WHERE IS REALITY HIDING amidst all these claims and counter-claims concerning the protest encampment in Parliament Grounds? In an excruciatingly post-modern political moment, reality seems to have gone AWOL, leaving behind only a noisy collection of competing narratives.
To make matters worse, the state itself, supposedly the supreme arbiter of what is and is not politically real, is refusing to do its job. Even though it is his sworn duty, the Commissioner of Police, Andrew Coster, has made it frighteningly clear to the public that he lacks both the will and the means to assert the state’s authority. The New Zealand Defence Force, meanwhile, holds itself aloof from the fray. Jacinda Ardern and Christopher Luxon, powerless to intervene, look on ineffectually. The crisis deepens.
Ask yourself: what does it mean when tow-truck drivers, asked to assist the Commissioner of Police, refuse? At what point during the last decade did citizens begin to tell themselves that they had no obligations to the society in which they live? That nobody had the right to tell them what to do – not even the Police? What business is it of theirs if the people of Wellington, their neighbours, need their help?
It has been reported that at least one towie openly declared his support for the protesters encamped on Parliament Grounds. Entirely understandable. The occupiers don’t accept that their government has the right to require their vaccination against Covid-19. Nor do they believe that they owe their fellow citizens even the slightest co-operation in the fight to limit the harm of the virus. That tow-truck driver recognised kindred spirits when he saw them. Andrew Coster and Wellingtonians could go fuck themselves.
Not all the towies were so bloody minded. According to media reports, some of them were just plain scared. They claimed to have been threatened with dire retribution if they allowed their trucks to be used by the Police. Considering those trucks carried the names and phone numbers of their owners, it’s not difficult to understand the impact of such threats. Were someone to burn down a towing company’s premises, torch its trucks, that would be multiple livelihoods lost and a business ruined. Who wouldn’t think twice?
Such tactics are, however, remarkably effective. I remember reading about Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters’ bitter battles with the trucking companies. The bosses could rely on local politicians, local judges, local editors and local cops to defend them against Hoffa’s strikers. The union was on a hiding-to-nothing, until Hoffa reached out to the Mafia. It only took a few dozen torched trucks for the bosses to get the message. The Teamsters won their improved contract. But the spoon Hoffa took to his dinner with the Devil wasn’t quite long enough. His beloved Teamsters’ Union now belonged to the Mob.
Now you might think that people on the left of New Zealand politics would recognise the danger of holding up the occupation of Parliament Grounds as a praiseworthy assertion of working-class power. As if poverty and marginalisation, frustration and anger, ignorance and credulity are always and everywhere evidence of moral force and progressive intent.
Karl Marx himself recognised the acute political danger inherent in what he called the Lumpenproletariat. According to the Encyclopedia of Marxism, this social formation is composed of the “outcast, degenerated and submerged elements” of industrial society:
“It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements. In times of prolonged crisis (depression), innumerable young people also, who cannot find an opportunity to enter into the social organism as producers, are pushed into this limbo of the outcast. Here demagogues and fascists of various stripes find some area of their mass base in time of struggle and social breakdown, when the ranks of the Lumpenproletariat are enormously swelled by ruined and declassed elements from all layers of a society in decay.”
That our society is in decay can hardly be doubted. The events of the past ten days offer ample evidence of just how seriously that decay has weakened New Zealand society. A viable Left, recognising the weakness of the system, and its acute vulnerability to those who would enlist the aid of “gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals” would have no hesitation in identifying the so-called “Freedom Convoy” as the reactionary, quasi-fascist, enterprise it has always been.
Alas, New Zealand no longer possesses a viable Left. Identity politics has schooled a whole generation to accept the self-definitions of “oppressed groups” at their face value. Drilling down into the actual character of such groups, and scrutinising their relationship to the ruling class, is not encouraged. Even among those leftists who still acknowledge the primacy of class politics there is a pronounced unwillingness to subject movements like the Freedom Convoy to any kind of rigorous class analysis.
For these leftists, it is enough that the occupiers of Parliament Grounds are, or were, members of the working-class. So desperate are these “revolutionaries” for the slightest hint of revolutionary consciousness that they are willing to overlook the absence of anything remotely resembling a concrete programme for the social and economic emancipation of the working class. The only programme in evidence among the occupiers is the one demanding the instant cessation of all measures aimed at minimising the hurt and suffering of Covid-19.
How self-proclaimed “socialists” could possibly mistake such a noxious potpourri of anti-social attitudes for anything remotely progressive is a mystery. Perhaps it is no more than the curious allure of the demi-monde, coupled with the magnetic eccentricities of the Bohemian temperament, that has led these desperate socialists to mistake reactionaries for revolutionaries. Clearly they have forgotten that Adolf Hitler himself was a Lumpenproletarian. A more “declassed, degraded and degenerated” specimen History has yet to supply!
It was the Italian socialist, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) who grasped the extraordinary fluidity of reality in periods of acute social stress and political disintegration. Moments in history when the hegemonic explanations of the ruling-class have lost, or are beginning to lose, their power to allay the fears and misgivings of subordinate classes. In such times – and we are living through them now – people are desperate for new and more persuasive narratives about the nature of reality.
Not all of those narratives are addressed to the best that is in human nature. Sorting out the lies of charlatans and demagogues from genuine revolutionary truths isn’t always easy – especially in this age of social-media algorithms. Leftists are often surprised to learn that Mussolini was a socialist before he became a fascist.
Gramsci put it best when he wrote: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
Or, more succinctly: “Now is the time of monsters.”
Except the monsters are at least partially of the the govts own making.
When you create 2 classes of people, then have no plan about what will happen when the “deplorables” get desperate as personal financial armageddon hits.
We end up where we are now.
Nice use of US Bannon speak. We do not have a two tier society – people have made choices and some people are not prepared to live with the choices they’ve made and want everyone else to do what they want. If I smoke I will smoke in the smokers area at my pub but I’m not going in bitching and intimidating the staff at that pub with a cig in my mouth. I gave up a job offer at a call centre because you have to have random drug test – any of these poor, second class citizens protesting against work drug testing? Suck it up, do what you need to to work in your field or get another job. Or I’m stopping washing my hands next time you eat at my place of work.
Fine words Mr Trotter, a good read for sure. The conspiracy theorists and so called revolutionaries are half right and half wrong. Yes there is a major conspiracy in progress, since the mid 80’s as we all know. But these groups have no idea what it is. Jacinda Ardern a nazi? God help us. I’m slightly impressed by the Convoys determination and organisation but the message is way off track. If this is what a revolution looks like then our neo liberal masters have nothing to fear.
Is it also that so many of these so called woke neo-socialists perfectly epitomised by the student politicians Jacinda, Justin from Ottawa & Grant are completely detached from the reality of life at the edges?
How many of the currant Labour caucus have a history of living as and amongst the precariat? How many have lived and worked jobs where that dirt gets into your skin so deep it can’t be washed away each night or lived in cold damp homes with no money to pay for food let alone heating?
I’d venture none, at least from the outside they are all to a person ex teachers or union lawyers.
They don’t understand, don’t want to and worse, they don’t like these hard nosed, practical and brutally realist people as they confront the woke world view absolutely. Who really cares about pronouns or the alphabet people if you can’t work, get a job or somewhere to sleep at night?
The protestors are not working class. Just spend time watching the livestream.
The majority are fringe dwellers who have been discarded from society for reasons of ignorance, mental health and radicalization.
This community has existed long before Covid.
correct, recognised a couple from the Far North that live in manky vans and are basically against any state oversight of their lives–Census, home schooling, healthcare, you name it, the COVID rules just sent them right off
Jack. The protestors have more upmarket vehicles than many people and have little trouble getting resourced. Some may be fringe, some are unpleasant nutters, some appear affluent – even if not the sort of people who read goodnight stories to their children.
Everyone has a double cab ute bagged out on low profile rims. All on finance.
Antonio Gramsci is also arguably (along with the Frankfurt school) the originator of modern leftist identity politics, where culture takes precedence over socio-economics. Good diagnosis, crap prescription.
New Zealand has a cultural background made up by mostly Pacific islanders and Europeans. Of course the public will go into full on wtf mode when woke charlatans attempt to break those iron laws of history.
There are, I believe, very good reasons why one may break the iron laws of history so to promote the “message” of inclusion and diversity and so on and so on and so on and blah blah blah. One reason is because
I guess a good reason to include oppressed groups is because we’ve been trying to do just that since the signing of the treaty. It’s right there. There’s no need to invent what ever narritive when one already exists.
Scaremongering doesn’t work when there’s nothing to be scared of. This article ignores the crux of today’s problem by misrepresenting today’s reality. This article ignores the consistent post-delta trend in covid-19’s mutations into today’s harmless variants. This article misrepresents the “hurt and suffering of Covid-19” by ignoring post-delta data. Any media becomes useful when they start being relevant with actual factual current data instead of regurgitating extinct data which was previously relevant to the almost-extinct delta and now-extinct prior variants of covid-19.
While I don’t support the protest, 6 of the demands (see John Minto’s article) seem reasonable and the others, while extreme libertarian in the context of this pandemic, are hardly foaming-at-the mouth far right.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/02/16/resolving-the-wellington-protest-and-two-proposals-to-reduce-misinformation-on-social-media/
To be blunt, conjuring monsters to justify a state crack down on its citizens is a tactic often used by [fill in the blank]
Chris, how much more contempt have you for opinions that don’t align to yours? Your assumptions about who the protesters are and what they are asking for show a classic elitist Leftist viewpoint, “What those prols down there don’t accept our views and natural leadership?”
They then get labelled “quasi fascists”. Well done Chris, watch the Left haemorrhage, no wonder a large chunk of the prols rejects the Left.
Who said “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”? Oh yes,
Benjamin Franklin who could talk the talk. It seems that you are losing both the talk and ability to walk NickJ.
Can’t we play nicely and talk and try and recognise the pros and cons of each argument?
This article would support your analysis, Chris. https://iso.org.nz/2022/02/14/the-anti-mandate-occupation-a-reactionary-convergence/?fbclid=IwAR1IQFzxJGJay0_T3ihwmWA3lEPqTXHT5nRnJkEIufhnPgmcbwlOhr-LYzc
We need an exit strategy for the mandates.
The yellow belly sneetches have had their lives ruined.
The disturbing thing for me is the disingenuous attitude of Jacinda and the total unwillingness to engage.
It really is a bastard when David Seymour is the practical voice of reason.
Just going to leave this here, I’ll say it again, Martyn (and John) are right on this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ffFYHAFJlQ
“As the “freedom convoy” sparks an unlikely global movement, police in Canada have started to make arrests. But how has it come to this, and is the trend of by leaders of deriding protesters the way to solve this obvious societal tensions? ”
Trucker Protest Goes Global – “Hold The Line!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMC_8q49rlM
Good link, Matt Taibbi along with the likes of Glenn Greenwald is one of a relatively small number of journalists who can call balls and strikes with clarity and without favour.
They should be rockstar journalists of the (traditional) left if what passes for the left could get its head out of it’s collective ass.
The image in the media of Mallard sneering from the balcony in Parliament was all we to see to understand that the establishment ‘Left’ no longer represents the working class. The left today consists of a university half-educated middle class. Teachers and government drones mostly. In years gone by they’ve have been described as Tories.
Few of these New Left people have ever worked with their hands. None have spent a day in the sun with a shovel. Few have had dirt under their finger nails. Most can’t start a lawnmower and none could be trusted to use a chainsaw. They regard actual workers as ‘untermenchen’, if we’re going to make historic references.
“… reality seems to have gone AWOL, leaving behind only a noisy collection of competing narratives”.
Your best line ever, Chris!
We don’t have a left represented in parliament anymore, Labours beliefs match National, they’re National but more useless.
The Greens represent the middle class Twitter society and wokedom.
And as for the police, dear oh dear oh dear, a shadow of it’s former self. It appears it’s leadership are very very uncomfortable with the coercive nature of policing and quite out of their depth. Their “plan”, if it can be called that, is hoping and praying to the stars above the protesters will get bored and go away.
Meanwhile the government look toward them, equally hoping and praying the commissioner they appointed will grow a pair, probably knowing deep down and with regret that it ain’t going to happen. And so by association they too are powerless and equally impotent, stuck in no man’s land, looking increasingly powerless!
And what message does this broadcast to society? Do what you want!
The optics for this government and its ability to enforce its will are terrible!
Do you really believe they are lumpenprole working for a fascist conspiracy to take over NZ? I just think they have had enough of being shit on from up high and would burn their own demagogues if they they so much as stepped out of line, Tiger by the tail, Wolf by the ears and the like.
Lumpenprole is just another one of those elite-leftist terms that once had a sinister and specific meaning (like ‘nazi’ or ‘fascist’) but is now thrown around like derogatory-confetti meaning ‘morally bad’ or ‘unclean’. Tainted people can be excommunicated, thus relieving the elite of any moral responsibility to address their concerns. Indeed as Seymour (of all people!) demonstrates, it is sinful to even talk to them.
Pseudo-religious tribalism.
“Even though it is his sworn duty, the Commissioner of Police, Andrew Coster, has made it frighteningly clear to the public that he lacks both the will and the means to assert the state’s authority.”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Coster could have gone in right at the outset of course with batons and shields and tear gas. He would have showed the will and the means to assert the state’s authority. That would have had him the monster.
The choice Chris: would you prefer him to play it as he sees fit with the complex dynamics or have had him go in right from the outset with the ‘smash’em’ model?
It touches of the wider attitude to dealing with crime. The “Lock em up, throw away the key” mentality is pretty widespread. Of course prisons work only in limited makeshift ways but they do away with the immediate need to find real solutions. (There’s been discussion in the US about California since 1980 building 22 new prisons and 4 universities. Has it solved problem with crime?)
So, we have no faith in Coster to deal with a situation which he knows more about than any of us. He should resign. His successor? There are plenty of options. I appreciate there could be many off the list since taking up positions in as epidemiologists and modellers, board members of NZRugby, road design engineers and vaccine researchers.
The nuances and logistics of the situation in Wellington would be a piece of piss for any of us.
What is the purpose of the police? My take is that Mr Trotter is concerned that the police are no longer feared, they are not in control, they have lost community support. The Policing Act 2008 has a few functions for them….but I’m unsure what the focus is in wellington
s.9 Functions of Police
The functions of the Police include—
(a)keeping the peace:
(b)maintaining public safety:
(c)law enforcement:
(d)crime prevention:
(e)community support and reassurance:
(f)national security:
(g)participation in policing activities outside New Zealand:
(h)emergency management.
Shout outs to Tui and Glen’s points from me.
Tui raises omicron transmission stats in the presence of highly vaccinated populations – the assumptions underlying CT’s position on these issues. Other countries are taking other public heath choices on account of those stats. We might debate why – perhaps we might allege political reasons in the UK or the like – but the point is we might debate it. The government here brooks no debate on these things, but will not put up its continuing justification for the mandates. The answer is dialogue.
Glen raises the stuff around threats to towie business, and so gets towards the assumptions underlying CT’s position on these issues. CT’s unstated assumption is that the threats to towies have been legitimate, and important in the towie reluctance to tow relative to other things. How do we know any of that? I don’t – I’m not on FB or TikTok or Grinder or whatever. All of the stuff in the past two years of characterising protests etc as “peaceful” “violent”, then adding “mostly” according to whether you want to justify or demonise the cause – all of it is rubbish. Not nuanced enough. Steven Cowan’s comment on this yesterday was a good attempt at the necessary level of nuance for the issue. The answer re towies is probably to go have a yarn with as many towies as poss – and see if a pattern of meaningful threats meanigfully influencing their decisions emerges. Hats off to CT if he’s done this, otherwise his argument rests on a second debatable assumption.
All that and more is underneath CT’s essential allegation that people have mistaken selfishness for public-spiritedness, and been prepared to use violence to implement their incohate programme. So come on all – let’s work through it. The answer is going to be found in the revelatory power of … dialogue.
Some of the protesters are what would have ben classed as working class NZers (left) – however these protesters (excluding the White Power maggots) havent left the left – the left left them and did so nearly 40 years ago with the 1984 Labour Govt. The Ardern Government has/ is conservative middleclass and there actions in rewarding the rich during this pandemic is a fucking disgrace. 10m to AJ Hackett – Dont see to many millionares protesting. The first time any party in Government under MMP has had a majority and they have missed the oppurtunity to push through real changes for the working poor, housing and our health system and all they can come up with is FPA that wont work, income insurance scheme the low paid workers cant afford, stopping the right to free speech and a fucking cycle way across a bridge for the north shore wanker brigade on their 5k bikes. And we are asking why are some of the working class protesting. The Greens dont get off free either – we need a real political movement that has core principles of a socialist society where all are treated equally and with respect.
100%
Chris these deplorable motley crew are gutless cowards as they have strategically placed babies and children among themselves thus ensuring the police and army will not move them on in case they are hurt or killed. Similarly, the police/army can not move any cars will the owners in them. At least with trumps attack on capital hill i never saw any children or babies.
You, Mr Chris Trotter, have always been ( and always will be) one of my most respected teachers of political history, I have not studied history formally, ( I love the study of history! , – such a fool I have been in not going to varsity!) but I will always remember you on parliament steps being interviewed after the 4th Labour govt’s second election win. You were circumspect yet your heart for the people and the ramifications for the working people were clear. It bode them ill will. I was a young man at the time and I thought ‘finally, a man who speaks the truth in all the chaos’. Yet my teacher, I find it is time ( at least temporarily) for us to depart in different directions.
I have spent time at the protest, I have seen first hand the people involved. They are not AT ALL like the govt and media have portrayed, in fact, there is lie after lie being told about them. They are not all working class. They are a diverse group, from middle class to working class for the most part.
And a word on the archetypical ‘hippies’. You know as well as I do, that more often than not , it is these folk who tend to form the vanguard of such movements. A profile could easily be made of them,…yet in their defense,… it is exactly these same personality types who would have marched in the great 1913 strike, in the 1951 watersiders strike, during the Vietnam war and the springbok tours of 1981. Extrapolate that to the English civil war and innumerable conflicts before and after…
Where would we be without these loud, brash courageous types in history? Still under the jack boot of overly authoritarian , autocratic and elitist rule. A ‘rule’, an order,… which suffers no dissension or deviation from its assumed mandate.
I would say that these prior generations paid for their freedoms we now enjoy and take for granted with their very and literal blood. We are the benefactors of these courageous forbearers who gave so much. A common sentiment as I attended the protest in Wellington was ‘ I cannot stand to see these people enduring such conditions , these lies and slurs, this inclement weather and not stand with them’
It was a ‘call to arms’. Yet not those of bullets and bombs, but the message of peace, humility, forbearance and forgiveness. What you have been fed are lies. It is a denigrative, smear campaign carefully crafted to project and illustrate those opposing the governmental narrative. Pick any period of history, any contemporary narrative and you will see the same tactics used and deployed.
I think, at least on this issue, you are on the wrong side of history regards this pseudo pandemic, regards heavy handed governmental authority and its misuse. As despite the issues for and against this ‘pandemic’, this is becoming a crises of what exactly is , and defined,… as a democracy and just what role does the common citizen expect to play and at what point also does she / he overstep the mark. Just what are the parameters of our freedom, and just who are the arbiters of that definition of freedom.
These are among the reasons I will be going back down indefinitely come the Friday.
Chris makes some quite valid points but I think the truth is somewhere between the two sides here. It is true that successive governments have brought us here and it is also true that social cohesion has gone out the window and that the existing ‘power’ systems are no longer in control. People no longer have faith in the government or the police – they have proven themselves ideologues first and defenders of the common good, last.
From the mid Clark years, its been apparent to me that what NZ desperately needs is to build more low income housing. Its simplistic I know, but when people have a stable and adequate roof over their heads they have room to grow personally and as a family and as a community.
Many things changed with Rogernomics but the biggest impact of those changes was on housing (and the rort that is private property ownership for gain) and I remember thinking that as house prices doubled back then, that Clarke would step in and do something but no, as my husband said, she wants the votes, she will never allow house prices to fall and this has proved to be the same with each government since. It worsened significantly with the massive sell offs and a permanent reduction in the ratio of state housing and has brought us to where we are today.
I have written JA about this a few times since she has been in government. And I imagine thousands more worthy than me have done so too but as we have seen in 4 years there was no priority or urgency put on this and now Robbo tells us, its a 40 year problem that will go away in time.
You do have to take from this that our whole system of government is wrong and that without radical democratic change things will only get worse. Given that the government must also be aware of this, you begin to wonder when you see many of these same issues and behaviours right across the world, is this all part of a ‘downfall of Rome’ type scenario or is there an agenda we are not privy to?
It is not misunderstanding protestors intent or naivety about their politics that has middle class lefties like me expressing a conciliatory tone is a desire to be kind and empathetic because I have the choice to do that sitting here on my fat, comfortable, vaxed, middle-class arse.
Also, the lumpen proletariat are the economically dispossessed and they have no options or choices about how they survive – this doesn’t make them evil or bad people. In the quote Marx is not being disparaging, he factually is listing the economic status of those with nothing. Marx points out that many of these people are young and have been unable to find opportunity – indicting that he clearly doesn’t see them as inherently bad people.
This is relevant to the the protestors who – we should all remember – are fellow NZer’s who decided not to get vaccinated for what ever reason and some have lost jobs, business, family and friend ships etc. and it’s ok to have empathy for that – especially if your a middle-class leftie.
The economic impact to these people should have been, and still can be, repaired by offering those a UBI type payment until the mandates are lifted. Thousands of social houses and relief from private landlords would also make a massive difference as stated by Zombi.
That’s how a smart, woke, socialist government with kind and empathetic leadership would respond. The utes parked on Wellingtons precious roads and the degenerates peeing on the expensively manicured parliament lawns would be gone in days.
Yes agree, except; a lot of the protesters are vaccinated like me, but strongly disagree with the government’s illegal actions of vaccine mandates, and in my opinion the government’s illegal authoritarian rules that deny NZ citizens the right to return home.
Yes, and whatever happened to the U.N’s thing about all human beings have the right to refuse medication they don’t want?… I guess Adern got rejected by them and wont get the position in the U.N Aunty Helen did…
They are just ordinary Kiwis upset with the events of the past two years culminating with the vaccine measures. That’s the long and short of it.
I agree. However misguided some of their information and rhetoric may be many will have suffered significant losses as a consequence of the vaccine mandates.
One ought not quote Marx as though the outworking of his ideas was in any way successful. If Marx suggests that the lumpen proletariat includes “beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements” one ought to question if Marx is correct. This is a rather poor description of the protestors in Wellington. Pop down and you’ll see. Suit or civvies, you’ll meet all sorts and be richer for it. If people matter to one, if one can hold ones tongue – the conversations I had were about job losses, business owners who couldn’t visit their accountants, holders of council contracts, and Fontana contracts and all get-out who couldn’t work, mid-wives letting down clients, police & teacher couples who were both now unemployed, granny’s lonely death, grandpas lonely dementia, little Johnny excluded from after school boxing although he sits on the school bus with the same boys, little Jenny who can no longer do highland dancing though the class is one-to-one. Back to Marx – indeed ‘cast out of industry’ and ‘de-classed’ might be fair. Having left my comfortable tertiary educated inheritance acquired comfortable lifestyle to join the protest for a week, over-whelmingly the heart-issue was to avoid jabbing the grand-children and children. And the employment loss due to the rejection PCR tests (in this country, though not overseas). Marx has never been the full story, and he has always co-opted by the elite. Best not to quote him at length, or as gospel, unless one is entrenching oneself in the elite. It’s a bad look.
I think the article misuses the quote from Marx in an attempt to cajole lefties into viewing the protestors as bad people. But I don’t believe that is what Marx is saying and as you point out the protestors are not in this category anyway. See my comment above.
gagarin
You do keep bringing up the known stuff that the vast majority wants to remain unknown; seeing past it in wilful blindness. Most of us have batteries that have run down, but you keep yours charged. Uou are a light in the darkness I reckon, and power to your elbow.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-dr-charles-hoffe-speaks-out-world/5771073
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