsibilities would therefore seem to be a more natural “fit” for mature democratic systems.

If that is true, then its time is now.

Trump as an agent of change.

Posted on by
6

Brothers and sisters, I have a confession to make. After much reflection I have now come to the conclusion that the US evangelicals are correct. Trump is indeed a God-sent gift to the Republic. He is a modern day version of the Persian King Cyrus, a non-believer who delivered Jews to their promised land. He has a bit of King David in him as well, imperfect and flawed but possessing strong character. He is the vessel through which the Almighty will transform the Republic and restore its greatness. Of this, I truly believe. Can I get an Amen for that, my fellow children of the Lord?

Say Hallelujah!

Now, some of you might wonder why an atheistic commie like me would all of a sudden turn around and endorse the evangelical’s “empty vessel” beliefs. Well, think of it this way, brothers and sisters. Just like the Hebrew warrior Saul was knocked off his donkey and blinded by a vision of the ascendant Jesus on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus to persecute Christians, only to have his sight restored and convert to the Christian Saint Paul the Apostle, so too I have had a moment of clarity. Trump is indeed an agent of change. But the great fairy in the sky works in mysterious and dialectical ways. Let me explain.

Trump is doing what no one else has been able to do in modern US history. He is bringing to a head all of the contradictions in US society. Everything that is bad, he makes worse. Everything that is good, he tarnishes. He embraces evil and he shuns fairness. In doing so he has, like an ointment on an infected wound, brought all of the racist, xenophobic and bigoted rot out to the surface, where he revels like a pig in slop in their ignorance and hate.

Christian fundamentalists think that he is the vessel that will deliver them to the Rapture, and that in the meantime he will restore the white Anglo Saxon Christian character of the nation by pushing back–and down–on those who would challenge that status quo. No more insolent people of color to contend with, no alphabet soup of sexual deviants to put up with, no freeloading criminal minded foreigners sneaking across the borders, no snowflakes libtards squawking about rights from the safety of their safe spaces. Hell no!

But this is where the bible-bashers and I part company. You see, it is because Trump is so ignorant, so incompetent, so self-centred and such a profoundly horrid excuse for humanity that he is now forcing US society to confront head on the contradictions that it has so long buried under a veneer of “democratic” civility and which allowed him to win the presidency. This has been building since the moment he announced his campaign, and now, with the incoherent and indifferent response to the pandemic, the resort to quasi-fascist tactics in order to suppress the BLM protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and the abject pandering to the thuggish racist minority that are his “base,” Trump has managed to force society into a reckoning.

And that reckoning is going against him. States, cities, industries and private firms were the first to walk away, not just over the pandemic response but also over issues of statutory authority, jurisdictional control and public funding priorities (e.g. education, healthcare and transportation). The military and intelligence communities, long-suffering under this barrage of uninformed criticism and worship of foreign dictators, then used as props in his attempted war on his own citizens during the protests, has begun to put public distance between themselves and the idiot-in-chief. After rushing to reap the opportunistic rewards of his tax and regulatory dismantling, Wall Street, Silicone Valley, the Farm Belt and pretty much everything in between have begin to hedge against his staying in office. He is now openly mocked in the corporate media, with commentators speculating about his mental and physical status being in decline.

Even the Republican Party is starting to waver in its support, having seen his reckless incompetence on overt display the last few months and fearing not only for its presence in Congress but its future as a unified party.

One might say that all of this is necessary but not sufficient to topple him, and that he has managed to weather impeachment, caging kids, assorted conflicts of interests and corruption scandals, a merry-go-round of top level personnel appointments and yet still remains as president. He lies, he insults, he posts conspiracy theories and generally rants in ways so unhinged that he appears to be a thirteen year old boy after his ever first round of bourbon and cokes. But he still stands. Heck, he even managed to dodge a lightening bolt when he held up that dusty bible in front of the church near Lafayette Park that he had cleared by teargas and rubber bullets. Not even Satan himself would have been so bold.

Now the concern is that he will use the pandemic and the protests to either postpone the November election citing a state of national emergency or he will–as he is now doing–claim that the vote is being rigged against him and refuse to recognise the results. He will then call on his followers to hit the streets to defend his mandate, and at that point things will head seriously South.

Except for one thing. NASCAR just banned confederate flags from all of its facilities–racetracks, spectator stands, cars, uniforms, advertising, the works. There may be commercial considerations at play, but this represents a cultural shift so significant, so momentous, so gosh darn biblical in effect, that I have now seen the Light. Forget the post-March 15 Crusaders’ symbolism row. It is as if the All Blacks abandoned both the name and colours in order to become the Kiwi Cherry Pops.

Now states, cities and agencies are proposing to remove Confederate iconography from public spaces, including Congress, various Southern cities and even military bases named after Confederate generals–all against Trump’s wishes. He can whine, but he cannot do anything to prevent local authorities, Congress or even the military from doing so and in fact his opposition to removing slave era icons only serves to galvanize support for their removal. Phrased differently: it took Trump’s open embrace of symbols of racism and disunity to unify consensus that they have to go.

That is why Trump is an agent of change. Not in the direction that he and his supporters want to go, but as a catalyst for the long-docile majority to rise, say “enough,” and move in a different if not opposite direction. It turns out that the US, and the world, needed someone like him to expose all that is wrong with the American Dream, all that is fake, a lie, and a betrayal of the foundational ideals that, if not perfect in construction were and are a heck of a lot better than the smash and grab crime spree that is this presidency and the political support Mafia that surrounds him.

So yes, I do believe in miracles. The time of political revelation is coming because the sun has set on the Stars and Bars in the soul of the Confederacy. And with it, the Trump presidency and all that it represents. There may still be kicking and screaming on the way out, but the days of Satan/POTUS are nigh.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammo!

In the US, an organic crisis?

Posted on by
21

The US appears to be headed towards what Antonio Gramsci and other Italian political theorists call an “organic crisis of the State.” It involves the simultaneous and compounded fractures of economy, society and politics, which together constitute a tipping point in a nation’s history. Social contradictions are exacerbated, class and identity divisions are exposed and governments prove incapable or incompetent in offering peaceful relief or resolution to what is a very “delicate and dangerous” situation.

The moment of crisis is brought on by a catalyst or precipitant that cannot be resolved by “ordinary” institutional means. The turn then is towards “extraordinary” means, which often involve, under the guise of re-establishing “law and order,” the imposition of authoritarian controls on the body politic in order to “cleanse” the nation-State of the “impurities” that elites–often led by so-called “charismatic men of destiny” who are most often self-serving if not malign in intent–see as the root source of the national malaise. The classic examples of this phenomenon come from interwar Europe but there are plenty of others, including the military-bureaucratic authoritarian regimes of Central America and the Southern Cone of the 1960s-1980s.

This is the danger. Although the sources of American discontent are many and lie deep, the Trump administration and its Republican allies seek only to address the immediate “problem” of public unrest while working to reinforce their partisan interests. Already, the language used by the Trump administration with regards to political opponents, immigrants and others seen as obstacles echoes the language used by authoritarians of the past, something that is now accompanied by open calls for increased repression of protesters. The administration and its media acolytes have shifted their attention from the police murder of an unarmed black man to blaming “radical leftists” for the looting and vandalism that has swept the nation in response. Media coverage feeds into that narrative, as its focus fixates on scenes of destruction and violence. Less attention is paid to the underlying causes of mass collective violence in the US and the history of unsuccessful peaceful resistance that gave way to it, or to the fact that looting and attacks on symbols of authority and power is a major venting mechanism for oppressed populations the world over. The media coverage is on the symptoms, not the cause, and the government response is an example of the problem, not the solution.

The government response was predictable but has been worsened by Trump. He blames movements like Antifa and threatens to unleash “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” on demonstrators, not too subtlety evoking images of police violence against peaceful protestors in the US South in the 1960s. He says that “when the looting starts the shooting starts,” echoing the words of a Southern police chief from that era. He speaks of “thugs,” infiltrators, agitators and even “Radical Democrats” opportunistically exploiting the moment for selfish gain.

Media pundits have likened the current moment to the situation in 1967-68, when a wave of race riots swept the country in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy amidst the ongoing protests against the Vietnam War and the cultural wars between hippies and hardhats. However, this situation is worse. In 1968 the economy was robust and the political establishment, for all of its old pale male characteristics, was stable and united on ideological fundamentals. The crisis of the day was social, not existential or organic.

Today the US is a bitterly divided country in decline with a dysfunctional political system, an economy in recession and a society swept by social, ideological, racial and class divisions–all blanketed in a pandemic and backdropped by a slow moving climate disaster.

There are other points of difference. Technological advances have widened the coverage of as well as the communication between protests, thereby amplifying their impact and the linkage between them. Rather than radical leftists (such as those who challenged the status quo in the 1960s and 1970s), now well-organised rightwing extremists have infiltrated the protests in pursuit of what is known as “acceleration theory,” whereby acts of violence in the context of otherwise peaceful protest are used as accelerants that bring social contradictions to a head and quicken the path towards open race war. Along with so-called “replacement theory,” where it is claimed that unless it stands and fights now, the white race will be replaced by non-white races in the near future due to demographic trends, acceleration theory was the ideological underpinning of the Christchurch terrorist and many other perpetrators of mass murder in recent years. It is what lay at the heart of the neo-Nazi March on Charlottesville and it is not only deeply rooted in the the US but is, however obliquely, encouraged from the highest levels of the Trump administration (see: Stephen Miller).

Where there are parallels with 1968 is in the mobilisation of the National Guard in several states, the imposition of curfews in cities and states, and the declaration of states of emergency in many areas. Trump has ordered mobilisation of active duty military police units as reinforcements for local police and Guard units. Yet even here the situation is now more acute. After years of militarisation, local law enforcement agencies deploy sworn officers in storm trooper outfits and wielding military-grade weapons along with an assortment of “non-lethal” crowd control instruments. Many police are veterans of recent wars given special admission to law enforcement, and many of the equipment they use is surplus inventory from those wars. Not all of these officers have eliminated the combat ethos from their personal ideas about law enforcement. In any event, the approach of US repressive apparatuses as a whole addresses the immediate expressions of community rage but does nothing, and in fact often is counter-productive to, resolve the underlying problems in US society.

There is another source of concern beyond the fact that the Trump administration’s response is an example of the political dimension of the organic crisis. Increasingly under siege because of his incompetence and imbecility, Trump’s behaviour is getting more reckless and unpredictable. There is growing apprehension that he may do something drastic (read: stupid) to divert attention away from his domestic failures. This could be starting a war with Iran, increasing the tensions with China, provoking a cross-border dispute with Mexico or pursuing a number of other foreign misadventures. It could also include postponing national elections under the rise of a national emergency declaration, with the argument being that the combination of public health and public order threats require extraordinary counter-measures, including a delay in voting. Regrettably, it is within Trump’s powers to do so.

All of this must be seen against the backdrop of an international system in transition, where ascendant and descendent powers jockey for position in the move from a unipolar to a multipolar world. It is possible that what we are seeing in the US today is the domestic manifestation of its decline, a former superpower now cracking under the stresses of attempting to hang on to lost empire while at the same time seeing long-simmering (yet obvious) internal contradictions come to the surface. Adversarial powers see this evolution and will no doubt attempt to take advantage of it, to include exploiting US internal divisions via disinformation campaigns as well as presenting direct challenges in areas of contestation abroad. That may well accentuate the erratic actions of an unhinged president enabled by a coterie of grifters and opportunists and unburdened by a political opposition or national bureaucracy that can or is willing to intervene in defence of the nation (if nothing else, by ignoring his orders).

Whatever happens over the next few months, the stage is set for an ugly outcome.

Church, State and the weight of capitalism.

Posted on by
27

Arguments by religious folk that they are being discriminated against under the Level 2 pandemic restrictions in NZ, which limit church services to ten people or less when schools, restaurants, malls and other service outlets are allowed to host many more people under voluntary self-distancing protocols, got me to think about whether people understand the rationale behind the government approach as well as the role of religion in society and particularly in a liberal democracy such as NZ. I wrote a tweet outlining my general view and it elicited some contrary responses from people who are either religious and/or dislike the current government. I will not dwell on their responses but I will below string together in fuller scope my side of the discussion.

I began with the first tweet:

“Liberal democracies are secular regimes where church and state are separate and the state treats all religions neutrally and equally while having superordinate authority over material (as opposed to spiritual) issues, including public health. Churches need to respect that.” That began a back and forth with the contrary minded readers, which elicited the following responses from me:

“Stage (sic) 2 is based on opening up commerce, with some social restrictions still in place. Education is critical for commerce in several ways. Services are critical to economic well-being. Religion is a social construct based on belief that is not economically essential. Big diff.

In medicine, the environment, engineering, economics, threat assessment, even political forecasting, among so many other material things, science must and will trump belief. With CV-19 science must prevail over belief. There is nothing “illiberal” about the govt response.”

The last sentence came in response to a commentator’s remark that NZ is an illiberal democracy because of the restriction on religious gatherings, among other things. The author went on to speak of a difference in values between the government and people like him when it comes to family and society. I replied:

“A secular democratic regime can, should and most often does value families and society, and its social policies demonstrate this. The level 2 re-opening is business driven because NZ is a capitalist country, and everyone’s welfare depends on capitalist survival, not churches.

So long as the economic imperatives of a capitalist society remain a paramount concern of govt, then commercial concerns will supersede (much variegated) spiritual ones. Hence the pro-business incrementalism of the govt approach. They respond to structural necessity, not values.”

And that is the bottom line. NZ is a capitalist society. It is a capitalist society because the means of production are mostly in private hands and subject to market-oriented logics, because the relations in and of production reproduce the material hierarchy on which the economic system rests, because it is inserted in a global capitalist system of production, consumption and exchange, and because the social division of labour that emerges out of it reinforces the hierarchical relations between the ultimate producers of wealth and the owners of productive assets in NZ and elsewhere. Most of all, NZ is a capitalist society because the welfare of everyone directly or indirectly depends on the welfare and investment of capitalists–if they do not prosper, no one does.

Regular readers know the I am not a fan of laissez fare capitalism or the various market-driven experiments of the last forty years. Nor am I entirely pleased with how the current government defers to capitalist logics rather than fully embrace the entire policy spectrum involved in well-being budgeting. I am just saying: when it comes to the economic motor of NZ society, it is what it is.

NZ has just faced and continues to be threatened by a deadly global pandemic. The initial government response was a public health campaign marshalled on scientific grounds that was mitigated by an unprecedented economic relief package designed to help people weather the financial storm caused by the disruption of economic activity. Capitalists and workers were included in the relief measures. This response was vetted by a pandemic emergency response committee chaired by the Leader of the Opposition and communicated in daily press conferences by the Prime Minister and Director General of Health, along with other officials. That is far from being the makings of a totalitarian police state that a fair few believe it to be.

Once the lockdown/quarantine phase of the restrictions was lifted (after six weeks), the government announced that its level 3 and 2 approaches were designed to get businesses back to work. This employed a type of pragmatic incrementalism where restrictions on commercial activity were slowly lifted in piecemeal, sectorial and graduated fashion over what is now going on 3 weeks. The government explicitly stated that this was not a social opening and that pre-pandemic social activities that do not have a commercial orientation were very consciously excluded from the stage 3 and 2 re-opening measures.

That is why churches are not allowed to resume pre-pandemic activities, indulging religious services, in the measure that they did before March 23. Note that they can still host church services and other activities but that they must adhere to the “fewer than 10” rule when doing so. No one has restricted their freedom of worship. Only group size when worshipping has been limited, and that is because churches are not considered to be businesses.

If churches want to claim that they are a type of commercial enterprise, then they have reason to feel discriminated against and by all means should air their grievances along those lines. But that might open questions about their tax-free status, real estate holdings, tithing practices and other non-spiritual aspects of their mission. So it is unlikely that we will hear this argument aired in public or as a defence of a church’s right to host large gatherings for religious purposes.

In any case, the “blame” for not including churches in the Level 3 and 2 re-openings is not the fault of government values when it comes to family and society. If anything, blame comes simply from the fact that NZ is a capitalist nation and the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Spirituality is fine but it does not pay the bills, unless of course it is of the “prosperity doctrine” persuasion where the Lord commands that we should enrich ourselves before all others.

Speaking of which: why the heck was that charlatan fraudster Brian Tamaki and his Destiny Church minions allowed to defy the level 2 restrictions without punitive sanction? Were the police worried about a confrontation with a large crowd? Even if that was the case, if the letter of the public health order cannot be enforced even with enabling legislation conferring extraordinary enforcement powers on the police, what is the point of having them? Or are exceptions to the rule made for bully-boy bigoted loudmouth xenophobic lumpenproletarians posing as preachers?

We might call that a type of reverse discrimination.

Between push and shove.

Posted on by
38

The NZ government’s handling of the CV-19 pandemic has won international praise for its decisiveness and effectiveness. It is hard to argue with a response that has reduced the number of daily reported transmissions to near zero and the death toll to less than two dozen out of 1500 total cases. Not bad.

But as could have been expected, there are those who are not happy with how the government has comported itself on the matter. There has been much whinging about restrictions on movement during the stage 4 lockdown, and now there is much moaning about ambiguous rules governing shopping, “bubble” expansion and easing of travel restrictions. It seems that some people will simply never be satisfied even if the international community stands in awe of what NZ has accomplished.

There appear to be three types of complainants. The first are the serial whiners. These sorry folk just like to bitch and moan about anything. They do so more as trolls rather than out of partisan spite or informed concern and are best seen as losers. They shall be ignored in this discussion.

The second group are the public health advocates. These include medical professionals, educators, some service sector providers and others who feel the government is moving a little too quickly when lifting the quarantine restrictions on commerce. They believe that the disease must be eradicated or at least its transmission reduced completely before the lockdown is lifted. For them, the current Level 3 restrictions are an invitation to transgression and indeed, that is what has happened in many instances. Some people simply ignore the fact that Level 3 is not about social movement but about gradually getting businesses going again in a limited way. Hence beaches and parks, trails etc. swelled in the days after the move to Level 3 with mindless or selfish opportunists who either ignored or did not understand that Level 3 was not supposed to be an invitation to resume the party.

Public health advocates push for the continuation of restrictions and hence are dissatisfied with the government’s liberal easing of the lockdown after just a month. They want a longer and more complete quarantine as per Levels 3-4, with no imminent move to Level 2. For them, the matter is a public health issue first and foremost, with all economic considerations secondary to that fact.

On the other side are what can be called the profit over people crowd. They are those who demand that the restrictions be lifted yesterday and that the country get back to business as usual as soon as possible. Level 2 cannot come too fast for them and the sooner that NZ gets back to Level 1 normality the better as far as they are concerned, no matter how many get sick or die. They whine about jack-booted government intrusion on their liberties and rights and, while happy to take emergency funds from the government when it suits them, also decry its meddling and interference in their economic affairs. These type of complainants include most of the political opposition and assorted commentators who have been provided media platforms well above their intellectual station. Among this crowd utilitarian logics and lifeboat ethics 101 abound, but the selfish is also strong, as is the self-servingly stupid.

Whatever the specific reason, here economic security comes before public health concerns.

It is understandable that small businesses fear that a prolonged suspension of trade will destroy their livelihoods, and I do not include them in this dichotomy. But the hypocrisy of big corporate players and their political and media acolytes is shameful. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but the overall attitude of many NZ capitalists appears borne of self-interest rather than solidarity. And unlike the public health advocates, who span a range of political persuasions, the profit over people folk are clearly of the rightwing persuasion. That is not surprising.

I admit that these are very crude categorisations and that I have painted things in broad strokes. That was done as a preface to my larger point, which is to note that, because it is unable to satisfy either the public health advocates or the profit over people crowd in the measure that each wants, the government is actually doing the right thing. It is striking a pretty fine balance between the two sides, and its pragmatic incrementalism demonstrates a good understanding of the scientific, economic and political realities in which it operates.

In the end, NZ’s response has been quintessentially democratic. Not because the pandemic emergency response committee is chaired, at the government’s behest, by the Leader of the Opposition. Not because it has allowed for full throated criticism of its actions and used its emergency (coercive) powers very selectively and discretely. Not because it put science above partisanship and politics when addressing the threat. Not because the Prime Minister and Director General of Health fronted daily press briefings for over a month and answered in clear, honest and humane fashion everything that was pitched their way, including inane questions with little relevance to the NZ situation (such as whether it was advisable to ingest disinfectant as a cure). Mostly, because its balancing approach encapsulates the essence of democracy as a social contract: it is not about everyone getting everything they want all of the time, but about everyone getting some of what they want some of the time. In other words, it is about settling for mutual second-best options.

That may not be always the case in NZ and democracies elsewhere. But it is what has been done in this instance. Beyond the positive statistics of the policy response itself, that is the most significant and enduring achievement to come out of this crisis: a reaffirmation of democracy as a contingent sectorial compromise on a grand scale.