We met her on the walkway to Cathedral Cove, on the
Coromandel Peninsula. My wife and I were on our way back to our vehicle and had
stopped to admire the view. She was going the other way.
She was a well-spoken, smartly dressed woman whom I guessed
to be in her 60s, or possibly a well-preserved 70-something.
She stopped and said she had seen us the previous day in
Whitianga. She had wondered at the time whether she should say something about
the T-shirt I was wearing.
Let me tell you about that T-shirt. I bought it in the US
about three years ago. It has a historical photo on the front showing four
Apache warriors holding Winchester rifles. Above the picture, in bold capitals, are the words “HOMELAND
SECURITY” and below: “Fighting terrorism since 1492”.
I bought the T-shirt because I liked the way it uses ironic
humour to make a point. Since 9/11 America has been understandably pre-occupied
with repelling people who want to do it harm. But the message on the T-shirt
was that the original invaders of America were white Europeans whose arrival in
the late 15th century had catastrophic consequences for the
indigenous inhabitants. In resisting the white man, the Apache warriors were
doing what Homeland Security does now – protecting their domain.
It’s not a T-shirt I would wear through Customs and
Immigration at LAX, but I’ve never had any qualms about wearing it in New
Zealand and it certainly didn’t occur to me, or my wife, that it might be
considered offensive after the events in
Christchurch on March 15.
The woman on the walkway to Cathedral Cove, however, saw
things differently. She questioned whether it was appropriate to be wearing it only
a few days after the shootings.
It was one of those situations where you’re so taken aback
that you don’t immediately think of a suitable response. She wasn’t rude or
aggressive, but there was an unmistakeable tone of moral disapproval in her
voice.
It was a brief encounter and we politely went our separate
ways. It was only after we had resumed our walk that I began to think of things
I might have said to her. Probably just as well, because I wouldn’t have wanted
to spoil a beautiful day by getting into a discussion that might have turned
unpleasant.
If we were to re-run the conversation, I would be curious to
know how she could possibly perceive any connection between my T-shirt and the
Christchurch massacres. In what way was
it, to use that ghastly weasel word, “inappropriate”? Did she even get the
irony of the T-shirt’s message? Possibly not. Moralistic people aren’t noted
for their sense of humour.
I mention this incident because it’s representative, in its
own tiny way, of the strange mood that has swept over the country in the 12
days since the mosque massacres. There’s a lot to like about this mood, but it
has produced some odd side-effects.
It’s a febrile, overheated mood; a rush to judgment that has
generated perverse, irrational and even hysterical reactions.
The incident on the Cathedral Cove walkway was at the very
benign end of the spectrum. Far more worrying is the grotesque witch-hunt for
scapegoats – people who bear not even the faintest responsibility for the
killings, but are somehow held to be contributing to a toxic, racist mindset
that shelters and encourages haters.
The most lamentable example is the decision by Whitcoulls to
withdraw from sale the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson’s best-selling
book 12 Rules for Life because
someone found a photo of Peterson posing with a fan wearing a T-shirt bearing
the words “I’m a proud Islamophobe”.
Admittedly it was a dumb thing for Peterson to do, but he
must pose for hundreds of photos with fans and it’s possible he didn’t even
notice what the T-shirt said. In any case, the issue should be whether
Peterson’s book promotes race hatred or disharmony – and as far as I can ascertain
from reliable people who have read it, it does no such thing.
But Whitcoulls was panicked into over-reacting. The noisy neo-Marxist
Left has learned that Western capitalism has a soft underbelly and can easily
be bullied into submission by fear of boycotts and bad publicity.
That a major book chain should so cravenly capitulate shows
a cowardly disregard for the very values it should be defending. If I were a
customer of Whitcoulls, which I haven’t been for a very long time because I
regarded it as a lousy company anyway, I would be taking my patronage
elsewhere.
Ironically, Whitcoulls reportedly continues to stock Mein Kampf – a vivid demonstration of
the absurd contradictions that can arise when people start censoring books.
Peterson, of course, is the current bête-noire of the
neo-Marxists, probably because his message clearly resonates with so many
people, as attested by the crowds he attracted on his recent New Zealand
tour. (The Left hate Don Brash for much
the same reason. Non-political people generally like Brash, or at least respect
his opinions and unfailing civility.)
I haven’t read Peterson’s books and didn’t see him speak,
but from everything I’ve read I get the impression he’s a mild conservative
whose views would have been considered unexceptionable as recently as 10 years
ago.
It’s a measure of how sharply the political and ideological
ground has shifted under our feet that Peterson is now widely portrayed in the
media as a right-wing ogre. The tone of the public conversation is such that
anyone to the right of the centre risks being stigmatised as right wing,
“alt-right” (whatever that means), extremist or fascist.
Moreover, the media have almost succeeded in redefining the
political ground by shifting that perceived centre sharply to the left, at
least in terms of the public conversation. It doesn’t seem to matter that this
doesn’t remotely reflect the reality of New Zealand, where the majority of
voters at the last election supported nominally conservative parties – as they
have done in most elections during my lifetime.
Some of the most hysterical invective against Peterson has
come from young(ish) female commentators, and I wonder whether it’s because
they have gone through school and university without ever being exposed to even
moderately conservative opinions. When they encounter them for the first time, they
react with fear and loathing. (I’ll pause here until the inevitable accusations
of sexism and misogyny subside.)
The witch-hunters have claimed other scalps too. An Auckland
doctor, Jim McVeagh, has been stood down by the Westgate Medical Centre pending
an investigation after a fellow doctor complained about “inappropriate” posts (that
word again) on the Whale Oil blog.
McVeagh posts under the pseudonym MacDoctor. I’ve seen some
of his posts – I think he’s commented on this site in the past – and would
describe them as being in the ACT/libertarian mould. On health matters, his
posts are often moderate, thoughtful and authoritative.
Nothing I’ve seen by him could be construed as hateful,
inflammatory or even exceptionable in a free and open society, although McVeagh
himself concedes they could be offensive to some. He has criticised “ordinary”
Muslims, for example, for not condemning Islamic extremism, and he has argued
that Muslim immigration should be suspended until non-threatening members of
the Muslim faith can be distinguished from potential extremists.
But context is everything. It would have been provocative in the extreme if
McVeagh had expressed those views during the past week when nerves are raw, but
in the context of a long-standing debate about immigration and extremism, they
were legitimate. Crucially, they fell far short of inciting hatred or violence
against Muslims.
What I find significant is that the comments complained
about were made a couple of years ago, but the complainant has waited until now
to make his or her objections known. Clearly he or she judged (correctly) that
the search for scapegoats following the Christchurch terror made the time ripe for
retribution.
The once solidly respectable Otago Daily Times, incidentally, reported: “A senior Auckland
doctor has been immediately stood down pending an investigation by his employer
into vile, anti-Islamic rants posted on the right-wing blog Whale Oil.”
There you have it, right there. When even the once respected
ODT can pepper a news story with
subjective and incendiary labels such as “vile” and “rants”, you sense that the
rot in journalism may be irreversible.
But it’s important to record that journalists can be on the
receiving end too. In a commentary on the Noted
website a few days ago, Graham Adams recalled that North&South magazine was accused of racism in 2016 for running
an article that asked whether New Zealanders had anything to fear from radical
Islam. It made no difference to the critics that the Muslims interviewed for
the story had welcomed the opportunity to talk about their faith.
There have been other recent examples of what might be
termed mild hysteria. Twitter users responded with outrage (as Twitter users
do, their dials being permanently set on furious) to an advertisement by the venerable
and staid Auckland department store Smith and Caughey for a fashion garment
described as a “lynch mob coat” – a name reportedly inspired by the cult-like
following enjoyed by film director David Lynch. (No, I don’t understand it
either.)
Judging by the New
Zealand Herald’s report, the store changed the name several weeks ago – in
other words, well before March 15 – to “lynch coat” and more recently to the
spectacularly cautious “check wool coat”. But that didn’t stop an explosion on
Twitter.
OK, so “lynch mob coat” may seem a bit silly, as is the
fashion industry’s way. But the name had already been changed - and in any case,
as with my Homeland Security T-shirt, it’s hard to see any direct connection
with the events in Christchurch. It’s just that in the hyper-sensitive
emotional climate and retributive mood brought about by the shootings, people
are casting about for things to be offended by.
It’s also been reported that husband-and-wife real estate
agents from Auckland had their contracts terminated by their employer, Ray
White, after someone complained about their Facebook posts relating to Africans
and Muslims. Same pattern: the comments were posted in April and August last
year but evidently came to Ray White’s attention only last week.
How offensive were they? I don’t know. What’s significant is
that the complainant clearly decided now was the time to act, presumably in the
expectation that the complaint would carry more weight because of the shootings.
And so it turned out. There seems to be an element of vengeful opportunism here
– one that has been rewarded with over-reactions that show a worrying disregard
for principles of free speech.
Incidentally, I found out about some of these cases from
Bruce Russell’s overnight talk show on NewstalkZB. Commercial talkback radio is
possibly the last sector of the media that hasn’t been captured by the Left, which
must irritate the hell out of them. You can be sure they’re working on it.
PERHAPS all of the above can be forgiven as a collective
rush of blood to the head, brought about by the shock of the appalling events
of March 15. But far less excusable is the manner in which prominent people, many
of them on the public payroll, exploited the deaths of 50 innocent people to
further an ideological agenda.
By this I mean people like the Green MPs Golriz Ghahraman
and Marama Davidson. In Parliament, Ghahraman blamed unnamed fellow MPs and
breakfast radio “shock jocks” – presumably meaning NewstalkZB’s Mike Hosking –
for the “hate speech” that she claims led to the killings. (Hosking,
incidentally, is another bête-noire of the Left, and for the same reason as
Jordan Peterson: his daily commentaries connect with a large number of New Zealanders
who are not racist or xenophobic and reject extremist ideology of both the
Right and Left.)
Ghahraman, a highly accomplished self-publicist, was in such
a rush to apportion blame that she wasn’t prepared to wait before making a
considered response based on facts and evidence rather than supposition,
assumption and prejudice. And why should she, when it was so much easier to
make sweeping, unsubstantiated and emotive assertions about the killings being caused by “hate
speech” (undefined), “white supremacy” and “gratuitous racism”?
She didn’t even have the decency to wait until all the
victims’ bodies had been released to their grieving families for burial. The
blame game took priority.
Davidson, meanwhile, took advantage of a vigil in honour of
the shooting victims to unleash a barrage of denunciation. “New Zealand was
founded on the theft of land, language and identity of indigenous people,” she
was reported as saying. “This land we are standing on is land we were violently
removed from to uphold the same agenda that killed the people in the mosques
yesterday.”
This was not about honouring or mourning the dead. It was
about finding someone to blame and settling old ideological scores. It stood in
jarring contrast to the tone set by the Muslim community of Christchurch, which
was all about reconciliation, forgiveness and unity. No recrimination, no
anger, no fulminating about Islamophobia or white supremacy; just shock and
sadness that this terrible thing had happened in a country they thought of as
inclusive and welcoming. And which remains
inclusive and welcoming, because the depredations of a single terrorist (an
Australian, we shouldn’t forget) doesn’t change who we are.
I find people like Ghahraman and Davidson almost as
frightening as terrorists. They don’t kill anyone, but their power to change
society is greater. They use the institutions of a liberal democracy to whittle
away at the open society.
They are, in their way, as totalitarian and
intolerant of difference as any gun-toting fascist or jihadist. They virtuously embrace ethnic and religious difference
(except when it comes to Christianity, which is seen as part of the white power
structure) but are aggressively intolerant of political difference and free
speech.
It was no surprise to read that some attendees left an
Auckland vigil early, apparently upset at a series of speeches attacking
colonialism, white supremacy and white terrorism. One disillusioned early
leaver was quoted as saying they wanted the vigil to be more focused on the
victims; another said that while she understood the need for a conversation
about racism and white supremacy, she felt that a week after the attacks was
too soon.
“I think there was too much mention of “white” and colonial
times. To me that wasn’t a remembrance of the victims and not the way to push
for unity.”
That event was jointly organised by Migrants Against Racism
and Xenophobia (MARX), Racial Equity Aotearoa, Shakti NZ, Asians Supporting
Tino Rangatiratanga and Auckland Peace Action. In other words it was an overtly
political event, organised by radical activists (it was disappointing to see
Shakti, which reportedly does admirable work for migrant and refugee women, keeping
such dodgy company) and staged to make political capital out of a tragedy that
deserved more time for people to grieve and wounds to start healing.
To its credit, the Labour-led government coalition has not bought
into this unedifying grudge-fest. As far as I can see, Jacinda Ardern has been
nothing but measured and conciliatory in her public statements. It’s the
ideologues on Labour’s left who are busy stirring the pot.
Interestingly, political scientist Bryce Edwards noted in a commentary
last week that prominent British authorities on multiculturalism had watched the
course of the debate over the events in Christchurch and were despondent. Writing
in The Guardian, the Indian-born Leftist
academic Kenan Malik said it was depressing that much of the discussion that
followed the shootings had degenerated into name calling and invective. “The
dead deserve better,” he wrote.
In The Times, Maajid
Nawaz, a Muslim, said both the far Left and theocratic Islamists were seeking
to exploit Christchurch “for their own nefarious ends”.
It should be unacceptable, Nawaz wrote, to use the March 15
attacks to blame critics of Islam or immigration, or to seek to silence the
political Right generally. “Shutting down debate in this way will only make
matters worse and is precisely what the New Zealand terrorist explicitly told
us he wanted, in his diatribe commonly referred to as a manifesto”.
Those words came too late to deter people like Ghahraman and
Davidson, who are probably too wrapped up in their own sense of grievance to
heed them anyway. Sadly they also came too late to deter the Auckland
University historian Dame Anne Salmond and the recently appointed Chief Human
Rights Commissioner, Paul Hunt. The blood still hadn’t been cleaned from the
Christchurch mosques when both weighed in with finger-wagging commentaries
upbraiding New Zealanders for their supposed failings and implying that we all
somehow shared the blame.
“White supremacy is part of us, a dark power in the land,”
Salmond’s melodramatic piece began. We may look “bland and reasonable”, but
according to Salmond our dark side is hateful and violent.
Hunt, an English academic and human rights careerist who had
barely got his feet under the desk, seized the opportunity to promote the
identity politics agenda and to lecture us on the many ways in which we need to
lift our game. Perhaps it’s just me, but I found it galling to read a new
arrival (although he claims dual British and New Zealand citizenship) pontificating
about the importance of “our” commitment to tolerance and diversity and the
values that lie at the heart of “our” multiculturalism.
Among other things, Hunt pronounced that a “sensible
dialogue” about our hate speech laws is “long overdue”. This should send a
chill through anyone who values free speech, because I suspect that what he
means by “sensible dialogue” is one that can be relied on to produce the
outcome that the Human Rights Commission wants – in other words, one that puts
greater weight on the protection of minority groups from views that they might
find upsetting than on the far more fundamental democratic right to free speech
and an open society.
It has been instructive to watch the speed and determination
with which elements on the far Left (not all
on the far Left, it should be noted – stand up, Chris Trotter) have tried
to hijack the post-shootings conversation and twist it to their own ends.
Their purpose is to stifle free speech, to shut down
legitimate journalism (which is in retreat anyway) and to prohibit people from
asking questions that the neo-Marxists think shouldn’t be asked.
I think they may have overplayed their hand. At a time when
common human decency dictates that the priorities should be compassion and
grieving, they have coldly pursued a transparently ideological agenda.
People know weapons-grade vindictiveness when they see it.
They also recognise it as the diametric opposite of what ordinary New
Zealanders have demonstrated in abundance over the past two weeks, which is
practical empathy and support for people who have suffered an unimaginable
loss.
FOOTNOTE: I wrote
two newspaper columns in the aftermath of the Christchurch shootings, both of
which have been reproduced on this blog site.
Those columns, which were published in a number of papers
and on the Stuff website, prompted several
critical letters. Some of these I didn’t see, because I was away on holiday,
but I want to comment on two that I did see.
One was from someone named Mike Sansom of Island Bay (Wellington), whom I
suspect may have been the “Unknown” commenter on this site whom I responded to on
March 22. I say that because both Sansom and “Unknown” had the same beef about
the column I had written from Long Bay in the Coromandel.
Sansom accused me of writing a self-satisfied column without
even mentioning the 50 victims of the shootings. This, he said, demonstrated an
appalling lack of compassion.
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. He criticised my column
not because of something I said but because of something he thinks I should
have said but didn’t. But if columnists are going to be attacked for things
readers think they should have said but didn’t, then they are on a hiding to
nothing. They are always going to be open to criticism for choosing to write
about the wrong things. (Note to self: consult Mike Sansom in future before
sitting down at the keyboard.)
More to the point though, Sansom implies that because I
didn’t express compassion, it can only be because I don’t feel any. Here, laid
bare, is the overweening moral conceit of some on the Left, who feel they have
a monopoly on virtue.
In fact the reason I didn’t feel it necessary to say I
felt sorry for the Christchurch victims and their families was that as a fellow
human being it would have been stating the obvious. I took it as a given, as
most readers probably did, that we all grieved. But that’s the world we now live
in: we have to publicly parade our feelings or risk censure for not being
compassionate enough.
The other letter was from Professor Boyd Swinburn of
Auckland University, who is deservedly famous as One Of Those People Who
Know What’s Best For Other People. We have a lot of them in New Zealand, and
especially in the universities.
Like Sansom, Swinburn made no attempt to engage with the
substance of my column, preferring to compare it unfavourably with another
column published alongside it which was far more to his liking. That column,
written by an Iranian-born female journalist, was headlined Christchurch shootings: The rot behind New
Zealand’s cloak of decency. Say no more.
Sansom's letter at least tried to make a point, even if it was off the mark. Swinburn's letter, on the other hand, was a lazy and gratuitous pot-shot that said nothing other than that he didn't like my column.
Well, I have a deal to put to Swinburn. He started his letter
by saying “I am an old, white, privileged male like Karl du Fresne.” The usual
corollary to this type of statement is that because older white males have led
a life of privilege, pushing other people around and generally exploiting their
power, they should be disqualified from expressing an opinion on anything.
My suggestion to Swinburn is that if he promises to shut up,
so will I. It would be a small price to pay for relief from his tiresome
sanctimony.
