GUEST BLOG: Catherine Delahunty – Mass Surveillance and the Banality of Evil

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Renowned journalist and intellectual Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe the normalisation of genocide in Nazi Germany. I thought of her phrase when I was listening to Glenn Greenwald and other international whistle-blowers talking about the mass surveillance via the internet which the National Government is attempting to deny. The banality of evil in the 21st century is a huge barrier to human rights because much of the world seems to have been numbed into an acceptance of not only global violence but also state surveillance without ethics, and dirty politics without shame.

Out on the streets people barely mention the extraordinary collusion between a right wing blogger, a Minister, and a Parliamentary staffer. They raise not an eyebrow over the Five-Eyes network or the risk that their emails and texts could be being studied in case they are perceived as political or economic threats by a right wing Government.

If I point this out many people look as if they simply don’t believe it’s true or they parrot the National Government’s catch phrase “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.” A cursory glance at world history shows that this is utterly untrue and that innocence has never been any kind of protection against the power of rogue states or any other form of totalitarianism.

My greatest concern about the state surveillance debacle is not the unsurprising revelations of how the internet is used to spy upon us, but how we wake people up to the understanding of what is at stake. The incremental softening-up process whereby spying is justified against anyone who disagrees with a government, takes us in small steady steps as well as giant leaps into an Orwellian reality with the apparent complicity of a sleepy hypnotised population.

The huge challenge to all who believe in human rights and the vital right to non-violent political organising and dissent is to wake up our friends, neighbours and families to the brave new world. If we are under surveillance, so are they. In this small country, the SIS started a file on me when I was 15 years old because I was a student organiser at my high school. Now, like many of my friends, I stand up against multinational mining interests and support the independence campaign for West Papua – these issues may make me a target for continued surveillance. Everyone who emails me needs to understand who might be watching them by association.

The banality of evil becomes the enemy of justice and all can be justified by raising the spectre of terrorism or cyber-attacks. Those terrifyingly violent fundamentalists of all stripes would have us believe that violence and/or mass surveillance will make us safer. The current world has been described as in a neo-medieval era whereby corporates and free trade agreements have left us the illusion of nationality and the nation states working for undisclosed interests spy on their own citizens without accountability. As always, there are people willing to speak out but the question is, who beyond the small progressive circles is awake and listening?

The Green Party has been a consistent voice on this issue in parliament and we will keep speaking out – we have a mandate from an increasing number of people who are awake and concerned.

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They and everyone else deserve principled representation as soon as possible!

 

Catherine Delahunty is a Green MP from the Hauraki/ Coromandel. She was brought up to be an activist in a left wing Wellington family and works on social and environmental justice from a Te Tiriti o Waitangi perspective. Catherine is education spokesperson for the Greens.

16 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks for this really thoughtful and informed comment. A breath of fresh air amidst what has often been a Neo-feudal slanging match from both left and right. The challenge of defining evil and appealing to a catatonic population is certainly massive! However be assured, you are not alone, a significant minority are thinking about these issues with you. How to rehabilitate a collective conscience; maybe through local culture, food, communities… Education is obviously vital and our indigenous NZ Curriculum is definitely under threat from Charter Schools and the banality of reward based Positive Behaviour For Learning and other extrinsically focused systems of surveillance and manipulation. Democracy, we still have it and hopefully it will deliver us an opportunity to return to a more local sense of identity and ethics. Kia kaha Catherine

  2. Well said! And in total agreement with all you say say Catherine. Thinking of you all back there and may the Grahamstown hall rock Sat nite 😉 (and not from subsidence)

  3. Thank you for such a clear discussion of the risks of apathy. All of NZ should e-mail you. All of NZ should be proud to be on the NSA hit list. We are NZers and we stand up against injustice wherever it raises its ugly head.

    • Yeah – and for a start lets all give the NSA and GSCB a hearty welcome to this blog and a rousing FUCK OFF !!! for all their troubles.

      Feeling naked before the truth , boys?

      We can seeeeee you seeeeeing us now….

      And guess what – we aint scared. 🙂

      • Carefull
        These are the same people that have silenced many outspoken critics, do a bit of research on what they can do to f_ck up your life.
        Heard of a reporter called Hastings and his exploding car that was reported as hitting a tree?

        You should be scared.

        • Oh yeah…point taken..but that’s called intimidation.

          Unfortunately in my occupation its an occupational hazard at times.

          People like that only control you when you let them do so.

  4. If you want to make a paradigm shift in the way we Kiwis function and stand up and be counted on the global stage ? Kick out all the foreign owned banks . They , are who are creating the problems we all face . The Banks are the very foundation of our dysfunction . Not the NSA . Not the GCSB . Not the CIA , The FBI or any other permutation of the letters of the alphabet . It is the Banks . Everyone and everything else we’re suspicious of are nought but minions and we are their slaves .
    A couple earning $100,000 dollars between them who then buy a house for $550,000 with their %10 deposit and spend %47 of their total income on repayments is the True Evil . The reward for their endeavour is to have their time on this Earth stolen away , disguised as debt repayment on a grossly over valued yet modest old stack of glass , nails , iron and timber on a tiny patch of land that could barely sustain one vegan vegetarian over summer . That’s true madness to me . Or True Evil , if you prefer .

    • Too true RusticLad. However, that’s definitely a path to serious retribution – look at Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi – they didn’t get smacked for being inhumane despots but for exiting and proposing to exit from the petrodollar.
      Of course we should do it – but that’s the equivalent of thumbing your nose at your loan shark. Aussie banks aren’t going to stand idly by and watch $3bn per annum disappear.

  5. I have felt this week like Shrek in the first Shrek movie. There is a scene where Shrek and Princess are explaining a plan to donkey, and he just doesn’t get it. They use several different methods of explanation… until he gets it.

    Except many NZers don’t seem to get it.

    I have been absolutely mystified that so many people around me are prepared to live in a surveillance state. The threat of terrorism in NZ is close to zero, to respond to that with mass state surveillance is massively disproportionate.

    At what point in the slide to a dictatorship and / or totalitarian state should citizens stand up and stop it? When the state implements mass state surveillance? When we lose our freedom of speech and assembly? When we lose our right to vote?

    Because history shows us that it is those last freedoms and rights, the freedom of speech, assembly and the right to vote, which are lost last. And once they’re gone you have a dictatorship which is very hard to remove.

    So you have to know your history and look at what steps dictatorships arrive by. They are not something you vote FOR, they’re something that happen to your democracy to destroy it bit by bit.

    But like the frog in a pot set to boil, most of the population don’t realise whats happening until its too late. And while its happening they don’t want to listen to the whistleblowers (Edward Snowden) or even the experts (NZ Law Society).

    How to jolt them awake?

  6. “As always, there are people willing to speak out but the question is, who beyond the small progressive circles is awake and listening?”

    This is the $64 question. Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent describes it pretty well – get control of the mindless 80% and shape them – leave the other 20% to provide a patina of free speech but who are small enough and fragmented enough to be powerless.

    I wish I had the answer on a big scale – but I don’t. However, each of us is capable of much more influence than we think. We can write letters, make submissions, form & join active groups, demonstrate etc. We can talk to our friends and colleagues: we seem to stay silent on important issues in social settings – that has to stop.

    Gandhi said “What you do is insignificant but it’s most important that you do it.”

    • You are right:we each can do more but there will always be the apathetic 80%. Story: I wrote a comment on a Facebook page recently complaining that the people at large are ignorant of the truth because it suits the media to keep it that way. A friend saw it and ‘liked’ it.
      Why dont you send it to the press?” she asked. I did and it was published but that is not the point. Why did it not occur to her to paraphrase it and send it herself? Then there would have been two activists, not one.

  7. If John Key lied about knowing about Dotcom, what else has he lied about? Here ia a (partial) list of authorities that did know about Dotcom, and according to Teflon John, no-one told him. Yeah, right, John.

    The Prime Minister’s Department
    Overseas Investment Office
    Simon Power, Minister of Justice (up to 12/12/11)
    Judith Collins, Minister of Justice (from 12/12/11)
    Maurice Williamson, Minister for Land Information
    Police: OFCANZ – Organised and Financial Crime Agency NZ
    Crown Law Office
    SIS
    GCSB
    Immigration NZ
    A District Court Judge who signed the arrest warrant
    Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

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