Fascism in Aotearoa?

Bella Ciao.

There are certain movies you see that you remember vividly from the time. Significant events that become cultural landmarks. One such movie for me was the 1996 film Trainspotting. It had a fantastic soundtrack, and it introduced us to Ewan McGregor and the less than glamorous side of heroin addiction.

I read an interesting interview with author Irvine Welsh, marking thirty years since he wrote the book the movie was based on. One of the themes in the book is the choice people can make between a safe life with a boring job and a mortgage, or heroin.

Which is pretty grim, but not as bleak as Welsh pointing out that option ‘A’, the steady job and the house, is actually not an available option to many, just thirty years later. But what really struck me was his ending line:

“Is it any wonder people don’t really know what their place is in the world? Capitalism is on the way out but we’re not mature enough for socialism, and instead we’re sleepwalking towards some kind of fascistic model and pretty much everything is toxic.”

We see a growing tendency in countries overseas for the far right, the fascists, to gain traction. Building upon dissatisfaction with what life offers many in the current system, playing upon prejudices against minority groups. Could that happen here?

I’m not so worried about the parties of the right moving further in that direction after a victory, I’m worried about what happens if they lose the election. What happens to all the people they’re working up into a frenzy with the idea that everything here is terrible, it’s all the governments’s fault, and only National/ACT can save things?

Image @cv_nicks.

It’s not the politicians that worry me, so much as these supporters they have created. They are so revved up on thinking everything is awful, that the government is against them and deliberately destroying the country, and that’s not even mentioning the whole co-governance thing. Sadly I think we will, in the next term, see more aggression from these people if they lose at the ballot box. Although I wouldn’t like to speculate what form that might take.

These people need to be helped down, back from the edge. That way madness, and not accepting election results, lies. And if you think that sounds far fetched don’t forget it took some of these people years to accept that they lost the 2017 election after Winston went with Labour.

It’s not like if those parties win the election they’re planned to start locking people up in camps. Well, apart from troubled young people.

Hmm come to think of it people like Brown, Mitchell, Seymour, and Collins well, lets just say it’s not a big stretch to imagine them quite comfortable in some kind of uniform. Referring to themselves as real New Zealanders, and possibly expanding the definition of who needs to be locked up, over time.

I would like to be clear though that I am in no way inferring they would be like National Socialists. There’s no way these people would be associated with Socialism. Still perhaps it is for the best that their leader has no charisma to speak of, that could be dangerous.

Lets look at the definition of fascism (from Wikipedia):

Fascism is a far-right form of government in which most of the country's power is held by one ruler or a small group, under a single party. Fascist governments are usually totalitarian and authoritarian one-party states.

Well I can’t see too much there that the group of MPs I mentioned above would object to, provided it was them that were in charge.

Then there are those who might not support National or ACT, but who strongly oppose this government. People who would be delighted with a change at the election. You might have read the Stuff article about the nutters that are Nuremberg 2.0.

“Antoinette (a Taupō based author and homeschooling advocate) hopes, like we do, to establish a true people’s court to hold fake scientists, killer doctors, and tyrannical Government officials accountable for what they’ve done,” Peters said in his introduction.

For almost as long as the coronavirus pandemic has existed, people have wanted retribution for the response.

Most of these efforts are informal; lists on Telegram of public figures who risk being arrested and executed, a manifestation of primal bloodlust. Others are more polished; advertised as investigative committees with lawyers and exhibits.

The shorthand for these efforts is “Nuremberg 2.0”, named for the post-war trials of Nazis and their collaborators. In New Zealand, the term has adorned signs and T-shirts at protests and litters many a politician and journalist’s email inbox.

I’m sure we can all think of some different shorthand to describe those efforts. Still, they seem like a largely harmless group of insane people, no disrespect of the insane intended. Maybe we shouldn’t be so concerned about the ramifications of a National/ACT victory?

Photo: Sydney Morning Herald.

It’s not like they would all of a sudden start targeting a group in our society if they do win. They’ve already been targeting female Māori MPs for the last couple of years, making it clear that they do not deserve the same treatment as, for example, white male MPs. I assume that harassment is quite acceptable to society. They’ve been doing it openly again and again and all the media have said so far is “would you like some help with that?”

Thankfully if either National or ACT were to exhibit Fascist behaviour they would need a compliant media who would happily paint them in a good light, while painting things the government does negatively.

Um.

All joking aside, not that the state of our media is a laughing matter. Christopher Luxon, and the others I’ve mentioned here, are not actually fascists.

But if National and ACT win this election on the anti Māori message they have been running then to my mind fascism is winning in Aotearoa, and that is heartbreaking.

I’ll leave you with Bella Ciao, sung worldwide as an anti-fascist hymn of freedom and resistance.