Drawing Comparisons
Last week Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere was condemned for comparing New Zealand’s coalition Government with that of Germany’s Nazi Fascism.
Speaking on The Bradbury Group’s politics podcast, which was debating the government’s 2026 re-election chances, Tamihere accused the Government of being a fascist regime, “worse than Nazi Germany,” for failing to address the low rates of immunisation in Māori communities.
Reacting to that, the Holocaust Centre’s deputy chair, Giacomo Lichtner, described the remark as “political hyperbole,” and expressed concern that the growing frequency of Nazi comparisons in political debate undermined legitimate allegations of fascism. “If we were ever faced with a regime that actually was fascist, the call to alert would fall on deaf ears because it would be easy to dismiss,” he said.
And Mr Lichtner, an associate Professor of History at Victoria university, is absolutely right – familiarity can breed contempt. But, equally, just as the careless use of comparisons can defuse their potency, so too can the organised campaigns of vested interests tasked with scuttling comparisons being made between the policies of a current nation state and those of Nazi Germany.
In the 1930s Nazis, fully aware foreign concerns that their fascist policies could lead to another world war, strove to have the media emphasise Germany’s anti-communist policies, at the expense any other criticism.
To be clear, in making his fascist Germany comparison, Tamihere wasn’t suggesting Luxon’s government is about to invade Poland, but rather his belief that Maori are marginalised by this government’s policies, just as Germany’s minorities were.
Political parties of every stripe are just as likely to rise today as ever they did in the past. And so, if “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” and if “a country be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable,” it’s important to never imagine fascist policies could not find their way into our political system today.
Hitler’s Nazi fascist state was built on its people believing that their destiny was pre-ordained by God, that they were ethnically superior and that, reinforced by an heroic myth of historical supremacy, they were justified in committing whatever destruction it took, including genocide, to seize “lebensraum” the living space they claimed essential to “re-establishing” their state’s former glory.
The Doomsday Clock warns that the estimated likelihood of a global catastrophe has never been greater. However with the dogma of the state most likely to trigger that catastrophe identical to the list above, but criticism of it stifled by orchestrated pressure on the media, the warning signs are flashing.
Still worse, some distinguished observers are even warning that, with its super-power backer now trying to extricate itself from its “other commitments”, the danger is even greater.
Did Prof Lichnter notice this govt targets academics for a beating in the media?
First they came for the academics …
Maybe he knows that which is why he is defending the government?
NZ is inherently a racist state founded on European colonization taking advantage of Maori welcoming and supportive nature.
“If we were ever faced with a regime that actually was fascist, the call to alert would fall on deaf ears because it would be easy to dismiss,” he [Prof Lichtner] said.
Yes. But it’s possible that Professor Lichtner is himself making a too easy dismissal of what Tamihere said – thus unconsciously demonstrating his own point. Can we ever accurately determine the point at which something that formerly felt like hyperbole has become a simple description of reality? It’s not as straightforward as Prof. Lichtner makes out.
I happen to think that Tamihere is exaggerating, but that he is correct about the direction of travel. And there are no signs from the government that this journey is about to stop.
We are soaking in the propaganda, immersed in it. The reality of us is that we are living in a virtual internet show – think of The Truman Show with a managed environment and everyone peering into others lives waiting for the next chapter to unfold. Their own lives, they have not realised, are diminishing in conjunction with
their altered attention – simply voyeurs, even to the point of pornography.
Our surroundings are increasingly owned by entities buying up land and water rights round the world. Money and the accretion of it and tradeable assets, figures and codes, has grown in the way that banks are largely lending out money on sure things, with a separate charge for the kindness, which they pocket. Under this magic system we have created bloated genies that have hold of our trading system, and control of our communications, travel, and anything else they desire. But our propaganda tells us all is well. Aldous Huxley is one man that brings us to the coalface.
Giacomo Lichtner is an open supporter of the Gaza Holocaust, a very real genocide that is happening right now. He has no position to comment on the statements of any actual human being.
My definition of fascists is narrower than most.
People who commit genocide are fascists.
People who support committing genocide are fascists.
People who support the genocide in Gaza are fascists, people who support the genocide in Sudan are fascists, people who supported Asssad’s genocide in Syria are fascists.
In some jurisdictions people who deny an incontrovertibe genocide like the Holocaust are fascists.
Holocaust deniers are generally considered to be fascists, and often admit to being fascists, or admirers of fascism.
Our National party led government and the opposition labour party deny the genocide in Gaza. Their genocide denial is a passive aggressive form of fascism lite, a sort of Klaytons’ fascism, the fascism you have when you are not having fasdcism.