Revolution or Resignation? Responding to the “Rigged Game” of NZ Politics

By
Chris Trotter
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42
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OKAY, so the game is rigged. Well spotted. Now, what should be done about it? That’s the $64,000 question. Because understanding that one lives inside a corrupt system does not automatically lead to political action. Indeed, it’s as likely to lead to resignation and despair as it is to anger and revolt. Those million missing voters that everybody claims to be chasing: aren’t they living proof that shrugging one’s shoulders is a lot easier than shrugging-off oppression? In fact, if the game really is rigged, then isn’t the argument that there’s no point in trying to un-rig it actually a pretty strong one? Why stick your neck out if someone’s just going to chop it off?

In a system that funnels nearly all the surplus wealth to a ridiculously small number of people, the best survival strategy is generally agreed to be to get as close to those people as possible. The argument for sucking-up to the rich is strengthened immeasurably when the consequences of challenging them are so life-shatteringly awful. When the few are protected from the many by a violent and utterly ruthless state apparatus, then “The Revolution” tends to sound a lot more like suicide than salvation.

History suggests that it takes a very special set of circumstances to move people from resignation and the hyper-cautious pursuit of their own self-interest to a mental state in which taking on “The System” seems like a good idea. The revolutionary spirit is a kind of madness induced by a coming together at the right time and in the right place of the right people with the right ideas. When that happens (and it doesn’t happen often) the future swiftly supplants the present as the primary motivator of human activity. Its hallucinatory power overrides all the usual objections to foolhardiness. Ideas once dismissed as dangerously speculative take on the bright aura of certainty. Hope eclipses evidence. Tomorrow outbids today.

So, is this the right time and place for a revolutionary upheaval? Are the right people with the right ideas on hand to offer us a future worth living in? The answer would appear to be that we are only half-way there. According to a recent poll, New Zealanders’ patience with the neoliberal status-quo has indeed worn perilously thin. Absent from the revolutionary equation, however, is an individual politician or political group capable of presenting a coherent and credible description of a better tomorrow.

In stark contrast to the Brits, who were presented at just the right moment with Jeremy Corbyn and a Labour Party manifesto entitled “For the Many – Not the Few”, New Zealanders must make do with an historically timorous Labour Party and a Green Party so keen to get its feet under the Cabinet Table that it has forsworn all but the most anodyne of political promises. Winston Peters (now joined by Shane Jones) may be offering voters the most convincing résumé for the job of New Zealand’s change agent, but three months out from the 2017 General Election even he comes across as more the ageing populist crooner than the antipodean Trump.

Confronted with such an unappetising smorgasbord of electoral choices, the observation that “the game is rigged” seems entirely vindicated by the evidence. In the current political context, however, it represents not so much a call to action as an excuse for saying “fuck it” and walking away.

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42 COMMENTS

    • It’s happening here to. I always complain about the media because they are owned by the “club” in New Zealand like in the states and they continue to spew out the neoliberal bullshit. Fictitious polls which these corporate media keep declaring the gospel are there to keep those million people who didn’t vote home, away from the polling stations. Kiwis are so trusting. It’s depressing.

  2. Bloody good picture Chris!!!!

    Yes the revolution has started alright.

    NZ First is well off the starting gate and strong to with new policy.

    we need experience in Government!!!

    We have a lot of amateur actors there now, just look at the horrible manner in the way they conduct themselves during question & answer time and the terrible back sliding speaker of the house#$%&*()

    Disgusting!!!!

    Get rid of them come September!

  3. All true to my mind, but no doubt, Chris, you will now be abused by many on the Left for betrayal of the cause. But you are right – only rarely in history have the right conditions arisen. (The worst example would have to be the Weimar Republic.) To detractors – I suggest that denying truths is a poor policy. If NZ had an equivalent of Corbyn, I think you would find Trotter supporting him.

    • Because, when he is not playing the Rigged System’s game as a cosy self-inflicted dog bite to the Left, on TV or Radio, he has a historian’s desire to Rose-tint the triumphs of post-war unionism.

      Today’s people, in New Zealand at least, have barely-reformable middle-class aspirations. In this they are the beneficiaries of Baby Boomer’s (and their parents’) game-changing success, which put those aspirations within reach.

      A country with a small population and benign weather and a reasonable measure of arable land contributes to this easy complacency.

      New Zealand is not the UK. Clarion calls there will probably resonate less here. And, unsurprisingly, even in the UK, there may be a high-water-mark to that kind of appeal, unless a coalition can be created, such as major problems with the path to Brexit.

      In New Zealand, progress will usually have to be even more incremental. And without rhetorical or socio-seductive talent, will be even slower. But still possible.

  4. “It tells you a strong, disciplined campaign about real issues and things people care about has the best chance of success. You can’t campaign on vacuous ideas like ‘strong, stable leadership’ or a manifesto that doesn’t say anything.” Andrew Little on Corbyn’s campaign and election result.

    Andrew Little has repeatedly laid claim to being ‘strong and stable’ on interviews on Radio NZ over the last few weeks.

    Can someone please stop him.

    • I wonder who is advising him?

      I would suggest he emphasize the difference between a government with ideas to improve the lot of the many, rather than simply pretend to.

      We’ve had enough “look like you’re doing something” and “selfie-stick” government to last a lifetime.

      If at base you don’t really believe in either the means or the ends, you are going to find no solutions and improve nothing.

      Generally, I think Little is improving when interviewed fairly. But I long to hear from someone able to enunciate a wider and deeper philosophical perspective on what he’s there for and why New Zealand needs and should want a change of government.

      I feel they are ready to follow if someone is ready to lead. And I don’t mean Winston.

  5. Yes. Exactly.

    I prefer the idea of saying ” Fuck it” and wading in to the first beige politician I see waddling along the street. I’d a preferred to say ” fuck it” and pushed gerry brownlee down that escalator. I’d prefer anything, anything at all other than to be half human and all minion to a cadre of lying scum bags sucking at my life’s veins. I can’t believe how we’ve become so bland and colourless and subservient to sick deviants with dirty secrets and an insatiable greed for everyone else’s money. I am frankly amazed that while we can be the fastest in a yot race, the most brutal at a brutal game, the most brilliant at many, many things yet we are unable to free ourselves from the tyranny of weak, pasty, soft, flabby, bully politicians handing us to the rich to eat alive. It’s all too bizarre. And there’s no one individual in the wings like a Corbyn or a Sanders to show us some kind of hope. That’s why I reckon we ( But who? ) should hire an actor and act out a script. We’ve become so disempowered and lacking in hope and passion that we will soon need instructions on how to obtain the right permit to take a shit.
    They’ve done this to us. Prof Stanley Milgram explains how. Sasha Baron Cohen capitalizes on the psychology to make movies. We’ve become terminally head fucked in fact. We’ve become orange traffic cones. We’re the ape that wears fluro vests. I see people wearing fluro vests out in fields ?? I see farmers driving tractors in paddocks miles from fucking roads with their little orange light flashing on their tractor cab. Why? A speeding sheep might plow into you, you fucking muppets?
    I know why. It’s because we’re gutless. We’re cowards and we’re cowering before bullies. We do our best to please, we do our best to appease, we are victims of narcissists and well educated yet dumb thugs who, when they see it, they take it.

    • We have been and are manipulated and are scared to see it for what it is.

      Because we are so divided, our actions take different directions and so protest is diffused in confusion.

      Meanwhile the propaganda continues ignoring the questioning or truth and relies on it being heard so many times that it becomes to be relied on.

      History gets written on that propaganda

  6. I presume this article was written in light of the Corbyn results against the Torys. Which is a catchword foe neo liberalism at the moment.

    … ” The revolutionary spirit is a kind of madness induced by a coming together at the right time and in the right place of the right people with the right ideas ” . …

    Indeed. Taking an example of that in the extreme, … the Cuban revolution occurred because of a small group ( who at that time , were not communists contrary to widely held belief ) of idealists, pragmatists and activists could easily draw a correlation with the Batista regime and American business interests which stripped the people of their wealth.

    The Russian revolution occurred on the other hand not necessarily because of a public uprising per se’,… but because it was the focal point of several powerful groups at the time to destroy all European monarchy’s. And if they could not destroy them they would ensure they were tamed and had their official power base reduced to a ‘ constitutional monarchy ‘.

    Now its interesting that when Che Guevara attempted communist revolution in both the Congo and Bolivia, … it was the people themselves who Guevara most lamented as ‘ not having the inclination , discipline or sense of purpose’ to be effective agents for change. And so both revolutions in both country’s failed because of that. With Guevara losing his life in Bolivia.

    I don’t like revolution. People get needlessly hurt. I also don’t like corrupt hierarchy’s that are answerable to no one and are in league with bankers , corporate lobbyists and their interests.

    Which brings us around to neo liberalism.

    In the Anglo / western democracy’s, this pernicious economic doctrine / social model had as its figureheads Margret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Here it was Roger Douglas . And all it ever really was , … was the regurgitation of Friedrich Hayeks 1890’s economic theory ( Austrian school of Economics ) – otherwise known as Lasse faire and in latter times, neo liberalism.

    It is an unstable theory and every time it is implemented it causes boom / bust with a few becoming obscenely wealthy and the vast majority gradually becoming impoverished- especially so if they live in a developing nation. There they are simply exploited . Here we see the declining wealth of the middle class , the degradation of the working class and the gradual decline of our living standards.

    But here in the west it takes time for the effects to become visible . Well , – after 33 years of implementation , it is becoming very very visible.

    Because we are a small population compared to England, dissenting voices are easily drowned out. It is so much easier to buy off the media and instruct a narrative. Keep them all working for longer hours for less and less pay , – and they are all too busy working to do anything other than mutter into their hastily drank coffees before they have to rush off to work , arrive home tired and spent, collapse into a chair after feeding the kids and washing up , watching some telly and then go to bed worrying about the bills that have to paid…

    I would say the neo liberal politicians the New Zealand Institute , and their distant Mont Pelerin society masters have done exceedingly well in New Zealand. They have achieved volumes. And while the TTPA has suffered a small set back , it wont stop the long term goal.

    Not in the slightest.

    I would say that it will not be until NZ suffers major economic set back that New Zealanders will galvanize into action and demand change. Such as they did in the aftermath of the Great Depression. There we had the origins of the legend of Mickey Joseph Savage and his govt. it was :

    … ” a coming together at the right time and in the right place of the right people with the right ideas ” …

    And the problem with Labour in particular , is that it continues to foster neo liberals among them. I say Labour , because they are traditionally the ones to stick up for the workers and address social injustices. But they are also the party that not only introduced neo liberalism but went out of their way to implement it.

    Labour holds a unique mantel of social justice in this country by tradition ,… no other party really holds that title historically. Others may hold equally as strong values in their manifestos but it is Labour who have formed govt’s with minor party’s . And being the largest opposition party , the spotlight is on them and what they will do. Not the Greens, not NZ First , … but Labour.

    Any true ‘ revolution’ against far right wing neo liberalism must begin with Labour. When they renounce by policy and by action neo liberalism and present a viable alternative, … when they demonstrate that the neo liberal experiment has been a colossal failure with destructive consequences , … there will be a ( virtually ) permanent landslide movement towards them ,.. and by association , all of the smaller party’s that will help to form a government.

    When they start to advocate the same sort of broadly Keynesian economic policy’s as Jeremy Corban has ,… it will be then that the revolutions starts.

  7. The game is mostly certainly rigged, but generally speaking, people are not suffering enough yet, so they will continue to take the easy path, which means doing nothing that challenges the system. Only when they are REALLY suffering will most people take action. And it is far too late, anyway of course. The future environment has already been sacrificed to maintain the system.

    2020 or so.

  8. CB – you are NZ’s Corbyn or Sanders – yeah let’s tell them all to get fucked! Love it!

  9. Armed revolution is unavoidable; it may not happen tomorrow or next year, but it IS going to happen. If you care to disagree, sell all your property, donate all your money to charity, and go compete for a less-than-minimum wage job in the race to the bottom. I believe in political language, the term is “the valley of transition”, it has been reached, and will be reached by a growing number of No Zealanders with nothing left to lose.

    • … ” Armed revolution is unavoidable; it may not happen tomorrow or next year, but it IS going to happen ” …

      Alternatively , … ‘ Legless revolution is unavoidable ‘ ,… which would be a far more convivial – and certainly a tad more socially amiable – way of going about things than ‘ armed revolution’ ever could be …

      I can just imagine Keynes as a young economics student at Cambridge University happily imbibing , being slightly ‘ legless ‘ , and debating among his student friends the best economic alternative solution to Lasse fair / neo liberalism to date.

      Bourbon or beer, Castro … name yer poison…

      I really do wish you would stop talking about ‘ armed revolution’ ,… as that is an affront to an ex security officer. Violence is ugly.

      Its up to us if we want peaceful change. The duty is ours.

      • Armed revolution usually takes the form of police or govt troops using extreme force and violence , then firearms signaling that some popular forceful defense is justified.

        it is a highly risky strategy and unless there is a good chance of escalating support

        It rarely happens as protest is seldom well organised across a majority, so small groups are easily suppressed.

        When the protest group gets large enough to be a significant threat then protesters usually win.

        There are exceptions such as when vigilantes, foreign troops or mercenaries are brought in. Guerrilla warfare can then ensue.

        Why do you think surveillance is so widespread and invasive.

      • I really do wish you would stop talking about ‘ armed revolution’ ,… as that is an affront to an ex security officer. Violence is ugly.

        Its up to us if we want peaceful change. The duty is ours.

        I concur, Wild Katipo – 100%.

        I don’t know if “Castro” is naive about what “armed revolution” entails – but Libya and Syria should be clear examples where that road leads.

        Or if he’s being an “agent provocateur”.

        Either way, s/he is not helping matters.

      • Everyone forgets that without energy nothing happens, and that we live in an -energy-depleted world which is post peak oil and being held together by ‘unconventional oil’ which is doomed to failure in the near future.

        Since there can be no economy [in the modern sense of economy and economics] when the oil supply is constrained and rapidly -which is clearly on the horizon- all talk of economic theory is irrelevant.

        The game being played by the fuckwits in power (or awaiting their opportunity to be in power) involves denying reality and lying to the masses about everything, as they ‘progressively’ destabilize the factors that make life possible.

        Industrial civilisation is, by definition, unsustainable, and will collapse soon .

  10. Goodness Chris do we really want an antipodean Trump? I’ve been hopeing he would come through his troubles and do some of the things he promised, making excuses for him against the chorus of condemnation, but I have to admit he’s not looking good.
    But he was the best the Yanks could do to try to find an alternative to the strangle-hold that the established parties everywhere have on democracy. Look what happened in France. An unknown and a party only months old. Up against in the end an extreme nationalist. All the extremists came through and the result went to a banker for god’s sake, but like the election of Trump it was the unpredictable result of of a population trying to find something different.
    In the UK , though starting from so far behind he not surprisingly didn’t quite make it, but Corbyn, regenerating genuine traditional values in an established ,once social democratic party , has a much clearer road ahead, and much more clearly embodies the change his supporters want. But oh boy ! will Corbyn’s labour be in for a rough ride if and when they make government in this neoliberal world.
    People don’t vote in NZ because there is no candidate out there that they believe has the slightest interest in their lives, or the ability to improve the running of the country in the interests of the existing population. And they are perfectly justified in making that assessment.
    D J S

    • … ” People don’t vote in NZ because there is no candidate out there that they believe has the slightest interest in their lives, or the ability to improve the running of the country in the interests of the existing population. And they are perfectly justified in making that assessment ” …

      Pretty much. But politicians are only people themselves.

      Not much of a justification but fear would be a motivator as well to not rock the boat. They know the battle will be long and hard and cost them dearly. That is where Corbyn , – and yes Trump – are different. They are in large country’s population wise , one a billionaire with nothing to lose if he didn’t make it , the other a long term politician with the ‘creds’.

      The common denominator is both preached a message based on how they perceived the people to be feeling.

      Both of them spoke in nationalistic terms, both of them railed against the excesses of Globalism / neo liberalism.

      In the American example , that was a message tailored to the American audience with its long tradition of capitalism , – though capitalism within certain boundaries. With Corbyn , it was more similar to pre 1984 NZ, with its state owned assets , award wage rates , regulations to prevent unfairness in trade and rorting the system etc…

      I would say that not only because we were selected as the guinea pigs for the free market experiment by the Mont Pelerin society for total embracing of the free market , but also because we are isolated, of a small population , and are miles from the international markets , … these political party’s are loath to swim against that tide. Big business, corporate lobby groups all donate to keep these party’s onside.

      And there’s the problem right there.

      And its not until poverty becomes severe , and enough people become strident about it , … that politicians will pick up and run with it and feel they have the numbers to back them.

      Sad , really . That they need to be shamed or embarrassed into action. We have whimpers about it , but as of yet ,.. nothing as bold or declarative as the gauntlet Jeremy Corbyn has laid down.

      But it just goes to show the power and the magic of when one person pushes against all odds and believes in what they are saying. They have nothing to hide, everything to lose, and that engenders trust and vision.

      If they only realized the gains they would get if they thought ‘ stuff it – I’m sick of all this double speak, I’m going to start making waves’. And I would have to say Winston Peters , and to a lesser extent Andrew Little , ( with a concession also to Hone Hawira ) in a limited fashion are among some of the only ones to date that have shown this sort of gumption in challenging the monolith of neo liberalism.

      But even then , they are far short of the benchmark established by Jeremy Corbyn.

      • I agree with all of that Katipo, but Corbyn hasn’t just materialised , he’s been there forever. It’s just that everyone is recognising that he has been on track all along. It makes him uniquely authentic . Like Chris would be if he would put his hand up.
        D J S

  11. Looks like another 3 years of the Tories, New Zealanders are like our National Symbol the sheep. We will keep believing what MSM tell us. Winston Peters appears to be the only politican who has any clue about what is actually going on here in NZ however he was tainted by the Winebox Enquiry where he tried to expose fraudulent behaviour.

    • 100% Jack,

      Sleepy hobbits care about who wins a rich mans sport than their country even though they are loosing their country as they sleep!!!!!!!

      Shows how shallow they really are.

    • Winston is the only party and don’t keep saying that about the Tories. I’m voting for Winston.

  12. What news of the old country? When I came into money (thanks Pa)I chose somewhere warm and cheap (Vanuatu), much like my British ancestors.

    Need is pretty near, but no one near to step up, like the least likely successful public figure, Bruce Jesson…yet, and yet, successful.

    Individualism and separated media will destroy us.

  14. NZ politics is a club of deluded fanatics, in which everyone is scientifically and financially illiterate and fails understand the basics ofecology and fails to understand the fundamentals of the financial system -because they have studied neither; everyone believes in the financialisation of every aspect of life yet denies the repercussions of that financialisation; everyone believes in the fantasy of infinite growth on a finite planet even though they know the Earth is finite; everyone believes that the environment (both local and global) can cope with whatever we throw at it or dump in it, even as both the local environment and global environment collapse; everyone believes in ‘development’ even though it is abundantly clear that development is at the core of our collective predicament; everyone is terrified of the international bankers and the global corporations that drive much of the insanity we witness, and promote the very aspects of policy that cause our demise.

    The idiotic narratives spouted by politicians are promulgated by the self-serving liars and talking heads of the idiotic corporate-owned mainstream media; the bulk of the populace are nothing more than ‘livestock’, dumbed-down debt-slaves and slaves to consumerism, their ability to think and act intelligently having been removed long ago by an ‘education’ system that is designed not to educate young people but to train them to be obedient to the corporate system.

    To imagine dumbed-down debt slaves who are also slaves to consumerism will revolt is to be deluded. (Orwell pointed it out in ‘1984’.)

    Those in power will do what they do (lie, self-serve, manipulate, propagandise) until they can’t.

    It will be environmental degradation (atmospheric CO2 is now well over 400 ppm and rising when is should be below 320 ppm and stable), overpopulation (close to 8 billion, which is population overshoot of around 100 times what the Earth can stand) and overconsumption and excessive energy use that will bring the globalized system down: that has been known for decades. And is almost universally denied because denying reality is a lot easier than dealing with it in the short term.

    Pity the children of this country and the world because they are the ones who will have to endure the diabolical conditions -environmental, economic and social- that are a natural product of the culture of greed and stupidity that was foisted on the bulk of humanity by bankers and economists decades ago.

  15. The survival strategies for the small group of wealthy might also be to get as close to the likely people as possible too. It happens.

    Emissaries head out to the ghettos to recruit representative specimens and take them away to a better life. The locals cheer seeing Lotto land so close and take one of their own. The locals are sated, realms of vicariousness plumbed and feelings of hate assuaged. The intruders’ aims realised.

    And the locals cheer so much when those specimens return, fully fledged uniformed mercenary members of a rugby first XV to thrash their own.

  16. “And its not until poverty becomes strident about it that politicians will pick up and run with it and feel they have the numbers to back them”[Wild Katipo]

    That about sums it up .Meanwhile beware of false prophets like the TOP party .Gareth Morgan has some seductive policies that will fool some with a limited understanding of politics .These policies are counter productive to efforts to promote an egalitarian society. More of this in the near future!!

  17. I noticed in the last election how the entire range of political vipers rose up to put paid to Hone Harawera and Mana-Internet Party. Moreover the suspicion is still with me that the last election was rigged.
    My feeling is that any counter movement must be sub rosa, disiplined, strategic and effective. The greater the silence, the greater the terror at the top.

  18. Revolutions occur all the time. We rarely notice them because none of us (or indeed anyone else) actually know or understand exactly how the game is rigged, so we are not well placed to notice the revolution, especially when the successful iconoclasts are ultimately almost indistinguishable from the ancien regime.

    To call the game”rigged” however overlooks that the rigging is to a large measure the result of benign (or malignant) laisser faire.

    When personal advantage is clear and easily effected, some might put a judicious thumb on the scale, but just as you describe, human nature might tempt many to schmooze the wealthy, while human propensity to aspire to short-term advantage, ignoring medium to long term self-interest, deals with most of the rest.

    To move the dial towards genuine progress requires little more than a seductive messenger, and enough dissatisfaction to draw an audience. When random action produces a preferable result, the advantage will stick – until, of course, an equally attractive proponent comes along to reverse the improvement.

    But just because the way is crooked and progress tentative is no reason to pretend there is not a clear choice in the up-coming election.

    Anyone who pretends that electing a government that at least identifies itself with the Left would be no different from electing one that appeals to the inaction typical of the Right in this year’s manifestation, would be entirely disingenuous.

    The fact that the total left-Green program is not a carbon copy of one’s own manifesto is not to say there aren’t improvements at stake.

    And to dismiss this with an effete wave of a perfumed hand is an unreasonable abdication of progressive responsibility.

  22. It’s the people who make the revolution not the politicians. So it’s up the people and the commentators to change the government by uniting.

    While this post may have a lot of truth, if revolution is what they are after the post might come across as more depressing than inspiring to do something about it.

    Yep, we don’t have a Corbyn, but any change of government away from National is going to have a massive swing away from the far right, ideologically ignorant dictatorship that is emerging under the National party.

    Any other party is better than them. And sitting around not voting or thinking eventually someone else is going to do something about it is actually not helping.

    Agency and a leap of faith is necessary to start the ball rolling away from the corruption that is the National party.

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