Chris Trotter

The debate stirred up by the repeated denial of both public and private stages to the pair on account of threats and intimidation has placed the issue of free speech squarely on New Zealand’s political agenda. The Left will find it much harder, now, to sell its arguments in favour of limiting New Zealanders right to free expression that would have been the case if Southern and Molyneux had simply been allowed to come and go without incident.

TO HEAR THE National Party and other assorted right-wing beasts tell the story, the Greens have just sold their soul to the Devil. By whom they mean, presumably, that double-breasted Lucifer, Winston Peters, and his attendant pandemonium – NZ First. The Devil’s price, allegedly, is Green Party support for Winston’s “Waka-Jumping Bill”.

Herein lies the irony of the ongoing “free speech” controversy. As vociferous opponents of what they characterise as existential threats to traditional Anglo-Saxon culture, Lauren Southern’s and Stefan Molyneux’s looming visit to New Zealand is intended to persuade ordinary Kiwis to look to their own defence against the twin scourges of multiculturalism and identity politics.

IRONICALLY, THE CONCERN over Chinese influence in New Zealand is being raised against a backdrop of unchallenged American hegemony. Extending across the whole width of the nation’s political stage, this American backdrop has become so much a part of the play’s scenery that most Kiwis no longer notice it. The inclusion of a few Chinese props, however, is enough to induce something close to panic among New Zealand’s political class.

THE NEW ZEALAND LEFT is not alone in being torn apart by what should and should not be tolerated. Only yesterday, the British Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was publicly upbraided for being “an antisemitic racist” by Margaret Hodge, a senior British Labour MP. Hodge was furious that Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has refused to accept, in full, the definition of antisemitism issued by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

Nothing could be more helpful to the cause of the Right than a Left which has lost its faith in the people. What, after all, is more likely to cause the people to lose faith in the Left than a nagging suspicion that their self-appointed liberators regard them as being either too vicious or too stupid to grasp the arguments in favour of individual freedom and social justice without instruction from above?

IT HAS BEEN DISPIRITING, this past week, to learn how little people who consider themselves leftists know about fascism.