As the schoolboy saying goes, them what smelt it, dealt it. The left have spent at least the last half-century waging culture war after culture war — everything from the 60s “counter-culture” to gay marriage and transgenderism — and they still clutch their pearls and screech “Culture war!” if anyone pushes back in the slightest.
In few places have the left prosecuted the culture wars so assiduously as New Zealand in the past five years. The entire country is being remade, from top to bottom, frequently by stealth: even its name is being changed. All without ordinary Kiwis being asked, much less listened to.
In fact, they’re not even allowed to object.
Act leader David Seymour told his party conference over the weekend that New Zealand is becoming an “ethno-state”. He’s said this before. His argument is largely based on the proposed Three Waters reforms and the creation of Te Aka Whai Ora, the new Maori Health Authority.
Wilson notably leaves out He Puapua, a literal plan for dividing the country along racial lines. Nor does he tackle the question of just why one race in New Zealand alone merits its own, exclusive health authority.
That’s just the start of the projection.
In my view, this is straight-out racism. He may say that’s not his intention, but he is stirring up racial hatred and he cannot be unaware of that.
Take your time to absorb the hypocrisy: a white journalist is calling a politician of Ngapuhi descent “racist”, for opposing dividing the nation by racial heritage.
Ethno-states promote the idea that their true citizens share a history, culture and ethnicity, and because of it belong to a superior race. Almost always, they defend their status with the brutal oppression of others.
The last is simply untrue: Malaysia, for example, is an ethno-state. Non-Malays are discriminated against, but not particularly brutally. Japan is essentially an ethno-state, but one of the most peaceful countries on Earth. Switzerland is notoriously parsimonious with extending citizenship to non-Swiss. German citizenship is passed on by descent, rather than residency: fourth-generation Turkish-Germans, who don’t speak Turkish, still aren’t eligible for citizenship, but a Canadian or Australian-born descendant of German grandparents can.
More importantly: it’s irrelevant. “Brutal oppression” is not a necessary condition of an ethnostate. Nor is the idea of racial superiority, as the above examples also show.
An ethnostate is a political unit — usually a nation-state — that is populated by and run in the interest of an ethnic group.
That’s precisely what the Ardern government is trying to establish in New Zealand. The Maori half of “co-governance” is solely based on shared “history, culture and ethnicity”.
But “muh racism” is the only argument Simon Wilson knows.
A week ago, anti-Three Waters campaigners ran an ad in the Otago Daily Times showing a glass of water labelled “Kiwi” being poured into a glass labelled “Iwi”. The message: What belonged to “Kiwis” will now belong to iwi. I believe that was racism too.
Why? It’s just true. Facts are not “racist”.
To put the icing on the idiot cake, Wilson concludes with this gem:
Despite the fuss, something rather remarkable is happening in this country. We’ve just celebrated Matariki, the Maori new year that recognises the arrival of the Matariki star cluster and also roughly coincides with the winter solstice.
NZ Herald
Matariki is the leftist culture war, par excellence. It’s not a holiday that naturally evolved in New Zealand culture. It’s not even a genuinely historical cultural event that was ever celebrated uniformly across the two islands of New Zealand.
Like Australia’s fatuous “Welcome to Country” nonsense, it’s an almost-entirely-made-up farrago of cultural dress-ups that’s been foisted on Kiwis from above by the Ardern government and a clique of leftist lickspittles — including a media which is contractually bound to do nothing but parrot the government’s talking points.
Which is the ultimate point: why should anyone take Simon Wilson or the NZ Herald’s fulminating seriously? We know that they simply cannot say anything otherwise: they took the Ardern government’s money on the condition that they spruik the Ardern government’s co-governance agenda.
A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!
Robert A. Heinlein.
Wilson’s huffing-and-puffing is about as sincere as a hooker telling a John that he’s the best sex she ever had.