On "Facing Up" To The "Whole History" Of NZ Pre-1840

I see Don Brash was quoted in yesterday's Herald calling for broader education about New Zealand history, and in particular history here prior to 1840. This .. was somewhat unexpected, but the next few lines gradually made clear what he was on about:

Quoth Brash:

"My worry is that if we focus only on post 1840 history we'll ignore the fact that there were some awful things done by Māori tribes to other Māori tribes. [...] Let's face the whole history. I'm in favour of doing that."

He said the number of people killed in the Land Wars on both sides was "quite minor compared with pre-1840 inter-tribal war.""

Or, in other words, I suspect the actual idea here is to try and implicitly push a metanarrative of pre-Crown Sovereignty NZ being some kind of absolutely barbarous Dark Ages, followed by the extension of British (and later NZ-Crown) rule making everything .. if not perfect, then at least so inarguably better as to render any subsequent conversation around Crown misdeeds towards Maori effectively moot.

Perhaps I am being unfair to Brash. Maybe he was quoted out of context. And possibly, there is no essentialized connection between what he's advocating, and the implicit motivation I've ascribed to it. Although I somehow doubt it.

However, what I can say with greater certainty is that despite Brash's explicit enthusiasm for adding greater 'context' to New Zealand history, and discussions around the Treaty in particular ...

... adding a list of inter-Iwi atrocities to the New Zealand school-curriculum is not the way to go about this. Indeed, if that's *all* Brash et co are after, then the only thing they'll be accomplishing is, if anything, a further *decontextualization* of these threads of New Zealand's history.

How?

Well, consider these three rather glaring historiographical issues.

First up, while it is definitely true that the Musket Wars of the early 1800s [which, for the record, I definitely seem to recall having learned a bit about at school, so I'm not quite sure why Brash seems to think it's not taught?] featured significant inter-tribal conflict, and some luminous examples of that much-vaunted phrase: "Man's Inhumanity to Man" ... it's not like Maori had a monopoly upon armed conflict in the first few decades of the 19th century.

At about the same time that the Musket Wars were getting going in earnest here in New Zealand, much of the Continent of Europe was busy tearing itself apart at the height of the Napoleonic Wars. This might seem of questionable relevancy to New Zealand history itself - but a) it helps establish that no, no there isn't something uniquely barbarous about the inhabitants of New Zealand pre-Treaty, simply because they, too, engaged in acts of conquest and enslavement; and b) the ongoing geopolitical developments back in Europe which the Napoleonic Wars formed a particularly bloody manifestation of, would have considerable effects upon the actual processes by which New Zealand came into existence in the first place [viz. British reactions to the French, and putative desires to head the latter off from colonial acquisition].

I'd also append here that while Brash *is* technically correct about the Musket Wars having a far higher death-toll associated with them than the later Land Wars/New Zealand Wars - this is only to be expected. After all, the Musket Wars stretched over a period of nearly forty years, covered almost the entirety of the country [and the Chatham Islands, rather infamously], and featured a pretty huge degree of technological and therefore military disruption to pre-existing norms.

It is therefore entirely unsurprising that the relatively shorter Land Wars/New Zealand Wars, which featured a vastly smaller number of combatants on all sides and which raged over significantly smaller areas of the country and spans of time, would produce a much reduced death-toll in comparison.

The second point to be raised, of course, is that the enhanced bellicosity that characterizes the period of the Musket Wars, was only made possible in the first place via the introduction of technological improvements (most prominently, the eponymous weapon of the conflict) brought by Europeans.

This might sound something of a glaringly obvious self-evidency; yet it matters in the context of Hobson's Pledge's preferred metanarrative - as far and away from "proving" that European colonization was what made all the magical(thinking) difference between pre-Treaty "barbarism" and post-Treaty "civilization" , it instead shows that the European contribution to peace and prosperity here in these lands is, at best, *decidedly* more mixed.

To attempt to insist otherwise - that large-scale losses of life numbering in the tens of thousands (admittedly, again, over a period of nearly forty years) amidst Maori in the early 1800s, is something that is *only* the result *of* Maori, as if in a vacuum ... is again, to endeavour to decontextualize an important series of threads of New Zealand history, in service of an overarching yet fundamentally a-historical pro-colonial meta-narrative. t

Yet it is the third point, that I am about to make, which is arguably the most significant.

As I have stated above, it came as quite some surprise to me that Brash appeared to believe that New Zealand history teaching doesn't entail anybody learning anything about the conflicts which dominated much of the pre-1840s landscape here. I well remember reasonable tracts of classroom time spent upon it; and a pretty common currency for these in broader life.

When a law-lecturer of mine made a joke about the ... difficulties of introducing herself at various Maraes in certain parts of the country, due to her being Ngapuhi, and muttered occasionally only somewhat-joking comments about the alleged aggressions an outrages committed against her hosts' ancestors, by the folk of her forebears ... I don't think much of the room required this being explained as if it were entirely new information we were coming into contact with?

But I digress.

Maybe there have been some seismic shifts in the NZ education system over the past few years (and, as a side-note, it has ever been an endemic problem when it comes to commentary upon education matters - we all just blithely presume, unless we're teachers, that things are still fundamentally the same as "when we went through"); but unless this has been the case, I do not think that there is a total lack of teaching or of broader awareness about the Musket Wars et al.

I *do* however think that there is quite a chronic *under-teaching* and more than infrequent *lack of awareness* about the *other side* of proceedings.

Insofar as, while we *might* learn about some of the broad trends inherent in the Musket Wars; and some of the pretty impressive leadership figures like Hongi Hika ... pretty much everything else that's non-military related seems to fly under the radar. A QED proof of which can be found in Brash's own words pertaining to his own view that 'lifting the lid' on NZ history pre-1840 simply means confronting "the fact that there were some awful things done by Māori tribes to other Māori tribes".

But even though names like Ruatara are somewhat known today (a very forward-thinking Ngapuhi chieftain - who, amongst other things, sought to introduce European agricultural elements to his people, with a view to improving both their own self-provision of sustenance and the economic trading facility which greater output would bring - tellingly, stating his interest in wheat-cultivation due to a significant shortage in a neighbouring offshore market), you have to do a bit of digging to find mention of the remarkably active and intentional role which Maori were carving out for themselves in the flax, timber, sealskin, potato, and other industries.

Admittedly, as a side-note, pretty much all of these *do* directly relate to the military-history angle of things - insofar as the agricultural advancements of the period enabled far greater military actions due to freeing up manpower, and all these economic windfalls facilitating the additional purchase of armaments.

But that's just the thing. The "the pre-Treaty era was just barbarous atrocities carried out in the name of inter-tribal conquest" perspective doesn't even acknowledge the sheer ingenuity and societal effort which went into making those three thousand plus raids and battles which make up the Musket Wars *possible*. Even though the same sorts of people pushing that line probably still quietly pat their own forebears on the back for "the advancements of Industrial society" which eventually produced the technological capabilities of World War One, or the Second World War, or the Nazi-derived rocketry which both took Man to the Moon and furnished endless rows of atomic missile-silos at the height of the Cold War.

I suppose that's the metaphor I'm going for here, come to think of it - the notion that attempting to characterize or teach pre-1840s NZ history as a series of inter-tribal aggressive outrages ... makes about exactly as much sense as attempting to reduce everything that happened during the span of the Cold War down to escalating tallies of missiles pointed at each other, and Vietnam in there somewhere as well.

Anyway, again I digress.

Part of the reason why I find the economic developments which characterized New Zealand prior to the Treaty so worthy of reiteration here, is because contrary to the rather popular subconscious view of Maori trading activity with the wider world basically being exchanging a few minimally-above-subsistence surplus primary industry gleanings with whalers or sealers ... the actual truth of the matter is that ferrying the *literally thousands of tonnes* of flax, or the *literally thousands of pounds* [in the currency of the day] worth of other exports to Australia or elsewhere ... weren't just European trading ships. But Maori-owned vessels as well.

I shall phrase this again more succinctly: Maori prior to 1840 included within their number, quite some perspicacious and enterprising figures who saw fit to operate within the European-dominated international economic system of the day ... and compete very successfully on an equal footing.

Indeed, the success of Maori-owned and run international shipping operations is a key part of the story of how New Zealand acquired arguably 'our' first flag - that of the United Tribes, promulgated officially in 1835. This being necessitated due to the requirement of ships trading in British controlled ports overseas having a flag of nationality to register under.

There's another intriguing story to be written on how things "went wrong" economically over the course of the subsequent decades; but we shall, I think, leave that for another time - as this piece has already marched on far further I had initially intended.

The last point I'd raise (for now) about the pre-1840 'New Zealand' story, which is not raised in the 'litany of atrocity' metanarrative, is that the actual genesis of 'New Zealand' identity can very much be said to properly lie in those times.

In the occasionally confusing, sometimes deadly, but *always* interesting not just 'encounters' - but 'engagements', 'assimilations' (going both ways, to be sure), and 'enjoinments' of individuals and communities which took place well before the 'overwriting' of much of this by successive waves of "we're British" that took place with subsequent, post-Treaty migration and cultural-legal enshrinements here.

In the course of researching this piece, I happened across some several accountings of the prominent Missionary personage - Thomas Kendall. Now apart from the fact that the notion of missionary-linguist-teacher-arms dealers is a pretty ... almost 'pulp' level of interesting characterization, or the direct role which Kendall played in the international diplomacy of the day by facilitating Hongi Hika and Waikato's trip to England (the net outcome of which being hundreds of muskets and one suit of armour for Ngapuhi), it is the story of his eventual booting out of the Church Missionary Society that particularly interests me.

The 'official' reason, of course, was his affair with the daughter of a prominent Maori Tohunga [Priest]. Not due to any great opposition to the idea of interracial relations - but rather because Kendall was already a married man, thus making him an adulterer. Evidently, in those days, 'conduct unbecoming of the Clergy' was supposed to mean something.

Yet I don't think that's the actual motivation for his expulsion. Not entirely, anyway.

Instead, you look at Kendall's correspondence and other such sources - and it rapidly becomes abundantly clear that he'd effectively almost stopped thinking like, or for that matter thinking of *himself* as , a good English Christian man.

To quote his own words on the subject : due to the "apparent sublimity of [Maori] ideas" - "I have been almost completely turned from a Christian to a Heathen".

Where am I going with this? With a few notable and largely self-declared exceptions, we are not, truthfully speaking, simply "South Seas British", over here in the "New Zealand European" census-category. (Not least because of all the decidedly *non*-British Europeans who've migrated here over the centuries - my French and Swedish ancestry proudly wave their respective flags, and Dannevirke has its big Viking sign)

Instead, the 'encounter' with what has been here before (or what is coming here after), and the adjusting, the adaptation to these 'new' circumstances and *without* the comforting double-buttressing of cultural, political, and economic hegemony ... is something which has characterized both the pre-1840s span of New Zealand history, as well as the post-1970s [particularly the 1967 British entry into the European Economic Community] space of our seeking to define our *own* National Identity here in this little country of ours, upon our *own* terms rather than meekly blithely accepting the imposed identi-forms of others (whether British then, or McWorld today).

But again, I have digressed - albeit for rather important and significant reasons, given the customary introspection upon New Zealand National Identity which has come to characterize Waitangi Days year in and year out.

The point I have been making, is that I completely agree with *some* of the words uttered by Brash earlier at Waitangi.

"Let's face the whole history. I'm in favour of doing that. [...] but I don't want our history to be taught in a biased way."

It's just that this means *so* much more than simply rattling off a list of death-tolls from Musket-raids. And, in point of fact, will probably go quite some way to *disproving* the sorts of insistent cognitive terrain that the Hobson's Pledge types often like to propagate around the place.

There's so much to celebrate and to be impressed by with pre-1840s NZ history. And so much 'additional context' to some of the more grisly or negative parts.

The discussion and accompanying explorations around these areas is far too important, to reference me some Clemenceau, to be left simply to the sorts of people who pronounce the "ch" in "Racist".

On Venezuela And Judith Collins' Sudden Inexplicable Enthusiasm for Democracy

There are a few things to be said about this attack-line from the National Party's Judith Collins. One of which, is that Collins either doesn't know, or more likely simply doesn't care about the facts of the situation. Juan Guaido did not contest the 2018 Venezuelan Presidential Election. It is therefore impossible to truthfully call him the "rightful winner" of said Election.

But, you know, it isn't nearly as neat of a soundbite to talk about the installation of an "Interim President" with a view toward organizing pending new elections, so a simplistic "TRUE WINNER" vs "CORRUPT FAKE" narrative is what she's gone for here.

Another, is the curious contradiction entailed in Collins' statement that the European Union supports Guaido over Maduro. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that it's not actually true (the actual E.U. stance is only to recognize Guaido if Maduro continues to refuse to hold fresh elections; with the additional corollary that the Bloc's individual member-countries will issue a range of statements which *avoid* explicit 'recognition'), it completely erases the stances of a number of E.U. member-countries, such as Italy and Greece, which have pointedly refused to recognize Guaido as President, interim or otherwise.

The attempted monolithicization of the moral force of the entirety of Europe behind Guaido on show here, is also a very handy illustration of the way in which the supranational institutions that underpin neoliberal-globalism directly undercut the actual ability of any country to have its own say, its own views, its own voice. And actively distort realty in the process. But we shall perhaps leave that exploration for another time.

In any case, for all their faults, I'm not sure that it would be particularly tenable to try and argue that either Italy or Greece are not currently "democratic". Or, for that matter, that the world's largest democracy, a longstanding friend of ours with whom our interests increasingly align, the Republic of India, is not to be counted amidst "The World's [sic] democracies" simply because India has also refused to bend the Boltonian knee and recognize Guaido.

In fact, there are quite a number of democratic countries which aren't against Maduro. but once again, because this would be inconvenient for Collins' "Good Democracies vs Evil Socialists" moral duality, this is completely ignored. I must also confess myself abjectly surprised at The Economist suddenly being a champion of democracy, given some of its previous positions *against* democratically-attained outcomes it feels to be "problematic" from the perspective of neoliberal-technocracy; as is the curiousness of Collins' sudden apparent allergy to being cordial with the People's Republic of China, given her very specific history in this area - but, again, another series of stories for another time.

Collins' comments around New Zealand being offside with "all of our traditional allies" on this issue, further ring perplexing.

After all, you take a look at a number of the countries we're now apparently off-side with, and it almost seems like the opposite is true. I mean, as applies the United States, France, and Israel ... this therefore means that we are not joining, respectively, a country that broke *off* military relations with us and turfed us out of a defence pact over the NZ-nuclear-free issue, a country which carried out an act of international terrorism against us (a situation in which, I note, we did not have the United States' or United Kingdom's support, due to it being contrary to their interests to do so), and a country whose extensive array of strikes against us includes the ongoing theft of our passports for espionage purposes, an attempted hacking of our police computer-systems, and an implicit declaration of war against us at the United Nations only a few months ago.

The "BUT ALL OUR FRIENDS ARE DOING IT!" school of international diplomacy theory has also been trotted out previously by the National Party, most prominently with regard to its vitriolic opposition to the Clark Government keeping New Zealand out of the Americans' illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The New Zealand refusal to proceed in the absence of a clear U.N. mandate for THAT Bolton-approved Neocon brouhaha, has since been vindicated on any number of levels. Although no doubt, there are still holdouts within National who yet believe we made the wrong call on Iraq, and want to 'make it up' to the Americans with subsequent silliness at their behest.

Oh, and speaking of the U.N. - it's probably worth noting that that august body has thus far refused to ordain Guaido as a legitimate leader of Venezuela. Maybe Collins doesn't think the United Nations are a "traditional ally" of New Zealand, either.

Collins often likes to play the populist - hence her quip about "Even the E.U." choosing to recognize Guaido. The implication being clear that "even" the horrifically anti-democratic and anti-popular European Union has chosen to do the 'right thing', and is in this instance - in Collins' heavily skewed view - on the side of the ordinary Venezuelan people and some measure of "democracy".

It is therefore considerably ironic that the confederation of forces which she has allied herself with, and which she seeks to drag New Zealand kicking and screaming into greater alignment with ... are the anti-populist ones, more generally speaking.

Meanwhile, many of those who are castigated or characterized as being "populist", concerned with national sovereignty against intergovernmental interference, with the upholding of the democratically expressed will of the people *against* transnational neoliberal (or, for that matter, neocon - as in this instance) elites ... they are not on the side of Guaido.

I state this, because it illustrates the clear dysjunction between the anti-elitist, and somewhat 'popular' in style rhetoric which we have increasingly heard from the National Party over the past few years ... and what they actually believe, and actually support, when they think they can get away with it.

A similar instance can be observed with the National Party's recent declaration of opposition to the UN Migration Pact - despite its own immediately previous tenure presiding over historically high levels of immigration to New Zealand, and its earlier championing of the anti-sovereignty Trans-Pacific Partnership trade/investment agreement.

In any case, it is probable that another thought percolates at the back of Judith Collins' mind, motivating her and her colleagues/cronies to take such vociferous stands on the politics of a small nation on the other side of the globe.

Namely, that in situations wherein elections do not produce the "right" outcomes for some reason [whether due to alleged improper governmental actions in the Venezuelan election; or due to NZ First opting for Labour, over the notionally more popular National Party here in the NZ General Election in 2017], that the Guaido recognition suggests you can shift governing arrangements more toward the neoliberal right via 'top-down' ('diplomatic') interventions - no "elections" required.

It is no wonder that Collins is contemplating such a concept.

After all, it is pretty much the only way that she would possibly be able to become Leader of the National Party , and/or Prime Minister of New Zealand.

"Any Word That Threatens Power Is Literally Russian Propaganda"

Now here is quite a thing. What is being suggested, is that the primary users of any of these terms are supposedly Russian bots, or other vectors for material that can be 'safely dismissed' out of hand as "propaganda".

This is not, strictly speaking, "Orwellian" - in the sense of Orwell's conception of "Newspeak". That, after all, was the deliberate efforts to change cognition and render rebellion impossible through the policing of language by removing whole words and thus, potentially, concepts ... whilst proffering other, more rote and mechanical formulations elsewhere. A pruning and 'simplification' of thought, with the goal of removing the "thought" bit.

No, this is something else. It is keeping alive [for how long, who can say], these terms rather than attempting to obviate them from our collective political discourse.

And doing so with a very specific agenda in mind - rendering them from potentially quite apt terms of description and/or castigation ... particularly of those in power today [you know, the politics of the "Establishment" .. oop there's one right there!] ... into taboo terms.

Words which delineate and demarcate the user, the possessor as some sort of false-flag enemy agent; who has no interest in the furtherance of democracy or in the positive participation of their state's genuine political process. And who therefore, once again, can safely be de-legitimated rather than listened to or otherwise dialogued with (lest they, you know, change the minds of people they talk to with facts and/or persuasive rhetoric) , as "propaganda and propagandists do not argue in good faith" or whatever.

In a way, it is even more effective than the properly Orwellian approach outlined several paragraphs above.

Because it is not attempting to render un-words, concepts with long and embedded histories in the English [or, for that matter, any other] Lexicon and accompanying political consciousness.

Besides, as an associate pointed out with reference to Gene Wolf's Book of the New Sun series ... there's a reasonable argument that even removing words does not, in and of itself, manage to successfully 'reprogram the human mind' to remove entire concepts in the manner envisaged by Orwell's fictional governmental antagonists. It simply means we find new ways to express them.

Even assuming that "forbidden words" themselves don't remain or even encounter additional currency and saliency in less public popular/political culture. [this may or may not be an instance of the Streisand Effect] .

So instead, we have this - the attempt to turn the proper and appropriate words to describe things as they are [even though they are, yes, often over-used in some particulars, and with rather flexible definitional ambits ... as, as it happens, are almost all terms of serious political discourse anyway ["Democracy", anyone?], but I digress ... ] ...

... to turn these words into things that will be kept alive rather than erased. Precisely because they serve to mark out whom you're not allowed to listen to, and what you're not allowed to hear or "take seriously".

As I said above - in a way, this is more effective than simple erasure. As it is easier, in many spheres and in many respects to learn to "hate" than it is to "forget".

Now as a bit of a disclaimer, I do happen to think that quite frequently, "Rothschild" is basically a hallmark of conspiracy-theory tier rambling specularism rather than any serious nor immanent Critique of Power; and I can definitely see how both that and "Zionist" can be utilized in manners which we might broadly term "Anti-Semitic".

But it is a strange world indeed, to wake up one morning and find out that the commonly accepted Academic Term for the dominant politico-economic paradigm of the last thirty years here in the Anglosphere [and, for that matter, much further afield - via its neo-"imperialist" imposition as part and parcel with the "Neocon" foreign policy-set ... referred to, once again in literal academic textbooks as the "Neo-Neo Synthesis/Consensus"] ...

... that this is now apparently some sort of insta-signifer of subversive Russian State Agent employ, by the user.

No, the primary use for terms such as "Neoliberal" has, and is, and will be - the observational and deductive calling out of Neoliberalism. As, and when and whyfor it occurs.

No wonder you're "not allowed"" to use it, Citizen!

In a manner akin to the true ending of the parable of The Emperor's New Clothes - wherein the small child is locked up for insulting Royalty , by pointing out the actual nature of the foolish Ruler's new "garments" ..

... the one thing "they in Power" absolutely cannot stand is a simple, succinct, and easily communicated/understood statement of Truth.

On The Curiously Contradictory Complaints Against Tulsi Gabbard

Politics, much like the ethically-challenged tawdry celebrity gossip-rags it occasionally so closely resembles, is a field in which "Truth" (or even, simply, 'internal cohesiveness' of an argument or a position) is often only a tertiary consideration. With some measure of "effectiveness" (especially of a slur) as a secondary, and "the venting of highly emotive vitriol" an unabashed and unquestioned prime.

This is, presumably, how we explain the increasingly lurid, and manifestly ... not even just "counterfactual" as "inherently internally contradictory" pile-up of allegations and aspersions currently in circulation against Tulsi Gabbard.

If you believed what you read ... Gabbard is supposed to be simultaneously a radical anti-war candidate who'll leave America defenceless (by, you know, not getting further into unnecessary overseas quagmires) AND some sort of blood-curdling pro-war promulgator of the Pax-Americana.

She's accused of being an outspoken Islamophobe alleged to make Trump's statements about various demographics look moderate ... yet simultaneously a hater of Israel, an anti-semite, who wants said state wiped off the map by Iran and Syria.

Some ultra-liberal voices have attacked her for comments she made many years ago about how the Democratic Party's agenda should be economic in orientation rather than focused upon LGBT issues. Some conservatives have attacked her for the repudiation of those comments she made some years later.

And more confusingly, some Republicans have also attacked her for the earlier round of comments, on grounds that apparently they don't like people pre-empting their current-day talking points by a decade and a half?

It has even been said that she's some sort of Clinton-acolyte against genuine, economically progressive politics ... occasionally right next to the observations of her allegedly being "anti-Democrat" for the principled stance of resigning from her position on the DNC due to its favouritism of Clinton against Sanders.

Anyway, you get my point.

Going through this round of the Presidential Primary process, every, all sides who are arrayed against Gabbard are still "finding their feet". They're not sure what's going to work against Gabbard - in no small part because they've never really faced a candidate like her before [who cannot be easily attacked, depending upon which party you're from, on any of the "usual stuff" - as a brown woman with a military service record and strong, principled stances on all the key areas ... about the only "vulnerability" is if her antagonists want to go after the religion angle].

So instead of disciplined bursts of fire, along identified key themes, they're simply trying the old "throw everything at her and see what sticks" approach. Albeit in a manner which is so cap-handed and internally self-contradictory [seriously - check the GoP's initial response to Gabbard's announcement of candidacy] , that it's far less "recon-in-force" and more "recon-by-farce".

But in any case, it is useful to take a look, with critical eye, upon what's actually going on with the reality of her stances, as compared to the scaremongering rhetoric.

Take the charges of "Islamophobia", for instance.

Now while it is true that Gabbard has appeared in the media from time to time talking about terrorist threats from "Radical Islam" ... the actual thrust of this aspersion does not have much to do with that. Instead, it is because she also makes trenchant criticisms of the highly improper degree of malefic influence which Saudi Arabia exerts over American (geo)politics; of the ways in which Saudi Arabia and others are given carte-blanche to kill other Muslims, as a result.

And speaking on that general point - it takes a very strange mind indeed to suggest that Gabbard's opposition to America bombing ordinary Syrians or Iranians somehow makes her indelibly, appallingly "anti-Muslim".

I mean surely that's the more more important rubric for assessment?

Or are we in some frightningly phantasmical post-twilight political-psephological silliness-zone wherein it matters not a jot what stance one takes in opposition to the American role in tens of thousands of deaths in the Middle East in recent years ... you say "Radical Islam" on TV - that's the thing regarded as "meaningful", in the context of whether one is "pro" or "anti" Muslims.

Ultimately, yes - yes that is exactly where we are at. As can be seen by all the lurid ridicularity bound up in the mutually-contradictory aspersions being directed at Gabbard at this time.

It's all words. Empty words. Counterfactual words. Words of no fixed opinion, nor abode.

The only thing they tell you, really, is what she's up again.

That she matters.

Because apparently Everybody from all over the Establishment political spectrum, is running scared.

And given how fundamentally broken the US 'Establishment political spectrum' actually is - as morally (well, a-morally) committed as it is to pro-war and pro-poverty for all , with increasingly facile commitments to "any form of diversity you like provided it doesn't question the bedrock of our Neo-Neo (geo)political consensus" ...

GOOD!

Many years ago now, another great economic populist of the Democratic Party - back when being a Democrat on the side of the people meant something (and, from New York, no less!) - the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ... made a speech at Madison Square Garden, speaking about the similar confluence of opposition he and his agenda then faced.

He had this to say:

"They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred."

Just as with FDR , those in favour of Tulsi Gabbard, should, perhaps, welcome the castigation and condemnation of elites from all manner of different directions.

After all, it is a sign that, as the old Indian proverb goes:

"The monkeys only shake the tree with the good mangoes".

Which, in this instance, is a tree commensurate with what we here in Kiwiland, would refer to as a "Mighty Totara" indeed.

#GoHardForTulsiGabbard

Why Republicans Don't Want YOU To Go Hard For Gabbard

I've seen a few strange things this morning; but one of the more peculiar has to be the Republican Party attacking Tulsi Gabbard's just-announced Presidential candidacy, on grounds that "Progressives have blasted her".

I'll say that again: the Republicans appear to be attacking Gabbard for allegedly not being popular enough with "Progressives".

Like ... wut? Ordinarily, scare-mongering about a candidate running for the other party's Presidential nomination at this stage in the (pre-)campaign, is a matter of attempting to whip up your own party's supporters in paroxysms of terror about the politics of this or that potential nominee.



Now you could probably suggest that the GoP also attacking her for "Resign[ing] from the DNC to support Bernie Sanders", is an example of that. Something something "she's a creeping socialist infiltrator" something something. [Although I suspect that line of attack's going to backfire - partially due to cross-over support for economic populism between the Sanders-sectorial of American politics, and many people who voted for Trump [c.f Steve Bannon's remarks on the issue]; but largely also because people remember the narrative of the DNC having "rigged" the contest for Clinton in order to keep Sanders out. Statements that Gabbard left the DNC over this, therefore, just make it seem like a) she has Principles [over craven power-pursuit]; and b) they're Principles that people, including GoP working class people, will like].

But when you get right down to it, there's no way that the Republicans' statement about Gabbard being anathema to and routinely attacked by "Progressives", even if it were significantly true, is geared towards the Republicans' own voters.

I mean, how could it be? "DON'T VOTE FOR HER! SHE'S SECRETLY A CONSERVATIVE, MAYBE?" Yeah, nah. Doesn't work.

What it is, however, is quite clearly a message intended for Democrat Primary participants, who'll get to have their say [assuming, you know, the Primary process is fair, rather than a carefully co-ordinated Coronation] over the next year and a half or so on whether or not Gabbard gets the nod. And with the very explicit objective of discouraging them from supporting her.

Now why might that be.

Clearly, it is because the Republicans are most afraid of Gabbard.

Hence, they shall continue to do everything in their power to try and de-legitimate and pre-emptively bump-off Gabbard's candidacy, before it's even out of the starting blocks.

Because they know all too well that the potent mix of a sensible foreign policy and a genuinely for-the-people economic platform - is an absolute winner (even despite any amount of media-mouthpiece shrieking to the contrary). And, more to the point, that it's what a not insignificant proportion of those who cast their ballots for Trump in 2016 thought they were voting for, only to find themselves bitterly disappointed two to three years in, when the Hope And Change with Red Hat Characteristics, turned out to be More Of The Same - But On Twitter.

And, of course, because the GoP also know that many of the usual attack-lines they'd field against most other Democrat leading personalities simply won't work on Gabbard. After all, it's pretty difficult to accuse a relatively recent military veteran (who, indeed, left her political role in order to serve her country abroad) of being an unpatriotic, craven Beltway careerist. Or, for that matter, somebody who resigned from the DNC in protest at perceived Clintonite skulduggery, of being some sort of front for a "Clintonite agenda". Or, indeed, an ardently pious and well respected figure within our religion as being some sort of "Godless Cultural Marxist Communist" or whatever.

Having said that, it will be interesting to see how the religion angle plays out; as sadly,i wouldn't put it past Republicans (and even a few Democrats) to basically attempt to attack her for being a) of a religious minority [in the US], b) brown [and probably c) Hawaiian by state].

In any case, while I'm not in the business of simply urging people to do something largely if not entirely because somebody we don't like is opposed to it ...

... as applies the Tulsi Gabbard 2020 candidacy, I am reminded of a Murray Ball political cartoon published here in New Zealand at the height of the electoral reform debate in the early 1990s.



Namely - that looking at who's opposed to Gabbard, and why : is a pretty great gateway to starting to understand why she should, nay, must be given a fair chance to run.

She stands alone, in terms of character and characteristics, policy and political personhood, that is true.

And in so doing, casts all the rest of the field, entire, in such harsh relief and shade.

#GoHardForGabbard

On Human Rights - Declared, Upheld, And Otherwise

The 10th of December marks the 70th Anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It's a pretty interesting document - not least because, if you peruse its contents, it contains an array of "rights" that have largely fallen by the wayside here in modern, neoliberal society.

This is a piece I penned a bit more than a year ago on a closely related concept; which I'm re-running, because I feel it's relevant:

"Doing some thinking about First, Second and Third Generation Human Rights this morning. [often thought of as 'Negative Rights', 'Positive/Economic Rights', and 'Post-Materialist'/'Group'/'Identity' rights, respectively [although the third one's somewhat vague]]

Specifically, about how one of the most pernicious effects of the ongoing Neoliberal revolution has been to almost completely strip serious discussion of Second Generation Rights out of our public and political discourse. Once upon a time [during the heyday of the Post-War Economic Consensus which immediately preceded these dark times], it was entirely uncontroversial to speak of a "Right to Work" (and not just any work "just and favourable conditions of work" also turns up in the relevant enshrinements), the right to join a Union, the right to medical care, and the right to state assistance when economic times were tough. These weren't just European innovations, or misty-eyed arcs of internationalist idealism either - they formed a serious bedrock of politics the Western World over ... even (perhaps surprisingly) that much-hyped 'individualist' "paradise" America. (New Zealand, it may interest you to know, still has a theoretical duty under various forms of international law to guarantee much of the above)

But these days, all of that has passed. Through a combination of active and passive de-emphasis.

The 'active' components have been straight-forward enough. Progressive waves of legislation (mostly starting with the 'Ruthanasia' era under National - and the Employment Contracts Act in particular standing out as a bit of a death-knell piece of work) first cast many of these rights more as 'guidelines' (i.e. things which didn't have to be upheld or bothered about, really) - and then steadily eroded them down into nothingness over time.

Nowadays, you'd probably get laughed out of the building and/or job-queue at many places if you seriously attempted to insist upon a right to unionization [even if there are some seriously devoted Union organizers out there who make it their life's work to try and reverse this sad and sorry situation]; whilst the ongoing litany of protections formerly enshrined in law yet now taken away [such as smoko-breaks most recently, and guaranteed hours, job-security within the first ninety days and so many other things before that] continues to mount up by the year.

But it's the more 'passive' processes that have been dominating my thinking this morning.

In specia, the curious way in which the ideologues and adherents of this Neoliberal perfidy have so successfully shut out '2nd Generation Rights' from the debate by comprehensively re-focusing our attentions upon those rights drawn from the generations of the 1st and the 3rd.

Take a look. We see no shortage of economic right wingers jumping up and down most vociferously in defence of the Right to Freedom of Speech. LEft-wingers, too, will often be pretty enthusiastic about this (provided, of course, that the free-speech exerciser is not a "Nazi" - although if he or she is, then that opens up a fresh attention-focusing discourse about the proper and justifiable limits of Free Speech, continuing to mold the conception of 'rights' in the public imagination as being about this sort of thing rather than, say, your right to a fair day's work for a decent day's pay). And with political proposals to alter our abortion laws setting gums a'flap this Election Season, no doubt the 'Right to Life' (with all the attendant permutations of position on both sides of that particular modern debate) will shortly be joining its rather more frequently invoked cousin.

So that's the first prong of it.

The second prong, if you like, is this newfound focus on some of those Third Generation Rights which I mentioned earlier. In specia, the ones about group-identification and self-actualization. Not that there's anything wrong with these things, of course (any more than there'd be something wrong with freedom of speech). But when it comes to rights-discourse, it is inescapable that the group-rights being talked about are far more likely these days, to be the right to identify with the sexuality and gender of one's choosing rather than to identify as a Union member.

There is, perhaps, a bit of an irony here - in that whilst the 2nd Generation Rights I referred to above tend to require fairly monumental expressions of collective will & political engagement in order to first actualize, and then maintain and enforce ... due to the way that Identities are constructed and disseminated under our present econo-cultural system, the expression of 3rd Generation Rights [some of them, anyway], despite nominally featuring collectives, can often effectively be conducted with only one's self. [or, more darkly, with the addition to the equation of somebody to dream up a way of commodifying and selling the 'identity' and its accouterments to you]

Indeed, some analysts have suggested that this is part of an at least semi-deliberate ploy to undermine solidarity in pursuit of improved economic conditions through getting people to 'aspire' off in different directions (and along post-materialist paths of development) instead. [because 'Atomized Individuals' who think of themselves as snowflakes are rather easier to corral and economically disempower than is the whole careening avalanche of frozen water together]

I'm not sure I'd go quite that far; and it's definitely worth re-iterating that despite the way they've potentially been used to 'crowd out' the discussion of other rights, 1st and 3rd generation rights ARE important and DO have their place when it comes to shoring up the protections of what it means (and how it means) to be Human.

But nevertheless, something to think about next time you see somebody grandstanding (whether from a liberal or a conservative point of view - you hear 'rights' invoked in both contexts almost as much these days) about the Rights we hear about most these days.

Namely: "What happened to all the OTHER rights we used to enjoy?" [i.e. those predominantly of the 2nd Generation]; and "How can we make them part of the conversation again with a view to bringing them back?"

Because these things are Important (hence why they were recognized and enshrined as 'Rights' in the first place); and it is both sad and significant that we now find ourselves existing in their apparent effective absence.

The 'Damnatio Memoriae' process of first dismembering them, and then degrading their salience in the public-political imagination until it's barely remembered that they were even once there ... has evidently been a highly effective one.

But that does NOT mean that it is irreversible! "

On The Opportunistic, Would-Be Hijacking Of The Yellow-Jackets By Neoliberals

A thought that's been gestating in my head these past few days about the Yellow Jackets "political moment", is how ... I guess you could say that "populism" looks like *very* different things to different people.

And, more specifically, how any genuine upswelling of ordinary-people political sentiment which is not *vigorously* (self) branded, will find itself seemingly inevitably co-opted by people far-removed from the context in question. Often in *direct contradiction* of anything actually being advocated/agitated for by the relevant Movement.

If "populism" is "the politics of opportunism" - then it is both the mass-collaborative art [a 'flash mob' we might have said, ten years ago .. if those are still a thing] of seizing an opportunity, creating an opportunity in order to be heard *en masse* where you'd previously been ignored as individuals ...

... but it is *also*, apparently, a politics beset and bedevilled by "opportunists" seeking to coast or I suppose to "surf" [and then, with regrettable commonality, to "serf"] the 'wave' of the onrushing tide of the Body Politik to their own advancement.

Now, if all of that seems a bit abstract ... allow me to proffer an example.

The below-linked screencap is from a young American conservative commentator by the name of Charlie Kirk. If you haven't heard of him, or of the organization he represents - "Turning Point USA" - then I do apologize most deeply for (dis)abusing you via this introduction.

Suffice to say, he's of that peculiar flavour of American who has concluded that anything he doesn't like is literally "Socialism".

And, correspondingly, with the certitude of one only possessed of hammer-(and sickle) shaped glasses, that anything he *does* like is therefore inherently "anti-socialist".

Now, we shall leave aside for the moment the fact that Kirk appears to have - whether inadvertently, or intentionally - confused a bunch of *English* protesters chanting something about Trump ... for Frenchmen (a situation of ethno-political confusion, given that that flare-point captured on the video referred to, was a #Brexit demonstration, which *both sides* should find endlessly egregious!).

The key element that has defined the Yellow Jacket protests has been what it is opposed *to*. The Neoliberal technocratic-elitism which Macron is the emblematic standard bearer for, these days. And not least because he was literally elected, and then hailed, as "the antidote" or "the barrier" [but apparently, really rather more of "the speed-bump"] to "populism", to "democracy" which might produce "the wrong outcomes" ...

Perhaps French politics might be viewed like a steam-engine. Either the building pressure when there is fire under the body-politik - either it gets dissipated as hot-air through 'safe' release valves, or it builds up until the mighty 'locomotive of history' [to reference me some Marx] begins to chug inexorably, ineffably forwards. Or the whole thing explodes, which is always fun.

But to return to the reasoning behind this potential naescent "revolutionary moment" (yes, I'm wildly over-egging things there. How else to varnish?) - Kirk has seized, no doubt, upon the fuel-tax and upon the fact that France is relatively to the left of America on economic matters ... and decided, based on these limited two data-points that this therefore means it's a "squeezed middle" uprising against "SOCIALISM!!! (tm)".

Yet it is, in point of fact, the exact opposite.

As many people have, by now, pointed out, the fuel-tax hike proposed by Macron is not exactly a "socialist" policy. Indeed - it is a fundamentally *neoliberal* one. Which seeks to continue the long and woefully disappointing legacy of neoliberal-right political figures attempting to 'pass the buck' for internalizing the externalities which have produced runaway climate change ... from those *actually largely responsible for it* in various parts of the private (and, yes, to be fair, public) sectors of the corporate-driven world , to ordinary consumers and citizens. Which often, not at all coincidentally, entails a shift in the burden of paying for the 'cleanup efforts' from some of those *more* able to pay, in globe-spanning firms ... to some of those *least* able to pay, in those same firms' lowest-paying jobs or on the unemployment bread-line. And which, again entirely uncoincidentally, means a shift from those who have a disproportionately *loud* voice in the polises and the politics (psephological or *actually-influential*) of the world , to those who have the disproportionately *unheard* whispers upon its margins.

Further, despite France being - by any objective measure - a country that has spent much of its history to the "left" of America on matters economic ... the protesters thronging the streets of that former country are *not* demanding the Great Dismantlement of the French welfare state, or of the 'Continental Capitalist' economic model. Indeed, quite the opposite.

It's *Macron* who's been doing that - with all of his utterly ridiculous rhetoric about 'running France like a tech-industry "start-up"', et cetera.

The general trajectory amongst the "grassroots" of French politics, meanwhile, has been to push *back against* that, and do the demanding of the *reinstatement* of those state-directed protections which Macron and his wealthy associates have been attempting to strip away.

Indeed, phrased in these terms then , if we are to talk about the overall tax-situation of France ... it isn't just that Macron has been attempting to impose this significant tax-hike upon ordinary French citoyens. It's that he's doing this immediately after having *slashed* the taxes of the most wealthy, and of large firms.

That is to say, he's simply once again *shifted* the burden on to those who are *less able* or even *least able* to afford it, from those who could better do so - both socially and economically.

It's also, on a side note, why I'm appalled every time I see the Washington Post attempt to frame the Yellow Jackets' demands for the rollback of the diesel tax-hike as illogical and self-defeating on grounds that - again, in the WaPo "Voice of the Resistance" 's view - it'll necessitate spending-cuts in welfare and other areas of state spending in the economy (which, to WaPo's credit, it acknowledges are services the Yellow Jackets are *also* pretty keen on).

Because not only are said curtailments of service and of state *already happening anyway*, in order to pay for (in part) the *previous* rounds of fundamentally regressive tax-cuts and to directly facilitate Macron's odiously pro-business, pro-Eurozone agenda ... but instead of attempting to pretend the choice is simply between "fuel tax plus services [that're disintegrating *anyway*]" or "remove fuel-tax but also remove services" - the reality is there really *is* an alternative, "another way" (that of *restoring* the revenue-streams from other areas which Macron has slashed). However rhetorically inconvenient it might be for Macron's various technocratic-elitist backers across both the political and the media worlds.

But I digress.

The point here, is that it is a very curious form of "socialism" indeed which seeks to put the screws on ordinary people at the bottom of the heap in order to support the finance-sector, and private enterprise from both one's own country and more especially, from abroad. Admittedly, it *might* be viewed as an adequate encapsulation of many of the problems of the present-day People's Republic of China ... but despite the previous popularity of Maoism in, say, 1968 France, I do not think that one can conceivably refer to Macron as a Maoist, still much less as a Post-Maoist with Deng-ist Characteristics.

Yet leaving aside the litany of actual French people boldly proclaiming it ... I suppose we might be being a bit too harsh on poor old Charlie for apparently being unable to perceive that the Yellow Jacket movement is, in point of fact, a sustained assault *on* the technocratic-neoliberal Western "order".

You see, Kirk and his beliefs cannot even really *see* this aforementioned "technocratic-neoliberal" edifice ... for the exact same reason that, to quote messers Gaiman & Pratchett, "people in Trafalgar Square can't see England". (And having referenced that most excellent work of apocalyptic fiction, Good Omens, I should also perhaps note the French protester who boldly proclaimed that while Macron was busy talking about "the end of the world" [in reference to the admittedly pressing issue of global climate change] , the Yellow Jackets themselves were speaking of - and fretting over - "the end of the month", i.e. how to get by and survive to then, on a month-by-month and week-by-week basis].

He's also pathologically, categorically unable to acknowledge the idea that ... accepting for a moment that the French political-economic system falls under the rubric of "socialism" [it doesn't .. not really .. but for Charlie, we'll humour him, just this once ...] ... people might actually *voluntarily choose* to live under a "socialist" system - or even, more especially, *having* lived under such a system previously, that they might *voluntarily choose* to do so *again* if and when it starts being undermined and eroded around them.

A similar phenomenon can be observed when Neo-Neo people and other defenders of a certain sort of potentially partially post-modern Liberal Triumphalism , are completely unable and unwilling to accept the idea that reasonably large numbers of Russians might want to go back to the Soviet system, having seen just how bad things went under Yeltsin etc.

So it's no wonder, I suppose, that he insists that people wanting to move - relatively speaking - back *towards* the economic left, and *run screaming for the hills* [well, for the barricades, really - France is bold like that] from more-monetarist-more-problems Financier's Neoliberalism .... that these people are somehow attempting to overturn "socialism".

Although I nevertheless find it highly amusing that he's *also* chosen to label this as an attack on "Cultural Marxism".

Not simply because, as I've capaciously argued elsewhere, there really is no such thing [there are another set of trends observable in a number of societies that *do* somewhat correlate to what some people mean by "Cultural Marxism" .. it's just that these almost invariably turn out to *actually* be "Cultural Capitalism" and/or "Cultural Liberalism" - with these actual-antagonists employing the age-old distractionary tactic of "HEY LOOK OVER THERE AT THAT OTHER THING!" in order to neutralize and defuse the potential for dissent against them in the broader populace].

Rather, it's because if you get right down to it .. if ever there *were* such a thing as "Cultural Marxism", I am *pretty sure* that Article One, Paragraph One of its charter and its depiction would be groups of ordinary people getting together with torches and cobblestones and other implements and carrying out some sort of *seriously unruly* and not-easily-dispersible mass-protest in the streets against their overly-capitalist political would-be masters who've been putting the screws on the 'common man' overly more than usual, lately.

Or, phrased another way ... particularly because this is literally how Marxist theory kinda operates (i.e. crises of capitalism, in escalating magnitude and severity, until eventually somebodies either tear the whole thing down or alternatively introduce a "reformist" (or "Bismarckian" if it goes further/more principled in ambit/intent) policy-suite designed to ameliorate the situation in some lasting, significant manner) ...

Charlie Kirk has somehow managed to identify a broadly pro-"socialist" [in his sense of the term] "Cultural Marxist" [in the *proper* sense of the term .. i.e. the one you'll almost never hear used] movement ...

... as being the exact opposite of this all the way down.

One last thing:

This tweet and line of reasoning is also why you can tell that Charlie Kirk and his ilk are not in any way, shape, or form "populists" or otherwise on the side of The People.

Because it shows that when you get right down to it - they do not want an *empowered* people, a critically engaged citizenry.

Instead, they just want - at worst - to replace one set of out-of-touch, technocratic-neoliberal elites with another.

Remember that, at all times.

The word for that, I believe, is "Opportunism".