Something Thoughtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

                                                    IMPORTED PROTESTS

 

In Wellington, the ending of the squat-out "anti-mandate" village in front of parliament was violent after weeks of great forbearance by the police. It left a mass of mud, rubbish and destruction of a kids' playground, and that was its entire legacy.

I’m interested in this protest, completely wrong-headed though it was, because of something the prime minister said. She condemned the anti-vaxxers and their protest as “an imported protest”. It was very much in line with her statement after the Christchurch mosque massacres, when she said of New Zealanders that “We are not them”, “them” being racists and terrorists. So both anti-vaxxers and racist terrorists are “imported”. They come from overseas. They are not us.

I can see what the prime minister was thinking of. Would there have been an "anti-mandate" anti-vaxxer village in Wellington if some New Zealanders hadn’t seen footage of Canadian anti-mandate truck-drivers blockading Ottawa, or anti-vax protesters in Sydney and Paris? Would there have been an anti-vaxxer village if some New Zealanders hadn’t believed what Fox News was saying and what various American pundits were preaching on Facebook and similar platforms? There’s no doubt that overseas models – “imported” if you like – had a great influence on our very own anti-vax protests.

But the prime minister’s statement still rings a little disingenuous. After all, aren’t most New Zealand protests and demonstrations, in whatever cause, largely “imported”?

Think about it.

In the early 20^th century and right up until the 1960s, nearly all demonstrations and protests in New Zealand had to do with the conflict of capital and labour. It was not uncommon for there to be strikes, lockouts and related street demonstrations, with unions flexing their muscles and employers digging their heels in. In the depression of the 1930s there were, in New Zealand, some demonstrations that became violent and turned into riots. While, in both world wars, there were pacifists who refused to toe the line, their form of protest rarely led to street demonstrations. Likewise, some Maori protested at the loss of ancestral land, but their protests were more in the form of polite submissions or petitions to government. You could say the labour-capital conflict often drew inspiration from international movements, Marxism etc. But up until the 1960s, demonstrations had to do with bread-and-butter national interests. Why have I been laid off? Why are my wages so low? How can we tolerate these awful working conditions? Why can’t the government be more imaginative in dealing with this depression?

But things changed in the 1960s. First there were demonstrations against racially-selected players being sent off to play rugby in apartheid South Africa. This was clearly a very international issue, fired as much by injustice in South Africa as by discontents in New Zealand. Anti-apartheid demonstrations continued, climaxing in 1981 when the visit of a South African team led to riots and confrontation with police squads. Only when apartheid ended did such demonstrations end.

Then there was the Vietnam War, demonstrations against which were in large part “imported”. New Zealand did not have a draft sending New Zealand soldiers off to fight. Only professional soldiers went, and then only a small number. But a great part of the rhetoric used by New Zealand protesters against the war drew upon sources in America, where there really was a draft. Likewise, with what has been called the “Maori renaissance”, much rhetoric by Maori activists drew upon American sources -  the American Black Power movement and the increasing protests of “native Americans” (so-called “American Indians”). When Samoans became angry at dawn raids and unjust deportations, the Polynesian Panther movement clearly drew upon the American Black Panthers. Again, could these be called “imported” movements?

The hard fact is that, at least for the last fifty or more years, nearly every protest movement in New Zealand has had some foreign credentials and has been at least in part “imported”. How could it be any otherwise with television, the internet, international broadcasts and telecasts and more movement [before the pandemic] taking New Zealanders overseas? Like it or not, New Zealand is part of McLuhan’s “global village”, and part of that village involves styles of protests and things to protest about, with the United States of America in large part setting the pace. How heavily have New Zealand debates and demonstrations about feminism, euthanasia, or legalising the recreational use of marijuana been based on American models and enforced with American-initiated rhetoric? The “Black Lives Matter” movement, mimicked by some protests in New Zealand, was the epitome of an American issue being “imported” overseas.

I am making no judgement on the merits of any of these issues. And – in case you were wondering – I am definitely not an anti-vaxxer (at time of writing, I’ve willingly had the two jabs and a booster shot). But I am noting that, for the prime minister to refer to New Zealander anti-vaxxers as an “imported” protest is no more than saying what could be said of any other protest movement in recent New Zealand history. All her statement really means is that this is a protest movement in a cause that the prime minister does not approve, and the word “imported” is used as a form of insult.