Kyle Chapman’s brand of racism never really caught on much in NZ. Not because NZ isn’t racist, it’s just because Kyle’s National Front Movement required so much energy.
Dressing up as neo-Nazi’s and saluting swastika’s is too much effort for NZ’s ultra laid back culture.
It comes across as that thing we collectively despise the most as NZers – trying too hard.
NZ’s deeply ingrained negative egalitarianism is like a bucket of crabs, grabbing any crab that ever tries to escape the bucket and pulling them back into the collective doom. It’s the ‘you think you’re smarter than me c**t” type of chip on our shoulder that has always left NZ a bit deformed and anti-intellectual
Indeed, one of the secrets to Key’s success politically is his casual laid back manner, it connects to this dark streak of anti-intellectualism and embraces Key’s nonchalant ignorance with the passion of a junkie to their dealer.
Not that 30 years of neoliberal media have helped much of course.
Take the sudden surprise that Massey was a racist white supremacist. This has surprised the neoliberal corporate mass media with the same intensity as their sudden realisation this year that Kiwis are living in cars, that child poverty is real and that our system is racist.
The ignorance of our past and it’s ongoing power over the debate today was reflected in this bullshit piece by stuff who were fucking celebrating Massey’s Cossacks, a paramilitary fascist movement that crushed Unionists in the turn of the 20th Century…
‘Cossacks’ to ride again 100 years after strike
A century after they first rode in from the countryside with batons in hand, Massey’s Cossacks will once again take to the streets of Wellington.
Except this time, no blood will be spilt.
A parade to commemorate the great waterfront strike of 1913, when prime minister Bill Massey dispatched baton- wielding farmers on horseback to quell union protests on the capital’s streets, will take place on Tuesday.
Modern-day horsemen and unionists will begin from outside the Museum of Wellington City & Sea, and head up Lambton Quay to Bunny St.
The 1913 strike involved about 14,000 workers nationwide and led to clashes with police in central Wellington, involving cavalry charges, revolver fire and machineguns deployed on the wharves and in Buckle St.
They were labelled “Massey’s Cossacks” because of their similarities to the people of the Russian and Ukrainian hinterland who received government privileges in return for military services.
…that’s right, they fucking celebrated these fascists at Stuff.co.nz without any critical understanding whatsoever and we are seeing that again with this latest casually racist ‘Hobson’s Pledge’ crap started by Don Brash and other white supremacists under the cover of ‘one law’.
This month research was released that showed NZ’s systems are racist, yet the majority of the media were focused on one rich woman calling another rich woman a ‘Boat N****r’. Rich women calling each other racist names is news worthy, the fact that the Judiciary and Corrections are actually racist isn’t.
In casual NZ, facts are for gays and women, give us a beer with the PM and a BBQ to burn books on and we’re easily satisfied.
Any progressive Government coming into power must be courageous enough to push for Public Broadcasting that will challenge these narratives rather than nurture them.
“NZ’s deeply ingrained negative egalitarianism is like a bucket of crabs, grabbing any crab that ever tries to escape the bucket and pulling them back into the collective doom. It’s the ‘you think you’re smarter than me c**t” type of chip on our shoulder that has always left NZ a bit deformed and anti-intellectual.”
Yeah, when I enrolled in university, my grandfather gave me a stern look and said “Don’t think you’re better than us just because you’re going to university.”
No, you old bastard, I’m better than you because I don’t use my authority to try and make people feel guilty for wanting to better themselves.
It shouldn’t be any surprise then to note that he voted National his entire life, hated unions, got upset every time a Split Enz music video came on tv and started ranting about “woolly woofters”, and perhaps worst of all, loved to listen to Bing Crosby.
Great photo. Race relations is a fragile thing. Just look at the black lives matter movement in the U.S. who go nuts even when a cop shoots someone where the cops had no option, let alone the unjustified shootings. Brash, if you will excuse the pun, is too Brash for this topic, it requires the ultimate in diplomacy for, black, white and everyone in between.
Dave, get off the grass. “Black Lives Matter” is shorthand for the challenging: “Black Lives Matter Too”, as you, presumably know.
The steady drumbeat of unarmed blacks being shot to death by US cops, (don’t come back with the black cops shoot too bs, the system is racist, not only individual policemen or women) is indicative of the ubiquitous daily indignities doled out to coloured Americans, especially blacks, but not exclusively. (See Palestinian Extremism).
Whether this or that shooting has mitigating factors is a minor detail compared to the day to day reality experienced by the movement’s adherents. The Black Lives Matter movement , while sometimes unfocused and inartfully promoted, is an entirely legitimate expression of frustration over decades of insufficient progress away from complacently racist views.
We aren’t immune to those here either.
With the greatest of respect I think you have missed my point.
I got that you think Brash wasn’t careful enough with his framing of this issue for those fragile sensibilities. How about just too ignorant or maybe too bigoted. Both of those work for me.
Thanks for the respect but I maybe got the point just fine.
If Nick missed your point it was because your words told us you thought BLM was nuts. Race relations might be fragile but that is because so many people hold racist beliefs & refuse to let any evidence change that bias.
Dave, I got your point. While it may have been an initial sentiment, BLM is a divisive, violent hate group. Period. You can be for black lives without supporting that ridiculous Soros backed group.
And another thing. The land was acquired illegally so why should the thieves be more powerful than before
All land is acquired illegally. Sooner or later, one way or another, someone wins something, someone loses something.
We call it civilization.
Kyle Chapman’s dress up games also too closely resembled the uniformed thugs of a certain dictator that half of the world went to war against. That also has not helped his cause.
As for Don Brash, a National Party supporter told me how close he came to winning the 2005 election. When challenged he pointed to the Orewa speeches. What the supporter did not admit was the sheer number of women and Maori when one broke down the voting statistics by gender and ethnicity who refused to vote or voted for other parties, was that because of the speeches “close to winning” was not “I won!”.
Yes the laid back casualness of so many can be a serious problem when it comes to dealing with important matters and decisions, including elections and voting for candidates and parties.
But re Don Brash, I think this time the MSM did not give him much time and credit, apart perhaps from ones like Paul Henry. Duncan Garner rubbished his new attempts to stir up debate about supposedly “privileged” Maori, and others in the MSM also considered this as just another return to the days of his Orewa speech.
John Key is much more of a concern, and the New Zealander’s tolerance towards their leader, and even fan base that there is.
As for “stuff” and their report on the Massey remembrance, I have given up all hope that the present MSM journos and opinion writers will ever get a grip of their own country’s history and of facts that matter.
The decline of standards is evident, and we should not be surprised about false and misleading reporting, about misinterpreting past and present events and so forth.
I read some crap all the time, including in our Central Leader, where facts do often not seem to matter all that much, given the mistakes and oversight of detail I note in their reports.
Go online and look at the NZ Herald website, and the nightmare journey reaches an even more sinister destination, what they present as “news” now is targeted at people who fall for click bait and little else.
So commercialisation in the crisis riddled MSM and the use of the internet and online services lead to a wild west kind of media now, where you can shoot first and ask questions later. Some stories get corrected or amended during the day, I note.
Post truth era is the description of what we have, hence liars and BS artists get away with so much, and hence we have a nasty, dishonest government get voted in election after election.
+100
But we need to change the government first. Personally feel that all the political parties and left commentators should put aside their individual disagreements on policy to vote the National party out of government, which quite frankly does not seem to be easy.
In theory this is very simple. The only tactical unity required is on Election Day (or during pre-voting I guess) we don’t vote for National, or one of their possible support parties (ACT, UF, Māori, or NZ First). There are two problems. One is that about 10% of those opposed to National will vote NZ First, despite them refusing to commit to getting National out of government. In NZ First were to withdraw this fence-sitting position before Election Day, I would of course withdraw this criticism, but in practice, they will go with Labour or National, depending on who offers Winston the best legacy project.
The second, more complicated problem is the ideologically committed ‘no confidence in the system’ non-vote. I sympathize with this position, I really do. The governing system in Aotearoa is parliamentary supremacy, masquerading as “representative democracy”. After 30 years of watching elections change very little beyond the colour they paint the bikesheds, I have very little confidence in them. I want my own political practice as a small part of a nonviolent democratic revolution in this country.
Some questions I would pose to my fellow anarchists and other ‘no confidence’ voters. If the revolution was next Thursday, what would Aotearoa look like after it was over? If we can’t achieve this utopia through electioneering (and I agree we can’t), what onviolent and consensus-building political practices can we use to achieve it? Are there law changes or public sector activities that can reduce our freedom of action to organise and create new institutions of deep democracy? If there are, isn’t it good strategy to identify the parliamentary parties least likely to impinge on our democratic freedoms (human rights, civil liberties etc), and most likely to respect our freedom to organise outside the parliamentary sphere, and vote for them? After all, it only takes a couple of hours every three years.
Since I became politically aware over 50 years ago I have witnessed so-called right-leaning and so-called left-leaning governments fiddle with this and tinker with that, restructure this and reform that, and throughout that entire half-century everything that matters has been made worse and none of the fundamental issues that needed to be addressed long ago have ever been addressed.
The farcical puppet show that passes for an election in America is symptomatic of the level of corruption and inanity that is now endemic throughout western societies, and which is a direct consequence of dumbing-down and brainwashing of the masses.
I see no indication of that dismal situation changing any time soon but do see every indication the system will cause its own collapse in the medium term, i.e. 2020 to 2030 and will cause even more widespread suffering than it is already causing.
What it means to be a Kiwi? I suppose a brainwashed consumerist who does not care a shit about slave workers in poor countries making cheaper clothes for them, now on sale at H + M in Sylvia Park, Auckland:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/314650/protestors-stage-sit-down-at-h-and-m-store-opening
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/student-protesters-demonstrate-against-h-ms-inhumane-manufacturing
By the way, I watched the news, and on both channels, that is the Freeview ones, TV One and TV3 reported, that the H+M management or staff asked the media to return their media passes (that they had been issued), because the (dared) film the small protest by some concerned, dedicated, courageous protestors!!!
While the were sitting there silently and peacefully, thousands lined up to rush into the newly opened clothing retail story, to get a BARGAIN.
No further questions asked, it seems, after decades of consumerist conditioning, of depoliticising and dumbing down, people are no longer much interested how and where the goods they cherish are made. Never mind human rights and decent workers conditions.
Welcome to NZ Inc 2016, John Key can relish his perhaps good chances to get a fourth term.
Business rules, consumerism rules, commerce rules, greed and selfishness rule, we are fast moving to a modern day version of fascism if we do not watch out.
You are right MiA.
I think we are already are ‘a modern day version of fascism’ and if the Natz win the next election it will be cemented in. This government is not interested in informed democracy and is going out of its way to squash all opposition.
People who do not understand the financial system (i.e. 99%+ of the populace) fall for the HUGE confidence trick that central bankers are extremely smart people who have exceptional wisdom -when in fact the very opposite is true.
As a member of the gang -the gang of thieves, liars and exploiters who have been screwing NZ for decades for personal gain- Brash can churn out any kind of garbage and it will be avidly reported by the corrupt, corporate-owned mainstream media.
The exploiters need a dumbed-down, brainwashed populace incapable of critical thinking to facilitate their loot-and-pollute agendas, so that is exactly what we have -a dumbed-down, brainwashed populace incapable of critical thinking.
We are now well down the path that leads to economic meltdown, social meltdown and environmental meltdown as a consequence of the idiotic pronouncements -“I don’t believe in global warming.”- of wankers like Brash, and the anti-intelligent-debate brigade that promote his exploitive, self-serving, short-term narratives.
It will be the collapse of the environment -promoted by arseholes like Brash- that will shortly ruin everything for everyone.
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_two_years.png
Brash is getting back to his old Exclusive Bretheran roots?
Samuel Marsden cracks me up, the name of a girls school named after a misogynist who flayed naked woman prisoners in NSW.
Comments are closed.