The Cost Of Compromise
IF THE GREENS are to survive 19 September, they’ll need to draw inspiration from – of all people – the Nazis. Preposterous? Only if you refuse to understand that both the national-socialist and green movements have at their core an unwavering conviction that if they fail, then everything they hold dear will be lost. What separates the Greens from the Nazis is, of course, what they hold dear. Hitler and his followers were fighting for a myth – the German volk. The Greens are fighting for the survival of a very real and very vulnerable biosphere.
But what sort of inspiration could possibly be drawn from the political tactics of the most evil political party in human history?
The answer can be summed-up in a single word: compromise. If you believe yourself to be in the midst of an existential struggle; and that every day which fails to bring you closer to absolute victory brings you one day closer to absolute defeat; then compromise isn’t just ill-advised, it’s morally indefensible. The goal must be power. Not power in combination with others, but power alone. Power that can be wielded without reference to anybody else. Absolute victory – the salvation of the biosphere – can only be secured by winning absolute power.
This was Adolf Hitler’s crucial insight. He looked at the Weimar Republic, with its pure system of proportional representation, its multitude of competing parties, its fragile and ineffectual coalitions, and he bet his entire movement on the German electorate growing increasingly impatient with the political paralysis in Berlin. For a few years, from the mid-1920s until the onset of the Great Depression in late-1929, it looked as though he would lose his bet. But the collapse of the German economy, the descent of millions into poverty and despair, and the complete failure of “democratic” politics to meet the crisis, saw the Nazi’s share of the vote skyrocket.
Hitler’s contemporaries expected him to do what any other party leader would do in the face of such unanticipated electoral success: cut a deal. But the Nazi leader wasn’t interested in deals. Why would he enter into a coalition with the very parties who had proved themselves so incapable of doing anything to alleviate Germany’s suffering? Openly contemptuous of his electoral rivals, he didn’t promise to work with them, he promised to abolish them. Only one party, he said, could rescue Germany: the National Socialist German Workers Party. It would govern alone, or it would not govern at all.
As conditions in Germany grew steadily worse, and as the political centre crumbled and fell apart, it became clearer and clearer to the state bureaucracy, the army and the large capitalists, that if the Nazis were not given what they wanted, then an increasingly desperate German electorate would shift its support to the Communist Party. Rather than make a red revolution inevitable, the powers-that-be made a brown revolution possible. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Within six months his National Socialists were wielding absolute power. It was given to them to save Germany, but tragically they came close to destroying it. The human cost of Nazism’s fanatical pursuit of racial purity was colossal and its ultimate failure inevitable. Why? Because the German volk wasn’t real.
But anthropogenic global warming – climate change – is very real. And every day that is lost to compromise and drift does indeed bring global ecological catastrophe closer. Whether they are willing to admit it or not, everything human-beings hold dear is at risk of being overwhelmed by a disaster greater than any which has hitherto confronted human civilisation. To avert this impending global tragedy an international political movement is required. A global movement which absolutely refuses to compromise with the political, bureaucratic and corporate entities whose failure to take decisive action to combat climate change imperils human survival – along with that of just about every other life form on the planet.
The leaders of green parties around the world have largely chosen to turn their faces from this most urgent of political priorities. Rather than take a bet on the peoples of the world growing increasingly willing to throw their support behind an uncompromising international movement dedicated to radically reducing greenhouse emissions and implementing a “Green New Deal” to redirect the world economy away from fossil fuels and exploitative industrial production, these green leaders have opted to “do a deal”. They have joined hands with the very people who created the crisis and who have consistently declined to end it.
New Zealand’s Green Party has proved to be no exception in this respect. Its co-leader, James Shaw, not only refuses to bet on the people coming round to the need for urgent and ruthless change, but he has also fetishized “compromise” to the point where any attempt to draw a line in the sand is met with a rolling of eyes and statements like:
“Finding the path of least resistance. There’s that horrendous phrase about politics being the art of the possible, which can be read two ways.
“You can do things, it’s a really expansive notion. And there are some moments where we have changed things.
“And then there are others where you can only do what is possible. Maybe moving from naivety to experience is being able to live in both those worlds at the same time.”
Unfortunately for Shaw, humanity has only one world to live in, and it is running out of time. As the climate crisis deepens, and the failure of democratic politics to adequately address the need for radical change opens the way for more uncompromising parties, the politicians who continue to throw in their lot with the problem, rather than the solution, will be swept aside. For Shaw and his increasingly irresolute colleagues the electoral broom is approaching with unnerving speed.
Over the past three years, all the voters have received from the New Zealand Greens are pallid non-solutions. These, the fruit of the party’s craven unwillingness to call Labour and NZ First’s bluff, have been justified as the best outcomes available from a dispiriting range of “realistic” options. Together, they have brought the Greens’ nothing but a steadily declining share of the Party Vote. Political “realism” is Labour’s brand. If all they are offered in September is a choice between compromises of ever-decreasing effectiveness, then many Green supporters may elect to make no choice at all.
The only virtue to which the Nazis may lay claim is their willingness to risk everything for the opportunity to put their ideas to the test. Their unwillingness to compromise with reason cost humanity dearly. How supremely tragic (and ironic) it will be if the Greens’ willingness to compromise with greed and selfishness ends up costing humanity everything it’s got.
A good article Chris.
I agree with PPII….. the Greens must get focused on their core principles and get disciplined – especially Marama and Golriz! Time is running out and we cannot afford any more own goals (or I’ll be reclaiming “that” word !).
I agree with Garabaldi 100%.
The greens are copping out at present with James Shaw saying (my words) “we can only do what we can”
We say this is not good enough for a once in a planetary moment of immerse calamity about to overtake our lives’ – His message was simply “softy softly catchy monkey” but we don’t have time.
Well Chris the problem is that not enough people, some of them appropriately qualified scientists , believe that CO2 is making, or will make any significant difference to the world’s climate. It is socially suicidal to voice doubt in the present state of the debate, so most doubters don’t make a big noise about it, but without all those people being convinced, especially among politicians who’s political careers depend on not being a “climate denier” , nothing is going to actually change. So depending on how soon the “science” proves the world is going to end if we don’t reduce CO2 emissions we, or at least some of us will live to see if the “science” was right or wrong.
If we are to actually reduce CO2 emissions it is going to be at the personal level. All the people are going to have to take it into their own hands individually, privately. Not by holding public demonstrations or writing comments and articles about it, but by organising their own lives so that the don’t use anything that is dependent on the use of fossil fuels. That includes the internet of course. But most agitators for climate change action want the government to force other people to make the sacrifices rather than change anything much in their own lives. To ban exploration and utilisation of our own deposits as if this will magically create an alternative method of maintaining our comfortable existence.
The other Bete Noir that oppresses us is the debt mountain and the price of housing and access to the money to buy one.. If everyone resolved as I did 50 years ago after a nasty experience early in my life, that I would manage my affairs without borrowing from a bank, and curtail my ambitions to fit within the parameters that that determination allowed , then house prices would be at what most people could afford by saving for a few years and using only their own money. The banks could not dominate us without our co operation. And in the same way the fossil fuel industry could not dominate without our co operation , but it is no more likely that everyone will do for themselves what is necessary to stop using fossil fuels than it is that everyone will agree to stop borrowing money from banks.
D J S
‘But most agitators for climate change action want the government to force other people to make the sacrifices rather than change anything much in their own lives.’
Really? And on what evidence do you base that assertion?
I should have said there are notable exceptions AFKTT but almost all my acquaintances are examples of lovely genuine people who are concerned and committed to the mainstream belief the same as you . One or two have adopted a lifestyle that is minimalist; driving very fuel efficient vehicles and as little as possible, but by and large the vast majority are living normal lives in Auckland, driving as they need to though one runs miles every morning and night to work at the museum but that is to keep fit rather than to save emissions. That normality is not enough to make a difference.
I respect your position , and I accept that mine is eccentric in having the temerity to disagree with the advice of the body of scientists engaged by the UN to determine the outcome of what we are doing. But in trying to understand the science I am not able to accept their reasoning and arrogant though it is to disagree , I would have to lie to pretend I did not, though that would be socially a more comfortable part to take.
Cheers D J S
‘committed to the mainstream belief the same as you’
David, you have made yet anther completely unfounded assertion.
For your information, I am nit committed to any mainstream beliefs. Indeed, I spend most of my time on this blog challenging them and pointing out their flaws.
I do study the basic science and make logical inferences. I’ve been doing that for about 55 years.
I am not committed to any mainstream beliefs
Surely you do not claim that your position on CO2 emissions causing a warming of the climate is not mainstream, in that it is what the majority of people accept at this point. This is the subject of the discussion. I made no implications about your position on other subjects.
D J S
Sadly most of the Greens MP’s are in the wrong party. They should be in Labour. There is zero difference between the Greens and Labour that I can see, therefore you might as well vote Labour.
Likewise you might as well vote The Maori Party or previously parties like Mana for their social welfare packages than the Green Party.
The Green Party today is not that environmental… There seems to be zero environmental focus, and even what they used to campaign for that was tangential, which is buy local produce is now a joke because the local produce is increasingly owned by overseas giant corporations signed off by the Overseas Investment Office which the Greens have a Ministers in.
OIO has become a rubber stamping joke, like the environmental protection agency that just sued Greenpeace for costs rather than the polluters…
I just don’t know, whether to vote for Greens out of nostalgia of policy past, or vote someone else…
There is no political party who genuinely campaigns for the environment anymore, so do you just keep voting hoping they will change or for that ideal?
Na imo the party caucus and rank and file have much more in common with National, the r/f members as well as caucus are usually very rich, white and have no interest in collective issues apart from welfare they are absolutely consumed with individualist upper middle class identity issues. Where as Jacinda had to be installed by caucus to avoid a primary as she would never have won the left or unions over and never won the leadership. Apart from young Labour, caucus and certain party dinosaurs the rank and file of labours membership is still highly working class and union oriented and most of the rank and file think the greens are a bunch of alt medicine conspiracy theorist, rich militantly woke nut jobs who the first thing they did in govt was give the nats their questions and call Little corrupt for briefing them, we call them vegan Nats on bikes. There’s a lot of respect for the rod Donald generation of the greens but this lot naaaah. Labour has many issues but we don’t need a bunch of neoliberal woke vegans on bikes flooding the party and further outflanking the working class members
I disagree entirely with Trotter’s premise. Not only do the ends not justify the means, but in a very real sense; the means are the end!
However, I do understand the frustration (often) nonGreen Party members have at; the GP not staying in (what is perceived to be) their lane of being exclusively an environmentalist party. They are wrong, and have chosen not to contribute to; the evolution of the GP from the Values Party, through their shaky alliance with the Alliance, to the present day; for whatever reason.
If you want to change the GP, then join and participate in the GP. It is more tedious, and frustrating, to build rather than tear down, but it has some chance of achieving something. Or go start your own Eco-fascist party if you think that will achieve anything besides stroking your own ego.
Most pundits don’t under stand how racism is unfolding in the U.S and how it ties in to the greater scheme and you seem to be one of them, Mr Forget now. Specifically racism ties into New Zealand through social ferment starts as an individual who gets fed up and builds into a global experience which has a lot to do with the corona virus isolating everyone for 6 months.
I’m upset because the police harassed me, cops watched and did nothing as my cousin was stabbed to death. If unrest is significant enough it becomes a movement where others follow and it becomes organised. After getting organised we have institutionalization and the movement from social ferment to organization happened like that and so to will the shift to institutionalization for anyone with even half the skill of Hitler.
Hitler wasn’t the first time, it’s happened with other movements the Arab Spring, apartheid and so on and so on. But pretty much from an organised perspective and social movement from the Martin Luther King days to the Black Lives Matters movement. BUT the movement from social ferment to organization AND then to institutionalization happened in about a week which Iv never seen before and I don’t think anyone’s seen that before.
The combination of being on lockdown, access to the Internet and the ability of everyone to be there own newscaster, and the pressure mounting on politicians, bureaucrats, administrators and dissatisfaction with police is the lever everyone is pulling on to show dissatisfaction with the current American President and then it follows its way all the way down. Now I don’t want to be a doomsayer but that is a very significant part of the puzzle of social unrest because there’s a lot going on.
If you factor in the bursting of the everything bubble made up of the Dotcom collapse, the 2008 meltdown, the end of the 50 year bond market boom, low interest rates in combination with the coming disillusion of unemployment numbers and the pandemic shutdown that will in my opinion will depending on how the depression plays out will benefit New Zealand by excising racism it will New Zealand will be inclusive towards more of other countries talents, dynamics and gender diversity into the upper realms of wealth and power and capital.
Sam
My condolences for your cousin. However you are not the only person to be harassed by the police. If you are urging violent revolution in response to social oppression, I must say that I disagree. For one thing; it is those who are best with violence who will prevail, and that is unlikely to be the side of reason and equality.
My comments are meant to be taken in the context of our current MMP representative democracy. Though I am not entirely against people taking whatever direct action they may deem necessary, so long as they understand the consequences first. Also, not; Mr, just; Forget Now, or FN, will do.
Hi Mr now.
I just want to say that if I did not insert the words “violent revolution” in to my comments above, then you did.
Sam
Your words are such an incoherent muddle, that it seemed possible such was your intent. I hope that you are finding the typing therapeutic, as it certainly doesn’t effectively communicate meaning to others.
If you don’t like it then give us a tldr about why you think Chris is wrong so I don’t have to give you a tldr about why I think he’s correct, based on evidence of course.
“…join and participate in the GP” – applies only to non-white, non-male, non-experienced beings… ?
Applewood
I have seen; white male retirees, at GP meetings. I would be more concerned by the middle-classness of the party myself. But there is a bit of a vicious cycle in that; the politically disengaged are difficult to engage politically. There may be a bias towards females, as they seem to be better at working incrementally in groups for the common good rather than needing to be the center of attention who dictates all action. But even that depends more on the person than their gender.
Lol.
And with that attempted justification, completely non aware it encapsulated the essence of identity politics, the Greens disappeared at the election.
How a school of politics (identity) thinks it can fight sexism and racism by being sexist and racist is just an exercise in self delusion.
The Greens: disappearing up their own orifice at a town near you.
KCKO
I think I may be running into a culture clash where I am describing my experiences with the Otago Greens, and others are seeing that through the lens of their impression of the Wellington GPMPs. Once again, I do think that the current list ranking process is flawed in that it no longer alternates females and males – but I mainly blame that on lazy GP members voting for the name recognition of sitting MPs.
The Greens; appearing to care about the impact of humans on other humans, as well as the broader physical environment. Myself; keeping calm, and carrying on assisting the GP for the next 101 days until the election. The election results; unknown – dependent on the events and campaigning strategies from now until then.
If Greens adopt Maori virtues of love and commitment to whenua and Tangata tangata tangata – they will reach a larger diverse group who will appreciate them and the practical things they can do for now and to take us into the future. I think that they are so fixed on environment and so middle-class in their attitudes and fixed in the verities they have decided encompass their beliefs and goals that they have withdrawn from being citizens to a bunch of Joan of Arcs.
Well said, Chris.
However, I must take issue with this: ‘Hitler and his followers were fighting for a myth – the German volk. The Greens are fighting for the survival of a very real and very vulnerable biosphere.’
The Greens are NOT fighting for the survival of a very real and very vulnerable biosphere.
They ARE fighting for is the maintenance of the myth that it is possible to protect the environment and provide a future for the next generation whilst at the same time maintaining the comforts and conveniences of fossil-fuel-based civilisation and maintaining the Ponzi money system, which is ultimately predicated on melting down the planet.
The Greens insistence on maintaining mutually exclusive concepts in their policy formulation and believing in the possibility that mutually exclusive policies can coexist leads to the awful compromises you have highlighted.
The main problem with people like the Greens is the way they make decisions. If everyone at a meeting had a chance to put forward their main idea then the circle would start again as to the imagined downsides and how they could be alleviated, and who would benefit from it, then the vast majority would start with a better understanding of the advantages and problems. Then the work would be to establish the most practical ways to go about it for successful outcomes. Then look at what would be unsatisfactory in each method and how they could be altered to fit within the set parameters, environmental or people slanted.
Discussions like that would prevent Davidson and co getting caught up in the ‘c’ rant. That is not of priority in a Party trying to grapple with climate change, environmental degradation, food resource being lost, animal habitat being destroyed, chemical and plastic causing deterioration, and poverty and ilolhealth and sadness zooming because of denial of government to take responsibility for their past wrongful actions, and to make bold changes now. There was so much to do and the navel gazers with their legitimate criticisms were not the most in need of attention. The gender, gay issues have had unprecedented positive action. Now they can wait while others with now urgent problems get the attention they deserve. And let it be in a way that shows Green sensibilities which must show caring about all people, not just the chosen ones of the moment.
Lees-Gallloway did not impress this morning on 9toNoon. If he is Green and forced to do such distasteful work at the behest of the system, he should explain that is how it is even if it annoys all the Sir Humphreys and the Labour ruling thespians. It is unfair to throw visa holders over the cliff; his raspy voice explaining how NZs needed jobs was just repeating the old cry heard and ignored over decades of neolib determination, of both meanings. We seem to have lost the idea of integrity, jerking foreigners around, charging people highly for government services that only partially deliver.
We are supposed to be running under efficient business rules. But they have government rules to keep them in line. Our govt takes service to its ‘customers’ on a loose, slippery basis. Immigration seems to be lacking in humanity. I hope they don’t bleed green when they cut themselves!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018749867/immigration-minister-on-the-government-s-plans-for-migrants
Ian L-G is a Labour MP.
Absolute Priority. Yes.
“To avert this impending global tragedy an international political movement is required.”
The old new. Think Globally – Act Locally.
https://progressive.international/
https://www.instagram.com/progintl_en/
The Left cannot be taken as voting cattle.
For the more fearfull:
https://wellbeingeconomy.org/here-we-go-first-wellbeing-economy-governments-policy-lab-underway-katherine-trebeck
Paradoxically, it wouldn’t be all that courageous. There has been more than $2.5 trillion of investment in renewable energy in the last few years, with the equivalent of one and a half thousand Huntly Power stations (not including large hydro schemes) online. Solar is cheaper than other power sources now. NZ has been described as the ‘Saudi Arabia of wind’, and Brendon Harré is promoting an innovative pumped storage scheme whereby we could pump water up to the Lake Onslow area in Central Otago (there are several big reservoirs in the hills there) and then let it run down again, thereby making our electricity 100% renewable even when the sun wasn’t shining or the wind blowing. And so on. These pragmatic Green New Deal visions and schemes are actually quite exciting and just the thing to get the Greens over the line I would have thought. They even address social justice issues like the cost of electricity. (See for instance http://sdg.iisd.org/news/renewable-energy-investment-to-surpass-usd-2-5-trillion-for-2010-2019-unep-report-finds/#:~:text=5%20September%202019%3A%20Global%20investment,UN%20Environment%20Programme%20(UNEP) and also https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/97543/brendon-harre-sees-future-%C2%A0hydrogen-trains-and-end-carbon%C2%A0era-hydrogen-powers-heavy)
The German Volk was and is REAL, with all its shades.