Being sincerely motivated doesn't make it right

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and Nelson Mail, September 21).

The International Film Festival has done the rounds of the provinces for another year. Normally I would seize the chance to binge on movies of the type that don’t usually make it to the town where I live, but this year I managed to see only one: a New Zealand documentary called The 5th Eye.

You’ll be familiar with the subject matter. The three central characters sabotaged a satellite dish at the Waihopai electronic spy facility in 2008.

They were a distinctly unworldly trio, driven by their fervent commitment to a Catholic peace movement called Swords into Ploughshares.  

The Waihopai Three were convinced that innocent people were dying – in Iraq, especially – as a result of Waihopai’s inclusion in an international network of Western spy bases operating under an alliance known as Five Eyes.  

The saboteurs used this as justification for slashing an inflatable plastic dome with a sickle. According to the government, the repair bill came to $1.2 million

Using the Waihopai saboteurs as its anchor point, The 5^th Eye built an elaborate case implicating New Zealand in a sinister international conspiracy to spy on people and to use the information obtained to kill and wage unjust war – all in the political and economic interests of America.

It’s a skilfully crafted propaganda film that owes a lot to the techniques of the left-wing American documentary maker Michael Moore.  

I suspect I was a minority of one in the audience. While most of the people around me obviously saw the Waihopai Three as heroes, I regarded the men as zealots, so convinced of the righteousness of their cause that they considered themselves above the law.

But here’s an admission: I came away with a more charitable view of the saboteurs.  I had always accepted that they were sincerely motivated. What I wasn’t prepared for was that they were such a likeable bunch of bumblers. There was something almost endearing in the amateurish way they went about their act of vandalism.

I’ve no doubt that their religious motivation, their implacable belief that they were doing God’s work and their disarming candour helped persuade a jury to acquit them of burglary and wilful damage charges.

At the time, the verdict made no sense. The satellite dish had been vandalised and they admitted they were responsible. How could they possibly get off? They admitted they expected to go to jail. Around the court it became known as the “No-hopai” case.

But the dynamics of the court room can produce strange outcomes. The quiet conviction of the men’s testimony and the passionate advocacy of their defence counsel resulted in the jury accepting the novel argument that because the men believed the satellite dish was the cause of human suffering, their action was lawful.

As far as I know, they have never paid any penalty for what Helen Clark, who was prime minister at the time, accurately described as an act of criminal vandalism.

Where The 5^th Eye succeeds as a piece of propaganda is that having captured the audience’s sympathy for these religiously motivated men, it uses that sympathy to provide a platform for a parade of familiar left-wing activists – Nicky Hager, Murray Horton, John Minto, Laila Harre, Keith Locke, Jane Kelsey, even Julian Assange – whose objectives are strictly ideological and political rather than spiritual.

I got the unsettling feeling that the three protagonists had been exploited in the pursuit of a more secular agenda – anti-West, anti-capitalism – than the one they perhaps had in mind.

I also noted that while The 5^th Eye played heavily on claims that the Five Eyes alliance kills innocent people, it was silent on the flip side of that argument – namely, that electronic surveillance is a means of thwarting terrorist acts. These kill innocent people too.

Am I saying we should trust the government and its intelligence agencies always to act in our best interests on matters of security and surveillance? Not at all. Their record is decidedly dodgy, as the documentary makes clear – but I’m suspicious of the motives of their left-wing critics too.

In any case, for me the film ultimately fails on a very basic premise. Being sincerely motivated doesn’t entitle people to take the law into their own hands.

Let’s imagine, for argument’s sake, that people who feel strongly about abortion (as many do) used that belief as justification to burn down an abortion clinic. The left – the same people who have anointed the Waihopai saboteurs as heroes – would be incandescent with rage. But what’s the difference?

That remains the problem with the Waihopai Three. For all their apparent humility, there remains an underlying conceit that their beliefs, presumably being sanctioned by God (at least in their minds) entitle them to do whatever they think is right.

But civil society can function only if people respect democratic institutions and the rule of law. If they don’t like the status quo, there’s a way to change things: via the ballot box. 

Heaven protect us from self-righteous zealots

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, April 10.)

We tend to think of idealism as a good thing. Idealists want the best for the world and for humanity – or so we assume.

Who could possibly object to idealism, then?

Yet idealism can be perverted. It can morph into zealotry and fanaticism. People can become so convinced of the correctness of their ideals that they feel able to justify almost any action aimed at fulfilling them.

The first step is to convince oneself that it’s legitimate, indeed necessary, to impose one’s ideals on others, whether they want them or not, on the basis that it’s for their own good.

That leads to the proposition that the end justifies the means – in other words, that any action is permissible as long as something desirable is accomplished at the end of it all. Once that principle is accepted, almost anything becomes excusable.

Left-wing political parties are particularly prone to idealistic zeal because they are often driven, at least initially, by visions of a perfect world. In their determination to impose that perfection, leftist regimes often end up filling prisons with contrary individuals who insist on exercising their own free will.

Right-wing autocrats, on the other hand, are usually motivated by nothing more than good old-fashioned greed and lust for power.

It's possible that even Joseph Stalin started out as an idealist, with a vision of a better existence for the oppressed, starving Russian peasantry, yet millions died under his rule. The Soviet empire that he extended by force through Eastern Europe became synonymous with repression and tyranny.  All this was justified by the grotesque fiction that he was liberating the proletariat.

Idealism can also produce hideous, unforeseen consequences. Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” in the late 1950s was intended to transform the Chinese economy – an idealistic goal – but ended in catastrophe, with tens of millions dead because of grain shortages.

Obviously these are extreme cases of idealism gone wrong, but we don’t have to look far for examples of how idealists can start out with admirable motives and end up as self-righteous zealots, blind to the rights of others.

I was reminded of this recently when I listened to a Radio New Zealand Spectrum documentary about the three peace activists who broke into the Waihopai spy base near Blenheim in 2010 and caused damage that the government said cost $1.2 million to repair – money that came out of taxpayers’ pockets.

I’m not suggesting that the Waihopai Three were Stalins or Maos in the making. We must assume they were motivated by a sincere desire for peace. But they were so convinced of the rightness of their cause, so consumed by unshakeable moral conviction, that they considered themselves above the law. At this point, idealism becomes zealotry.

If enough New Zealanders were sufficiently concerned about the Waihopai base, they could have demanded that the government get rid of it. But it hasn’t happened, probably because New Zealanders rationalise that an electronic spying network operated by an alliance of democratic Western governments is more likely to thwart evil than to promote it.

But the Waihopai Three and their narrow circle of supporters convinced themselves that they knew better than, and were morally superior to, their fellow citizens. Their self-righteousness trumped respect for democracy.

Incidentally, the Spectrum documentary (the sympathetic tone of which did nothing to dispel concern about the political leanings of some Radio New Zealand journalists) revealed the Waihopai zealots to be comically incompetent saboteurs.

A crucial cellphone message was never received because one of the three didn’t know what a text message was. Then the saboteurs’ truck slid on a muddy track and ended up on its side in a vineyard – so they were lousy drivers as well – and someone got lost in the darkness on a bike.

They were comically paranoid, too, imagining themselves being shadowed at every turn by agents of the state. They thought they were being spied on when they saw a man in Picton wearing an earphone and appearing to speak into his sleeve – no doubt some entirely innocent citizen using a hands-free phone – and freaked out when they happened to read a letter to the editor of the Marlborough Express inquiring about black SUVs being driven around Blenheim.

No doubt the three attributed the fact that they ultimately succeeded in their mission, despite all their blunders, as a sign that God approved. Zealots are rarely troubled by self-doubt.

The documentary concluded with a line about a magnificent rainbow that appeared as the saboteurs contemplated the results of their vandalism. Listeners were informed that this was “a sure sign that they were doing the right thing”. So it wasn’t only God who approved; the Radio New Zealand reporter did too.

For my part, I’m more likely to ask God to protect us from those who think they know what’s best for us.

The same fundamental impulse that motivated the Waihopai Three – namely, the desire for a better world – also seems to be behind the promotion of a new test that will enable pregnant women to determine whether their baby has Down Syndrome.

Unlike the established amniocentesis procedure, the new test is non-invasive. If it’s widely adopted, as the test’s backers hope, the almost inevitable outcome is that more women will choose to have an abortion.

Proponents of the test are doubtless driven by the conviction that they are doing the right thing. It’s that vision of the perfect society again; in this case, one where no one will have to suffer the inconvenience of bringing an imperfect human being into the world.

But virtually everyone with first-hand experience of people with Down Syndrome says they enjoy life to the full and enrich the lives of those around them. Wellington’s Dominion Post recently published a charming photo of three young people with Down Syndrome – one a skier, another a swimmer and the third a dancer – joyfully celebrating after being presented with national achievement awards by governor-general Sir Jerry Mateparae.

If the pregnancy test now being promoted had existed 30 years ago, these three might not have survived the womb. Is this another case, and a particularly chilling one, of misguided idealism producing a grotesquely anti-human outcome?

 

 

God protect us from pretend prophets

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, April 13).

WHEN we think of conceit and arrogance, we normally associate it with overt displays of superiority: the swaggering walk, the braying voice, the overweening air of self-assurance.

Yet there is another type of conceit and arrogance that dresses down, cladding itself in the garb of modesty and humility. It can appear self-effacing and even holy, but it is no less vain.

It was this sort of disguised hubris that we saw on display in the trial of the so-called Waihopai Three. Anyone observing the defendants’ scruffy clothing, their unworldly manner and their air of righteous sincerity could have concluded these were humble men of Christ, driven by the purest of motives. The jury obviously did.

I don’t dispute the sincerity of the three men who vandalised the Waihopai satellite dish, but I do question the popular perception that they are simple men of faith, untainted by pride or vanity.

On the contrary, I believe they exhibit a deeply unattractive type of conceit: namely, the unshakeable moral conviction of zealots.

Their beliefs trump anyone else’s. If their fellow New Zealanders objected strongly enough to the Waihopai satellite dish, it would be a political issue. They don’t, and it isn’t. Yet the Waihopai Three decided their moral convictions entitled them to act on our behalf, and to hell with the repair bill that the taxpayer will now have to pick up.

Even Helen Clark, hardly a right-wing warmonger, condemned the attack on Waihopai in 2008 as a senseless act of criminal vandalism.

The inflated self-regard of the Waihopai Three emerged in full view last week when Solicitor General David Collins QC suggested the Crown might sue them for damages. One of the three, Adrian Leason, scoffed at the government for being “sore losers or cry babies” and virtually taunted it to have a go.

A damages case would only promote their cause, he said; and besides, the three had only $1000 between them (a statement now open to doubt after revelations that Leason and co-defendant Sam Land have property assets valued at half a million dollars).

The third Waihopai vandal, Dominican friar Peter Murnane, seemed serenely confident that public opinion would force the government to back off. We shall see.

Murnane, incidentally, was one of the priests who gave sanctuary to the oily queue-jumper Ahmed Zaoui. He represents a highly politicised branch of the Catholic clergy that rarely hesitates to let reason get in the way of emotional fervour.

The motivation of the Waihopai vandals is as much political as religious. Their rhetoric is that of the neo-Marxist left which pursues its agenda under the banner of peace and justice.

They claim to have acted on behalf of the women and children killed by the US war machine in Iraq, but theirs is a highly selective morality. They condemn the killing of innocent Iraqis by American forces, most of which is unintentional, but they say nothing about the rampant and wholly deliberate murder of innocent people – mostly of their own kind – by Islamic fanatics seeking to extinguish democracy and impose their own repressive dogma.

If it ever occurred to the Waihopai Three that the eavesdropping network operated by the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand might be preventing more wholesale slaughter by these murderous fundamentalists, they probably pushed the thought from their minds. It doesn’t fit their warped worldview.

Muslim terrorists probably regard these woolly-headed, pretend prophets in much the same way as Lenin viewed the “useful idiots” in the West who supported the murderous Soviet state.

* * *

AM I ALONE in objecting to the melodramatic use of the word “survivors” to describe anyone who has been sexually abused or spent time in a psychiatric institution?

“Survivors” are people who have lived through truly life-threatening experiences. I wouldn’t make light of the awful experiences many victims of sexual and psychiatric abuse have suffered, but the integrity of the language is worth protecting.

Their lives were generally not at risk. To describe them as survivors devalues the word and detracts from the ordeals of true survivors – those who lived through Nazi concentration camps, for example, or were plucked from the sea after the Wahine sank.

You can see, though, why lobbyists for people seeking compensation for abuse have adopted the word. “Survivors” is an emotive term that makes their claims sound more pressing.

* * *

THE LEFT keeps moaning that wages in New Zealand are too low, which is perfectly correct. They complain that the government hasn’t delivered the promised higher-wage economy – again, all true.

But just let anyone suggest that something meaningful be done to free up the economy, increase productivity and stimulate income growth – such as reducing taxes and government spending – and who’s the first to howl in protest? Why, it’s the Left.

Unionist Matt McCarten recently grizzled that an increase in ACC levies would negate the 25 cents an hour rise in the minimum wage. Yet if anyone proposes dismantling the ACC behemoth, the unions are the first to rise up on their hind legs.

Until the Left can reconcile these contradictions, it’s stuck with a credibility problem.