Recognising Hate Speech When You See It.

By Chris Trotter  /  April 15, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  55 Comments

In that universe, Ghahraman would be calming down her more zealous followers: warning them that unreasoning zealotry is always the problem – never the solution. She would also be reassuring them that New Zealand’s statute books already contain plenty of legal remedies against dangerously hateful expression.

“We’re All Behind You.”

By Chris Trotter  /  April 12, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  23 Comments

THE 720,000 SUBSCRIBERS to the “Neighbourly” social media platform recently received a letter from the Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Paul Hunt. In it he offers advice on how to call out racist behaviour and who to call if you think it crosses the line.

The Multiple Faces Of Radicalisation

By Chris Trotter  /  April 11, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  20 Comments

The readiness to withhold empathy from those whose values the radical extremist abhors has always been the first step on the staircase that leads to terrorist atrocity. The second is the radical’s hate and rage when those deemed to hold abhorrent values refuse to be silent.

Convenient Fictions

By Chris Trotter  /  April 9, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  17 Comments

THE APPALLING CONDUCT of the Waikato DHB raises broader questions about the robustness of New Zealand’s liberal democracy. Most particularly, it challenges the whole notion that the administrators of New Zealand society remain accountable to the people they administrate

Unwilling To Disclose.

By Chris Trotter  /  April 5, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  35 Comments

The suspicion arises that in 2014-2015, in some unspecified, possibly unlawful, and highly secretive way, the country’s national security apparatus was working hand-in-glove with senior elements within the police to silence and punish a couple of outspoken critics of the National-led 2008-2017 Coalition Government.

Shadows Of The Past

By Chris Trotter  /  April 5, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  108 Comments

While they continue to ride forth, pausing in their wild career, to salute with uplifted arms, and uplifted swords, “The Crusaders” cheering fans, deep racial memories, born of the bloody excesses of Pakeha New Zealanders’ ancestors, will stir and rise to the surface. The past has a dangerous way of intruding upon the present.

Dark Matter

By Chris Trotter  /  April 2, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  27 Comments

Since Friday, 15 March, the Left has been dazzled by Jacinda’s light. So much so, that it has failed to understand that, far from defeating the Right’s darkness, the Prime Minister’s recent illuminations have only exposed the terrifying dimensions of its realm. Light speaks only to light. Political dark matter has always been, and always will be, profoundly deaf to everything except the soundless screaming energy of its black and inexhaustible rage.

The Roots Of His Rage: Can Winston Peters Save NZ First?

By Chris Trotter  /  March 29, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  49 Comments

SO, WHAT DOES NZ First do now? The Goddess of History hasn’t just foot-tripped Winston Peters and his party, she’s hurled them bodily into a very deep hole. The Christchurch Mosque Shootings have disabled just about all of the “hot-button” election issues upon which New Zealand’s right-wing populist party has depended since its inception. Robbed of its ability to rouse conservative voters against “Maori Separatism”, the “Asian Invasion”, and “Islamic Extremism”; where does NZ First go? How does a right-wing populist party do populism without right-wing slogans?

The Blame Game Continues

By Chris Trotter  /  March 28, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  52 Comments

Was it at all plausible that the Christchurch Shooter acted entirely alone? Is it possible that such a man could hide in plain sight – drawing absolutely no attention to himself for more than two years? How was he able to afford the extensive foreign travel he is known to have undertaken? The guy had no job – so who paid his rent? Could someone without extensive training in terrorist techniques have planned and executed so large and lethal an operation? If not, then who trained him and guided him under the authorities’ radar? Were the 15/3 attacks really a “lone-wolf” operation – or did the Christchurch Shooter have help?

Those Who Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History …

By Chris Trotter  /  March 26, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  71 Comments

MARAMA DAVIDSON and Golriz Ghahraman would be well advised to take a break and read a little history. Not the history of colonial New Zealand: they seem very well-acquainted with that dismal narrative. No, the history they should familiarise themselves with, is the history of the Alliance in the weeks and months that followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

Keeping The Devil Down In The Hole.

By Chris Trotter  /  March 22, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  78 Comments

The proposition being advanced by Davidson, Ghahraman, and many others on the left, is that terrorist acts are the by-products of societies steeped in racism and xenophobia: that they constitute the merely the awful apex of a much larger pyramid of prejudice. By discouraging the expression of the milder prejudices embedded at the base of this grim pyramid, they argue, their transmission upwards to damaged individuals like the Christchurch shooter can be interrupted, and lives saved.

What Happened Here?

By Chris Trotter  /  March 17, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  40 Comments

Part of the answer, the most important part, we have already seen. In the floral tributes outside the nation’s mosques. In the images of the imam and the rabbi embracing each other. In the Pasifika voices raised in a hymn of heart-breaking poignance. In the Maori and Pakeha faces wet with tears, yet set in grim defiance. In the passionate cry of the massacre survivor: “This is not New Zealand!” In the nearly $5 million already raised to support the victims’ families. The answer already given by the people of New Zealand, united in grief, is unequivocal: When confronted with such reckless hate, the only possible answer is aroha – love.

The wrong answer; the answer the terrorist is always hoping the strategic targets of his rage will give; is to meet recklessness with recklessness; hate with hate.

By Other Means

By Chris Trotter  /  March 14, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  29 Comments

When the US Government warned the rest of the world that, when it comes to securing regime change in Venezuela, “nothing is off the table”, most observers assumed it was talking about some form of military intervention. (An impression encouraged by a video-clip of National Security Advisor John Bolton’s hand-scrawled aide memoire “5,000 troops”.)

Why Isn’t JA Channelling AOC?

By Chris Trotter  /  March 12, 2019  /  Chris Trotter, Most Recent Blogs, Setting The Agenda  /  15 Comments

WHY ISN’T JACINDA ARDERN channelling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)? This is not a frivolous question. Labour found itself swept into a winning position at the end of 2017 almost entirely on the strength of Jacinda’s extraordinary appeal – especially to voters under 40.