The war memorial on the corner of Symonds Street and City Road in Auckland CBD was attacked by an anti-colonial activist group in the early hours of the morning. The statue of ‘Zealandia’ pays homage to ‘Mother Britain’ a figure of British colonialism, and was erected specifically as a memorial to the New Zealand Wars. This Auckland statue is one of three depicting the figure of ‘Zealandia’ in the country, the others located in Waimate and Palmerston. The group have attached an axe to her head and a poster to the plaque that reads: “Fascism and White Supremacy are not Welcome Here.” The anonymous group taking responsibility for the attack have issued the following statement:
“The ‘Zealandia’ war memorial is an ode to the violent and brutal occupation of Māori lands. It celebrates the ongoing colonisation of Aotearoa, its lands and its peoples. The settler capitalist system imposed on this land is a poison that works to systematically oppress indigenous peoples throughout the world to the benefit of corporations and the super-rich. It is a system that is doomed to fail.”
The Memorial is a tribute to the imperial and colonial soldiers who fought for Britain during the New Zealand Wars. Taking place between 1845 and 1872, these wars paved the way for mass confiscation and forced sale of Māori lands.
Good!
Well, they are not wrong.
And lets face it, The Victoria League was/is a fairly marginal group.
The one thing in its favour, apart from the draped flag which always fascinated me, is that it maintained a reminder of a War that was pretty much deleted from public consciousness by the 1920s. I know that as a kid in the 70’s I didn’t have a clue what it was referring to.
Would that be the morallly superior left-wing intellectuals known as Antifa?
Do you know something about Antifa?
About bloody time.
They have a political economic message spelt out as well. Good work people.
Antifa activists are doing a good job trying to draw comparisons to the Maori experience and the Jewish one at the moment. It was all kicked off by David Cohen some years back. Very evident in Jewish social media accounts pushing teo reo and Maori separatism at the moment.
Plan B South Island.
Oh no you don’t.
Piss off. The South Island is just fine as it is.
No more JAFAs down here thanks.
😀 😀 😀
“Maori separatism”, eh? Well, that’s loaded code indicating your agenda…
While they have a point, where does this stop. What was acceptable many years ago may be no longer acceptable but does that mean we have to revisit and, in some cases, apologise for the actions of our ancestors? Do the Danes have to feel bad because their Viking ancestors created havoc? Do the descendants of Genghis Khan do the same? Are we still doing things which will be viewed differently in 100 years time and will no longer be acceptable – yes we are, but it is not the things we are knowingly doing such as polluting our waterways, but it is the things we are unaware of?
Overly simplistic way of viewing things and a lost chance to make some far more important points about the nature of globalist exploitation imo. I’d totally support them putting up a plaque calling some of those assumptions into question, even having an official one set up which overshadows the original and gives an alternative message relating to what we know now.
I mean, really:
“The settler capitalist system imposed on this land is a poison that works to systematically oppress indigenous peoples throughout the world to the benefit of corporations and the super-rich. It is a system that is doomed to fail.”
Life expectancy comparison? Infant mortality rate comparison? Of course European rule was established and enforced in terms totally unjustifiable, in breach of the Treaty, and preceded by foolish things like selling then-cutting edge battlefield weaponry to a society where inter-tribal warfare was ongoing, and inter-generational scores remained to be settled with violence. That was a recipe for disaster which Europeans foolishly supplied and failed to adequately atone for for far too long.
A more thoughtful commentary would insist upon honouring the Treaty and offering some context for the original memorial, which should be seen for what it is, the remnant of an attitude which has thankfully diminished now to the shrinking worlds of John Ansell and Don Brash. Any exploitation involving the super-rich and the corporate world is frankly something which affects us all, and while I think it is correct to point out that it falls harder in the new world upon indigenous peoples, I think a look at the fate of the European working class in the correct context of globalist exploitation of people and resources would demonstrate that, in the words of punk band Born Against, these forces will ‘fuck you hard without a colour’. Ask my great grandfather (oh wait, you can’t – he died malnourished and penniless aged in his 20s during the great depression, in an era remembered largely in popular culture for the upper-class excesses of F Scott Fitzgerald and Evelyn Waugh novels).
That’s why I can’t stand intersectionalism. It overlooks the plain fact that anything corporatists have done to minorities are just the things it pioneered on working class white people in Europe before the tendrils began to spread. And for those who remained, it never stopped doing it to them. Their victimhood is actually the most enduring I remember well the council estates of 1980s Yorkshire and Lancashire from my childhood. Even with my age yet to hit double figures, I could see how doomed these kids were, and how everything which was going to happen to them was a continuation of what had happened to their hapless ancestors.
You’re supposed to be outraged. Unthinkingly outraged about ‘oppression’ etc.
And, what’s worse, you mention white indigenous kids being given a hard time. (Yes, Gentle Readers, white kids of the UK are indeed indigenous and may come under that Rights of Indigenous People UN deal. It probably also covers the black kids who descended from immigrants in Roman times. Native for more than two thousand years. Is that enough?)
Do not disturb the narrative. Let it run its course.
We might then come to the bit that says what we in the modern era are supposed to do with this febrility – and how that will lead to – what?
(There have always been people of this persuasion: in every era and nation. It is not new – and there’s probably a trail to who is/are profiting from the turmoil.)
Accusations of racism and colonialism are there to distract people from the forces that oppress everyone. We are all being oppressed but the powerful are successful in dividing us and diverting our energies into attacking each other. Sadly the left seem particularly blind to this.
I’m concerned that we are atomizing instead of coalescing, and it is a real pity to see. Whatever the answer may be, unceremoniously trashing historic monuments can’t be it. The only attention it will get is from the likes of Brash or Ansell. It’s clear that their views have little currency, we’re in the kind of climate now where nobody could entertain the notion that the continued existence of old monuments amounts to public endorsement of the land wars. We face a shared challenge to understand and contest the power games of global corporatism, and there can be no hierarchy of outrage when it comes to the deliberate exploitation of billions of people.
Comments are closed.