Over the past couple of weeks New Zealand has had a widespread outbreak of us-ness. It has been great. I particularly like the story of the three young women, school students, who saw a bus driver close the doors on a woman wearing a hijab, talked to her, waited with her, accompanied her on the next bus and ensured a complaint was laid even though the counter staff said it could not happen. They are cultural heroes!
But we are NOT ‘one’. There are far too many people who practice ethnic, gender and class exclusion in this country. This will be somewhat hidden for a while until the next outbreak of exclusionary practices, hopefully not nearly as horrific as the times we have lived through already.
In order to see what things might look like, however, we only need to look at the country of my birth, where the far-right ravings loved by Mr No-Name have taken severe hold of the populace. The people in the photo at the top of this blog believe they are being ‘replaced’ (read forcibly overrun) by persons of colour in their own land. Having fought off Hitler, the discourse goes, Britain has been given away to the European trash and thereafter to anyone who wants to come there. Keep them out! Rule Britannia! Brexit now, at all costs!
Underpinning this discourse is a sort of nostalgic view of the UK from the 1950s, even though most don’t even remember that time. Then, so the dream goes, the population dwelt together in monocultural bliss, unburdened by much in the way of internationalism or even education. That this vision of ‘Little England’ bears little relation to reality, and certainly denotes no Utopia, is of little account.
The country is split down the middle. After 45 years (since Thatcher) of neo-liberalism, with the wealth trickling upwards to the elite, and the rest of the populace mired in unemployment, poverty and austerity (which means draining any remaining wealth from the bottom half), it has not been hard to persuade the poor that their misery is down to immigration, and that caused by belonging to the European Community.
Is England, or even Britain, on the verge of a new civil war? They have managed not to have one for about 350 years, turning their military power outwards to defeat enemies such in places such as the Falkland Islands, that grand war to end all wars.
The people, the parliament, the countries of the union are all hopelessly divided. In the week after the Christchurch atrocity, there were 95 anti-Muslim attacks in the UK, 85 of them referencing Christchurch.
It is hard to see where it is all going to end. When people in the UK called for Jacinda to come and take over, was this in fact a last-ditch appeal for national unity against the forces of divisiveness? Is Tommy Robinson, a nasty women-beating fraudster (excuse the exclusionary language) the new Oliver Cromwell, assembling an army of the people to speak the racist truth to power?
Remember, one of their MPs, Jo Cox, has already been murdered by one of these people (be careful, Jacinda, you might be a target of some of these people for creating a powerful short-term antidote to hate speech).
So here we are, in this Trumpy, Brexity, yellow-vesty, war-ridden world, where the post-WW2 settlements have failed and now we face a burgeoning crisis, once more focussed on race, wealth and power. Is there no hope for peace? Perhaps in Aotearoa, which I guess is why interest in immigration here has spiked in the past couple of weeks. I guess all we can do here is do our best, ensure that bus drivers throw open the doors for women of the veil, keep shouting our support for all our brothers and sisters in this land, keep redressing past wrongs and hope the world does not go mad – again.
Dr Liz Gordon began her working life as a university lecturer at Massey and the Canterbury universities. She spent six years as an Alliance MP, before starting her own research company, Pukeko Research. Her work is in the fields of justice, law, education and sociology (poverty and inequality). She is the president of Pillars, a charity that works for the children of prisoners, a prison volunteer, and is on the board of several other organisations. Her mission is to see New Zealand freed from the shackles of neo-liberalism before she dies (hopefully well before!).
Would you ever dare to understand, that people in any country may have a certain longing for security, for belonging, for some unity and identity, expressed in living culture?
Or do you really believe we are all ‘one’ and ‘one of us’ that has no distinguishable aspects of being, be this culture, ethnicity, individual identity, religion even?
It is extremely condemn-able what the terrorist in Christchurch did, it is wrong and evil. The perpetrator was an extremist of the worst kinds. But what is happening in the UK, in some other countries in Europe, and in the US and even to some degree in Australia and here, it is a reaction, a reaction to decades of laissez faire policies in not only economics, also in immigration.
For some, and increasingly some, this is reaching a level where they fear, they fear their own cultural or national identity is being undermined or at risk of being destroyed.
That reaction may make sense to some, it may not so for others, it may be wrong, but it is real.
We have had numerous periods in history, where a trend going one way was later replaced by a trend going the other way.
The pulse of the people has not even been allowed to be felt, as in NZ Inc. the pro immigration lobby has had the upper hand, being neoliberals supporting businesses to be able to access willing overseas immigrant labour, and also being social liberals, wanting to turn the country into a truly multicultural society.
Have the people already living here ever been asked about whether they want this or not? I fear they have at each election been presented packages by parties, that avoid discussion of immigration (perhaps with the exception of Winston First), and they had to pick a package that may have offered them something they felt they needed as voters and citizens.
Immigration and the change of the face of once ‘bicultural’ New Zealand (Maori and Pakeha) has been avoided to be an issue, due to political correctness. And we will with potential law changes get even more political correctness, possibly restrictions of free speech.
To some this will resemble nothing else but a modern day PC dictatorship. I fear that some do not want to realise this, hence this post written by a person who I consider to otherwise be educated, but where there are NO comments so far.
It is a topic most Kiwis steer clear off now, they do not want to be seen as xenophobic or islamophobic, as that would breach PC rules and make you a target for the ones in power, including the MSM.
Culture is not protected by avoiding other cultures.
“Is England, or even Britain, on the verge of a new civil war?” Britain has never had a civil war (mores the pity) – workers against the elite. The so-called civil war of the 1600’s was middleclass v aristocracy; protestantism v catholic. The present turmoil is led by impoverished workers, but they haven’t the resources to do any serious harm, or good.
Civil war in Britain is inevitable, as it is in NZ, however much you prattle on about our “one ness”
Johnnybg’s fair & balanced comments are being censored again by TDB, maybe to time to bugger off again. This is no place or country for radical, poor, patriotic old white men who have a penchant for uncomfortable truths. Time for war by other means.
In fact all cultures require other cultures to give theirs distinction.
So you don’t believe Maori deserve any special treatment then?
“There are far too many people who practice ethnic, gender and class exclusion in this country.”
Too much wokie talk in this post.
Be reasonable, shouldn’t local people have the rights to live and control their own environment, including people who got born and raised in that community? Should they be pushed to the side as power interests replace them and change the laws around them to keep their own power interests growing around the world.
Woke Equality does not plan for power issues such as when someone with money can buy residency in NZ while not working here post citizenship or having anything to do with the country apart from exploiting it for personal gain and our laws allow this to pass on to their relatives too.
Should a poor Kiwi have to pay for overseas millionaires kids getting free kindy care/health care in NZ paid for by Kiwis, and be told they need to pay more taxes, when increasingly our government is keen to give away citizenship paper based only and to continue on to relatives no questions asked?
Under neoliberalism local rights are eroded so that those who have more power can go around buying up local resources, exploiting it and then moving on with the profits to buy up more. They don’t pay taxes.
“Data from the ATO reveals that in the 2015/2016 financial year, 732 companies failed to pay a cent of tax. These include household names like Bluescope Steel, Leandlease, CSL, Alcoa, Glencore, Qantas, Sony, Origin Energy, Energy Australia, Exxon Mobil, Auspost, Vodaphone, IBM AU/NZ, Ford, Foxtel, Virgin Australia and Seven Group.”
https://www.actu.org.au/actu-media/media-releases/2017/732-companies-pay-no-tax-cost-australia-134-billion
Take off the rose tinted glasses and work out why we have a paltry 1000 refugees in NZ and nearly 5,000,000 visitors buying up the assets and trying to get residency and citizenship here… our immigration policy is not for human rights reasons. It is because NZ government policy is based around exploitative scams they encourage on behalf of big business and scamsters operating here, and our political parties attraction to donated money.
Think 50 x $42,000 is over 2 million dollars. What a profit and our government encourages it further with open permits for people who can’t speak English, have no NZ trade qualification and no job offer here! Unions are promoting it, which is mind boggling to allow so many people into NZ in a housing shortage without a job or any recognised NZ trade degree (ability checked on arrival because of counterfeit documents) or speaking the language!
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018681217/chinese-migrant-workers-we-ve-been-cheated
I suggest that the lone anecdotal tale of a bus driver closing the door on a woman wearing a hijab as an example of discrimination is shonky “research”, especially for one who is a professional researcher. Anywhere in Auckland, any time of the day, one can see bus drivers routinely closing their doors on people mostly not wearing hijabs. It has been done to me more than once (I have never been known to wear one), and waving, tapping on the door, and pleading from outside does no good in any case I’ve seen. Once they have closed the doors, drivers have been instructed to pull away as a matter of safety policy. They will also drive right past a signalling person if that stop is in any way obstructed. Just once a driver stopped to tell me he was not allowed to stop because if he was reported it was an automatic $200 fine. It is a customer-unfriendly, very pedantic policy but seems to all appearances to be applied to all uniformly.
+1 GARBONZA – rudeness is a matter of course in the public transport system. But of course making everything about race is part of NZ MSM and political system to help keep the neoliberal wheels flowing smoothly and the Ponzi on track.
But in times like this, a person wearing a hijab, experiencing this, will easily feel like this is yet another ‘attack’ on Muslims, given the sensitivities.
Perhaps it may also be a convenient reverse ‘attack’ on society, raising an issue, which is though one affecting also many others?
I agree, bus drivers in Auckland do this very often, and they drive off, leaving people at bus stops, without caring too much.
Perhaps the ‘kindness’ the government and PM talk so much about is not arriving in the minds and hearts of many of the stressed out and competing people out there?
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