WHAT DOES IT MEAN? This extraordinary and quite sudden consolidation of a revolutionary ideological regime across virtually the whole of New Zealand society? How was it accomplished? And, in what ways is it likely to enhance (or retard) the opportunities for a conservative resurgence?
The nature of this new ideological regime is now relatively clear. It reflects the core values of what might be called (for want of a better term) the “Political Class”.
At its heart lies an unprecedented and debilitating self-loathing. The institutions in which the Political Class finds itself embedded: Labour and the Greens, the parties of what used to be called the Left; the “professional” sectors of the public service; the universities; the middle-class unions; the artistic community; and (most crucially) the whole field of media communications; are held to be corrupt vessels of “systemic racism” and “patriarchal power”.
In the eyes of the Political Class, these institutions are constantly spewing forth “white supremacy” against New Zealand’s indigenous people, and “toxic masculinity” against women and the LGBTQI+ community. Accordingly, the Political Class is committed to fundamentally reconstituting these institutions in ways that minimise the corrupting influences of “white privilege” and “patriarchy”; while simultaneously maximising the political, economic and cultural power of Maori, women and the LGBTQI+ community.
Conservative New Zealand politicians who object that they, too, are members of the Political Class, need to think again. The new ideology does not recognise the legitimacy of small ‘c’ conservative beliefs. Insufficient antipathy to white privilege and patriarchal gender relations fundamentally disqualifies a person from membership of the new Political Class. This applies with equal force to politically active individuals and right-wing political parties. Failure to embrace the new ideological orthodoxy renders both beyond the pale of acceptable political behaviour – effectively they are treated as outcasts.
Perhaps the best way for conservatives to get their heads around this new ideological order is to consider the sudden onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s and early 1950s. For the best part of World War II, the Soviet Union had been the key player in the anti-fascist cause. (A diplomatic veil was drawn over the nearly two years [September 1939 until June 1941] during which the USSR had worked hand-in-glove with Hitler’s Germany!) Joseph Stalin, one of the most murderous political leaders in human history, had been presented to Allied audiences as the friendly, pipe-smoking “Uncle Joe”. With bewildering speed, however, the all-encompassing anti-fascist creed of the war years was replaced with a militant anti-communism. With brutal effectiveness, all the key institutions of the Western states were brought into conformity with the new anti-Soviet orthodoxy.
This sudden and profound ideological shift left social-democrats and their parties in an extremely difficult position. Born out of the radical socialist surges of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, they could no longer tolerate the merest trace of their original revolutionary ambitions. Indeed, they were obliged to become ferociously intolerant of any internal force smacking of radicalism. If communism and socialism weren’t dead to them in every practical sense, then they were obviously “Reds”.
To say this left the Left wrong-footed vis-à-vis their conservative electoral rivals is to understate its predicament considerably. It is certainly no accident that, in New Zealand, the Labour Party languished on the Opposition benches for some very long stretches – holding office for just six of the 35 years between 1949 and 1984. The Australian Labor Party fared even worse. It had to wait 23 years!
What the Right faces in New Zealand in 2021 is something worryingly similar. With the new ideology firmly embedded in all the places that matter, the inevitable question arises: How is a party like National or Act to get a fair hearing? Will they, too, have to demonstrate their loyalty to the new regime by silencing and/or purging all those unwilling to pay lip service to the new orthodoxy? Will any failure to comply be greeted with the 2021 equivalent of McCarthyism? “Do you now deny, or have you ever denied in the past, that te Tiriti o Waitangi is the constitutional foundation of Aotearoa?”
How did we arrive at this point? How was this new Political Class able to establish its dominant position so strongly over the rest of New Zealand? Significantly, the process has been going on for two generations, albeit at quite different levels of intensity. The Baby Boomers oversaw the introduction of “political correctness”, albeit with that generation’s typically laissez-faire approach. When it came to people who were in some way disadvantaged or different, it was nice to be nice. The Boomers did not, however, attempt to make “niceness” compulsory. It is the children and grandchildren of these soft-hearted and soft-headed liberals, who have taken their elders’ well-meaning “reforms” and turned them into an uncompromising “revolution”.
The first – and probably the most important – “trigger” for this shifting-up of political gears was the ascension of Jacinda Ardern to the Prime-Ministership. (Thanks, Winston.) The torch had been passed to a new generation and, fuelled by the Christchurch mosque massacres and Covid-19; it burned with a preternatural brightness. Labour’s outright win in the 2020 election threw aside the last remaining obstacles to a revolutionary end-run and allowed the suddenly triumphant Political Class to fully mobilise its institutional resources. (Bye, Winston.) With these at their disposal, they are confident their political and ideological opponents will find it impossible to gain electoral purchase.
Defeating an enemy who holds in their hands the strings that control the public service, the universities, the unions, the artistic community and most of the mainstream news media will not be easy. The New Zealand Right faces a daunting struggle to gain access to a woefully uninformed electorate. As it dons its armour for battle, however, it can comfort itself with these two advantages. The first is that, unlike the Cold War, this new ideological order has yet to dominate the whole of the West. What we face in New Zealand is very much a case of “wokeism in one country”. The second is best expressed in the final verse of Percy Bysche Shelly’s poem “The Mask of Anarchy” – made famous by none other than Jeremy Corbyn:
'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.’