The Final Variant is Called ‘Business as Usual’

Below is the Freedom Shop's position on the 'anti-mandate' protests.

It’s easy to write off the ‘anti-mandate’ protests in Wellington and other towns. Given New Zealand has had few deaths and a smaller economic impact than most countries, the mandates may be one of the more justifiable of the many restrictions on freedom that the government has come up with and the politically clueless, erratic nature of the protest makes it easy to sneer at.

However, judgement shouldn’t be made on the basis of the way the protest is being conducted – that’s a red herring. Sure, there seem to be a high proportion of nutters, and lots of counter-productive behaviour, but the real reason for opposing the protest is the awful politics.

In terms of policy, the protests are a mess, not only are a hodge-podge of issues being raised, but no alternatives are being offered and a wide range of conspiracy theories are being promoted.

Marty Verry, chief executive of timber and tourism company Red Stag, who acknowledges funding the protest says “the major axe to grind I've got is with regards to what I'm seeing as to whether there is any justification now to maintain a quarantine system at the border for international tourism.” So it seems his problem is not personal freedom, he just wants to make money. Many others seem to be involved to push a particular political barrow that has little to do with mandates.

Wealthy America’s Cup yacht guy Russell Coutts said the main reason he was joining the protest was because he believed the government was funding the media “conditional on them promoting government policy, propaganda and spin”. Though he added to his list that “I'm against creating different rights, laws and privileges based on race” which obviously clashes with the insistence by others there that the 1835 He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni nullifies government laws and allows them to exercise control over parliament grounds.

Others on the protest have called for the reinstatement of Trump, a military coup or the abandonment of the government’s re-structuring of water supply management. There’s anti-semitic and misogynist slogans, plenty of toxic masculinity, and references to ‘Agenda 2030’ and ‘The Great Reset’ all on display. Some fret about masked ‘antifa’ infiltrators sneaking in at night causing trouble, reflecting right-wing paranoia that makes left activists a mixture of commissar, ninja and hobgoblin.

This protest seems to have been funded and orchestrated by people whose real aim is to attack anything they perceive as ‘leftist’. For some of those it’s a means of discrediting Labour in order to replace the present government with a more business friendly one, be it Luxon, a National-Act coalition or anyone else who will bow down to the gods of the ‘free-market’. Making it about mandates is just a convenient way to pull a crowd.

Another faction (if they have enough agreement to call them that) has a more frightening agenda. The presence of far-right individuals and white supremacists ranging from National Front members to former National Party publicist John Ansell isn’t coincidental. The political drift towards the left in recent years – even if the present government is hardly ‘left’ by any sensible analysis – is something that worries them, and they are using the pandemic to try and gain a following.

Never mind that these groups’ aims are in direct contradiction to those of many actually at the protest, this is an opportunity to undermine mildly progressive social policies, and to connect with people who in normal circumstances would have nothing in common with racist right-wingers or free-marketeers. When you are obsessed with a particular issue, you are likely to welcome allies regardless of their other views. Protestors who profess to hate corporate control cheered former ACT MP Rodney Hide when he spoke at the protest.

Shared opposition to covid restrictions gives the far-right a foot in a door that would normally be slammed shut, and opposing government measures allows them to position themselves as wanting ‘freedom’ even when calling for a military coup.

Believing anti-covid policies, which while often clumsy and poorly executed do have a rational aim, have destroyed our freedom, is an absurd fantasy. We’ve never been free. Since covid hit, stress and mental health problems have increased. The cost of living has risen. House prices are even more exorbitant than before. Some have lost their jobs. But none of these are new problems. We’ve suffered from them for decades.

The right-wing’s steering of discontent towards opposition to covid mandates is effectively saying “Let’s go back to the good old days – neo-liberalism, racism, poverty and a housing crisis”.

The reality is that there is no great plan to tighten control of the population. The elite’s plan is the same as it has always been – maintain as much economic inequality as possible and scramble to keep your own place near the top. ‘Business as usual’ has suited them fine, and they desire nothing more than a return to it. For the rest of us, this is a ghastly prospect in itself, for the elite, there’s no need to tamper with a system that is working perfectly well for them. They already have all the control they need.

The New Zealand government has frequently resorted to authoritarianism – again, this is nothing new. New Zealand’s history has included many repressive measures, the Maori Prisoners Act, for example, which made it legal to imprison people without trials and for the government to extend sentences without reference to a court.

The suppression of trade unions during the 1951 Waterfront dispute led to a state of emergency being declared and the media being censored to remove any articles supportive of the locked out workers. Even donating food to worker’s families was criminalised.

Military conscription during wars and compulsory military service in peacetime is another case.

In recent decades, our greatest loss of freedom has not come from direct government authoritarianism, but from economic pressures. Oppression has been privatised – participation in your community, in political organisations and debates, in society in general, is impossible if you have neither the time, the resources or the physical or mental health to do so. A large chunk of the population has been disempowered and excluded from democratic participation. They’ve been ground down, impoverished and disenfranchised.

While right-wing opportunists are stirring the pot, much of the fault for this situation lies with the mainstream left. Many of those at the protest are people the Labour Party, and many of the trade unions, abandoned when the party adopted neo-liberalism and the union leadership quietly let that happen. Sooner or later, these people were going to come under the influence of somebody else – somebody who could provide a sense of community and an understanding of the world, no matter how absurd – be it Destiny Church, conspiracy theorists or the alt-right.

The mainstream seems genuinely astonished that the social cohesion they themselves have been attacking for the last four decades is showing signs of cracking. Those who are marginalised by their policies were going to react in some way, and their reaction was unlikely to be pretty. Whatever its political – or apolitical – slant, it wouldn’t be the token, polite response the mainstream left considers acceptable. Hence the many ‘left’ commentators moaning that those on the protest didn’t just walk to parliament, listen to speeches and go home, as good citizens do.

Both the ruling class and parts of the middle class who have benefited from neo-liberalism have been living in a fool’s paradise, thinking they could wreck society for their own benefit without consequences.

In an emergency, such as a pandemic, social cohesion is crucial. But if the mainstream left continues its policy of rhetoric without delivery, and conveniently labels all opposition as irrational, things are only going to get worse. They have convinced themselves that a hugely unequal society is sustainable. It isn’t.

Sadly, I doubt what used to be the ‘mainstream left’ will learn from this. Their heads are too deeply buried in the sand.

The current manifestation of opposition to the mainstream is misguided, uninformed and unfocused. We can only hope that a genuine opposition, founded on a real understanding of economic and political forces, rather than conspiracy theories, can be built.

Those sucked in by conspiracy theories and right-wing idiocies need to be coaxed back to reality. And, before it’s too late, the crazy, socially destructive, economic experiment of the last few decades must be abandoned.

By Sam Buchanan