Delightful, humorous, harmless fun or racist icon?

Dolls are objects that we have very special relationships with. We own them. We exert control over them, doing pretty much what we want to and with them. We may love them deeply and treasure them but we may also abuse and discard them. We give them personalities and names and project our inner most feelings onto them. We learn a great deal from our play with them – from nurturing to soldiering – and we often learn a great deal about the value that adults place on those people our dolls mimic.

Toys may be an emotional bridge between the world of adulthood and what seems to be a safer, simpler childhood world. Some adults never sever these childhood connections and stay emotionally attached to their toys; some become avid collectors of them. 

Soft toys, in both humanoid and animal form, commonly accompany children to bed. In societies and social strata in which children are sequestered in their own beds and rooms from an early age (sometimes from birth), isolated from each other and from the adults in their lives, the soft bodies of their toys provide the sense of comfort and security that comes from the proximity and touch of another being. 

We are not solitary creatures.

In patriarchal societies, boys are not expected to be nurturers or even to need much in the way of nurturing after a certain age – for fear they might grow up too soft to be ‘real men’. The traditional golliwog doll, like the teddy bear, was considered to be a suitable soft toy for a boy to cuddle and to keep him company at night.

It’s understandable that labelling a beloved childhood companion as a racist icon, touches a raw nerve in some people.

No fault lies with children who loved a golliwog doll but when those children grow up and defend the toy as "innocent" or "humorous" or "ironic", or if they construct or perpetuate outright lies to deny its historical origins – then, they are at fault.

On RNZ’s The Panel on 23^rd March, Rosemary McLeod exemplified the contradictory nature of some white people’s attachment to golliwogs. She described them as "delightful" and says she owns several of them that she keeps on display in what she calls her "politically incorrect basket".  

Ms McLeod’s labelling of her basket of golliwogs as "politically incorrect" indicates that she’s well aware the toy offends the sensibilities of some people, so it is hard to escape the conclusion that she either thinks the taking of offence is unjustified and/or, she delights in giving it.  

If Ms McLeod were to be visited at home by a black person, would she leave her basket of golliwogs out in display? More to the point perhaps is whether she would think it’s acceptable to refer to a person of colour as a "golliwog"?  

If, as she claims, the toy is the embodiment of humorous, harmless fun, why wouldn’t she or any other white person feel free to use golliwog as a nickname for those of their fellow humans who have dark skin and tight curly black hair? And why wouldn’t black people be delighted with the name?

I have no doubt that Ms McLeod understands perfectly well the historical and contemporary realities that give rise to and are deeply embedded in racial epithets and is well aware of the harm and pain they can – and do cause.  

However, like all golliwoggers, she contrives to separate the toy from the racial epithet, and both toy and epithet from their origins in a caricature that had its genesis, and served a powerful ideological function, in a deeply and cruelly racist era.

 Ms McLeod’s fellow panellist, Tainui Stephens, blundered into the same moral and political morass when he said that he also likes golliwogs but prefers to call them "gollies"– as if leaving off the "wog" part of the name somehow cleanses them of any negative associations.

The standard golliwogger argument is that white people who are offended by the dolls are motivated by liberal guilt. These guilt feelings stem from the (incorrect) belief that there are historical links between the character and institutionalised racial discrimination and oppression.

This white liberal guilt has spawned that most oppressive of political phenomena – political correctness. 

Far from being reasonable and honourable attempts to avoid ways of saying or doing things that insult, marginalise or exclude groups of people who suffer unfair discrimination, political correctness is recast as a rigid political and moral correctitude that tries to prevent the majority of people from being able to say and do what they want – in this instance, to manufacture, sell and own golliwogs.

The spinners and weavers of this narrative are usually a lot less forthcoming (in public at least) about what they think motivates black people who are offended by golliwogs.  But those who do express their views publicly are invariably of the opinion that black people who are offended are either being over-sensitive, are also in thrall to political correctness, and/or are playing the race card.

The bottom line is that other people’s experiences, their beliefs and sensibilities are way less important than the nostalgic fondness golliwoggers have for their little black toy.

There has been a recent increase in the sale of golliwog dolls in NZ, Australia and the UK and the original golliwog has been joined by other dolls are based on the stock characters from the 19^th century American blackface minstrel tradition.

As well as the character that the traditional doll was modelled on, the (unruly) dandified coon, the cast included: the (semi-feral, naughty) piccaninny; the (stupid, lazy) field hand, and the (fat, docile) black mammy. The sexually promiscuous (usually light-skinned) wench character hasn’t made it into doll form – yet.

In an article I wrote for The Press in 2013, I asked whether anyone would think it was appropriate to have a doll based on a caricature of a person with a disability. It is unthinkable of course, yet people persist in arguing there is no harm in a doll that is based on a caricature of a black man which dates from an era in which black people were still enslaved, and which became wildly popular leading up to and during Britain's imperial zenith, and America’s Jim Crow era.

The blackface minstrel tradition in the USA goes back to the 1820s.  It may have been introduced to the USA by an English actor but it was American comic actor, Thomas Rice, who popularised the form in 1828 with a song and dance act "Jump Jim Crow", allegedly inspired by a crippled black stable hand.

Blackface minstrelsy appropriated aspects of African-American culture and created a cast of stock characters aimed initially at white audiences, which were both enthralled by the energy and humour, and comforted by the reduction of black people to a collection of heavily caricatured stereotypes.

Other ethnic and class based "comic" stereotypes existed in the music hall tradition – "the oleaginous Italian or Greek, the boozing, brawling Irishman, the sly and venal Jew, and the ubiquitous rural idiot" – not to mention the various female stereotypes played by men in drag.

These stereotypes reduced individuals and cultures to a form of burlesque – at once hugely exaggerated and grossly simplistic – with characters that could be cast as affable and lovable or as threatening and hateful depending on what was wanted at any given point in time. (1)

Blackface minstrelsy’s cast of racial stereotypes lampooned and dehumanised a specific racial group that was politically and economically powerless. In so doing, it served the interests of those who wanted to keep things that way.

Jim Crow, the capering, simple rural fool and Zip Coon, a dandified and sometimes dangerous blowhard, became so fixed in the popular imagination, their names became racial epithets and in the post-reconstruction Southern states, Jim Crow became the popular name for the segregationist legal system. The American phrase "don't know zip" may also have come from the character's name.

The golliwog family of dolls is based on these caricatures. They were derived from, and fed back into negative stereotypes that were used to justify and legitimise, not just a segregationist and cruelly oppressive legal system, but the extralegal lynchings, rapes, beatings and robberies carried out for the most part by white people, a fair number of whom were also disenfranchised and dirt poor – as a calculated policy of division, oppression and exclusion.  

This is why, in my view, the golliwog is not, and can never be just a doll.

There have been many attempts to rewrite history and recast the golliwog as a harmless toy that has nothing to do with the historical oppression of black people, let alone the continuation of it.

There are the risible claims that the term "wog" is nothing to do with the golliwog - but stands for "worthy oriental gentleman" or similar.

Another, more complex and equally wrong explanation is that the letters WOGS were stencilled on clothing issued to workers on the Suez Canal and stood for "Workers on Government Service".  Black rag dolls – a representation of a ‘ghuli’ a desert demon – belonging to the children of the Egyptian labourers were taken back as souvenirs by British soldiers returning to the UK. The soldiers called these dolls Ghuliwogs.

The creators of this marvellous fiction don’t explain why workers on a project run by a French construction firm would have had clothing marked in that way, in English. 

Nor do they bother with the fact that Frances Upton chose to dress her 1890 Golliwogg character – which she said was based on an "ugly minstrel toy" she had as a child in the USA – in the exact style of one of the stock characters of 19^th century American blackface minstrel shows.

A very confused correspondent to the Manawatu Times, a Mr Brougham (the letter was also printed in The Press) made the claim that golliwog dolls actually represent chimney sweeps and are therefore not racist.  A letter I wrote rebutting this claim was not printed.

In Britain, the standard attire for chimney sweeps was a black top hat and tails and was thought to be discarded clothing of funeral directors. The sweeps’ indentured child labourers typically dressed in rags.  Sweeps in all countries wore black, rough clothing – they certainly never dressed in brightly coloured or striped tight trousers, red or blue 19^th century style jacket, and an oversized bow tie or cravat.

Perhaps Mr Brougham was getting confused with the claim made by defenders of the Dutch Zwarte Piet tradition, that the character’s blackened face and hands represents soot from the chimneys he climbs down when delivering presents to well-behaved children. 

That sooty chimney story doesn’t explain the Zwarte Piet character’s colourful–  and clean – Rennaissance style costume, outsized red lips, black curly wig and golden earrings.

The Dutch festival of St Nicholas is a mix of pagan and Christian, and draws on Dutch and Spanish imagery. Festivals in Spain still celebrate the 'reconquista' – the Christian victory over the Moors – and Holland was a Spanish colony.  There were also strong trading and cultural links between Holland and the USA and American blackface minstrel troupes played in European theatres.

The 1850 children’s book that first established the black servant character in the St Nicholas narrative was written when slavery was still legal in the Dutch colonies. Holland was a major slave-owning and slave-trading nation and did not abolish slavery in its colonies until 1863. (2) 

To try to argue that Zwarte Piet or Golliwogg had no connection with the contemporary reality of African slavery is indefensible, both historically and morally.

There are people who just don’t know much history and who cannot be bothered to engage with it; there are people who want a version of history which doesn’t challenge their existing beliefs and practices, and there are people who have a powerful ideological agenda and who want to write out the fact of slave trading and slave owning in the countries in which these blackface traditions proliferated. 

What they all have in common is a refusal to acknowledge the fact that the repertoire of characters of blackface minstrel shows both flowed from racist and sexist attitudes and practices, and in turn helped to solidify and perpetuate them.

Of course black people were not all passive victims of this process; they re-appropriated the blackface minstrel form and used it. Most who worked in the tradition traded off the negative elements of blackface against the positive of being able to make a living that was safer and easier than the likes of picking cotton. Some used it to be openly subversive.

We in New Zealand cannot avoid engaging with this history by declaring it to be "not ours". We are recipients of those white American racist attitudes and traditions as much as we are recipients of European ones.

And we have our own uncomfortable history, traditions and contemporary realities that we need to acknowledge and to reconcile.

If people must collect and sell golliwogs, they should at least have the integrity and common decency to acknowledge where the toys came from and what role they and other negative race, class and gender stereotypes and icons have played in history – and are still playing.

Notes:

1. The negative stereotypes and caricatures of Jews served Nazi ideologues well; and today in that most tragic of ironies, negative stereotypes and caricatures created and promulgated by Zionists promote anti-Arab feeling among Jews. 

2. Holland required former slaves to work as indentured, unpaid labourers with no legal status or protection for 10 years after abolition. (Amendment: slavery in some parts of the former Dutch colonies persisted into the 20th century.)

Welcome to the mushroom farm

Mediaworks management has determined that viewers are bored with the earnest, campaigning style of John Campbell and his team.  Campbell Live hasn't attracted enough viewers to keep it financially viable. It needed to move with the times, get with the programme, lighten up, be entertaining i.e. avoid boring people with tedious stuff like the aftermaths of earthquakes and mining disasters. 

Most importantly, it broke the cardinal rule of modern Kiwi television, if it doesn't involve Auckland or the Wellington beltway, it's not really news, or at least not for very long. Current events – in the lexicon of today's shallow, fast moving media world – means what is happening today, not what happened in the South Island 4 years ago. 

Obviously the ennui sufferers are not among the loyal core of Campbell Live viewers or the many tens of thousands who increased viewer numbers as a gesture of solidarity with the show and its presenter, and who signed petitions to keep the programme.  No, it seems that those afflicted with the dreaded viewer tedium are the potential audience, the people Mediaworks wants to attract to its 7pm slot. 

These people are members of that growing demographic - the Frivolati – those viewers who will happily consume cheap, tawdry, schlock television and clamour for more.  

It's obvious to anyone with a claim to intelligence and impartiality, that the decision to axe Campbell Live was not about advertising revenue. There is no doubt that it was ideologically driven. It gets rid of a campaigning programme which sought to hold the powerful to account, and its replacement with something more "popular", will make TV3 a more attractive proposition to corporations that may buy it – and in the process, earn monster bonuses for the current management team.  

Mediaworks could have aimed at increasing its share of the 6pm news slot and at keeping those viewers for the 7pm current events slot.  

It could have invested in promoting its news and current events programmes as heavily as, for example, it marketed that exercise in kitsch vacuity, The Bachelor. 

Instead, it has chosen to dump a successful and popular format and presenter and to dumb down the 7pm slot, going for twin talking heads (what are the odds the pairing will be a dark haired man and a blonde haired woman) to mouth the "bland insincerities" that increasingly pass for social commentary in the corporatised media.

The problem is that John Campbell and his team had become adept at producing a mix of facts and passion which could get people to engage with social issues that this government and its corporate mates want to keep hidden or well under their control.

And how better to hide those issues than under a layer of frothy nonsense which seems, on the surface, to be harmless, just good fun – a pleasant divertissement that people need because their lives are so stressful and demanding. 

But, like its equivalent in the food industry, this frothy nonsense is not just empty of intellectual and ethical "nutrition", too much of it is also highly toxic to the body politic and to the common good.

It promotes selfish, short-termist attitudes and practices that help to separate, divide and alienate people.

It often wallows in hollow sentiment while sneering at and belittling honest feelings.  

It valorises and extolls personal acquisitiveness, and disparages and misrepresents collective action.  

It defines what people need to "possess" in order both to judge themselves and to be judged by others as 'successful'.

It creates exaggerated, idealised images of how people should look and behave and, in a crude process that, at its most extreme enters the realm of the 'freak show', it creates caricatures of how people must not look or behave.  

It tells some people that they got where they are and have what they have because they are more industrious, cleverer, better looking, more deserving, and tells others that they have failed because they are lazy, feckless, stupid, ugly and undeserving.

It's socially corrosive. 

Do the people who willingly consume repetitive, predictable dross think for one moment that the slick cynics who produce it watch it themselves? 

Do they think that the plutocrats and their minions believe they've made great television, or great radio, or written great copy? 

Do they think that they, the consumers, are held in high esteem by the people who make and market this formulaic, pedestrian rubbish? 

Seriously, how much can you be said to value yourself if you value people who, even with their glossy patina of celebrity and wealth, are so obviously facile lightweights?


John Campbell may not be the best journalist or the best TV broadcaster or the best human being in the world, but he's one of the very best in all those categories in NZ.  

In part, he's one of the best in NZ because he is a very good journalist, a very good broadcaster and a very, very good person, and in part, it's because he has so little competition.

And isn't it strange that, when it comes to competition, without which we are told the market and the world as we know it would collapse, the plutocrats are silent on its value in the critically important area of keeping the public informed about all those things which affect them, their families, their communities and the world at large?

Competition for viewers these days certainly doesn't include such measures as quality, creativity, insight or scope; it doesn't even depend on novelty any more as evidenced by how boringly formulaic and unimaginative so much corporate TV is.  

No, competition for the Frivolati's short attention span is by the promotion of such intellectually and socially stimulating phenomena as a contestant farting on camera, or another having a koala shit on her. 

In light of the mushroom analogy, how very apt.

War - what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

The Australian Women's Weekly published this photo of enlisted men forming the head of horse in a tribute to the estimated 8 million horses, mules and donkeys that were used  by and died for various armies in WW1. 

This old photo is extremely poignant but the modern commentary on it is an example of the cloying, faux patriotic sentiment that typifies the mainstream approach to WW1.

Those eight million horses, mules and donkeys did not "serve" – they were not "faithful to the end" –  they were requisitioned, transported in awful conditions and FORCED to haul guns and wagons and to carry soldiers and supplies. And they often died in the most horrible manner it is possible to imagine or were eaten by starving people.

WW1 was an imperial war; a monstrous battle between competing imperial powers – British, French, German, Ottoman and Russian – with the emerging super power, the USA, first making money out of it, then weighing in at the end to stake its claims in Europe and the Middle East.

It was a war that was largely about oil –  it was no accident that the imperial powers were rapidly moving away from coal and horse power and into oil to fuel their enormous war machines.

WW1 had NOTHING to do with our "freedom", or fighting for a ''good cause against a bad one" or "protecting our way of life".

It was a monstrous, cruel waste of human and animal lives.

It was a monstrous, cruel waste, not just of the young soldiers who died in their millions and those whose lives were blighted by being horribly injured in their bodies and minds, but of the millions of civilian casualties as well.

And it was a monstrous, cruel waste, not just the millions of hapless, press-ganged beasts of burden which suffered indescribable horrors, but of the countless millions of domestic and wild creatures that were destroyed in the turning of whole countries into battlefields.

The men who ordered young soldiers and animals into certain death, who ordered the colossal bombardments which, if they didn't blow people and animals to pieces, or drown them in stinking mud, drove them insane, and those other men who made vast fortunes out of those horrors, did not care one jot about the losses they inflicted in their pursuit of power.

If we remember anything, if we have any real feeling for the millions of humans and animals which lost their lives and suffered terribly – we must use this 100 year centenary to vow – NEVER AGAIN!

But, that vow only has meaning if we take a stand against those corporations and governments which are still wasting untold millions of human and animal lives in pursuit of profit and the power that those profits can buy.

This is why I do not wear a red poppy or attend a dawn service. 

I am old enough to remember real people who had fought in the Great War. I remember as a small child, a man who shook and jerked as if he had cerebral palsy and another with terrible gas burns to his face. I spent hours poring over the piles of sepia photos of fresh-faced young men who marched off from that small North Canterbury town to die in Galliopoli or Europe. I heard stories about them and their families, their sweethearts and the friends who stayed behind or who fought and survived. These were not distant or appropriated memories; the old woman who owned those photos knew those young men. She watched them march off and saw them stumble back. They were her immediate relatives, neighbours and friends. 

As I grew older, I began to question why we go to war and the way that those who did not fight justify it. I began to see the Anzac services and the war memorials that were centrepieces of all the small towns I knew as a child, as a prop for a set of attitudes that colludes with the sending of new generations off to fight wars in other people's countries. 

I understood my old friend's feelings; I knew that she had to justify it because how how could she have lived with it if she accepted it for what it was – millions of  lives pointlessly sacrificed on the altar of imperial ambition.

All those Australians and New Zealanders who turn Gallipoli into a tacky tourist destination, the young people who have suddenly discovered ANZAC day and attend dawn services, the kids whose parents deck them out in great-great Grandad's service medals all need to know that war is a horror; the dead are not glorious, they are simply dead, and we dishonour them if we glorify war and ignore the motives of those in whose interests wars are waged.

Living in the glasshouse

I haven't published a post on this blog for three months. I've written loads of stuff but none of it has made it out of the bulging Drafts file on my computer. Some might argue that I should leave everything I write in there and maybe they’re right, but sometimes pieces demand that I publish them. So it was with this and the linked post which will follow it.

This article was inspired by a letter to The Press written by a compulsive correspondent who is well-known for his trenchant rightwing and pro-American views.  He counterposed what he sees as the West's rational, enlightened, civilised values against the irrational, brutal and reactionary values of Islamic militants like ISIS. 

In this, he's leaping aboard a very crowded bandwagon whose complement of rowdily aggressive passengers has been significantly increased by the brutal murder of Jordanian pilot, Lieutenant Muath al-Kaseasbeh. 

The killers' crude justification for this viciously cruel act was that it was a reprisal in kind for what people like al-Kaseasbeh have done and are doing to them – a practical application of the Old Testament dogma of an "eye for an eye".

Like so many bloody sadists before them, they are demonstrating their ability to devise horrible deaths for their victims whilst justifying their actions as reprisals for what was done to them; or, as is more common with such sadists, what was done to those whose suffering they have appropriated for their own political ends.

The West's response has been to throw up its own blood-stained hands in horror at the "barbarism" of the act and to add copious amounts of accelerant to an already strongly burning fire of anti-Muslim feeling that will be further fanned by the reported beheadings of Egyptian Coptic Christians and the claims that ISIS plans to burn alive 17 captured Kurdish fighters.

On each side of the increasingly polarized debate, horrific stories of atrocities abound. Recent events in the USA and in Europe –  indicating an upsurge in hate crimes against Muslims – demonstrate both the complexity and the volatility of the situation. 

The right is heaving with fury at what it labels the "mediaeval savagery" of ISIS – which, in terms of hands-on, blood up to elbows killings makes Al Qaeda look benign – while calling for an even more bloody, albeit more technological, hands-off response.

The left – despite being riven with sectarianism and lacking a coherent ideology or strategy – provides the most intelligent, humane and politically nuanced analyses but it also throws up the viewpoints of those who confuse the pressing need for cogent explanations for the actions of militant Islamists, with excusing them. 

In the rapidly flowing and muddy torrent of information and disinformation about the Muslim Question, sifting the truth from the lies requires a greater knowledge of history and politics than many of the internet’s self-appointed "citizen journalists" possess. 

I was shocked when a person on Twitter who is very focussed on what is happening in the Middle East, posted a link to "evidence" of Jewish-led Bolshevik and Allied atrocities against Germans in WW2. The link was to a Neo-Nazi website and the material was aimed at those who Neo-Nazis hate and fear most – Jews and Communists. I can only assume that he thought he was doing Muslims a favour by retweeting anything that is anti-Jewish and/or anti-Communist. Or he's a mud-stirrer.

It is apparent – and it would be self serving or naïve to claim otherwise – that, hiding amongst those who support Palestinian rights and oppose Islamophobia, are virulent rightwing anti-Semites whose hatred of Muslims is surpassed only by their prior and greater hatred of Jews and Communists.

What angers a lot of people and results in them closing one and sometimes both eyes, is the fact that, among many other dreadful things, the West in general and the USA in particular, are capable of the most extreme double standards and canting hypocrisy. And nowhere is that more apparent in the simplistic juxtaposition of a mediaeval, culture-bound Islamic world and a modern, civilised Western one.

In November 2013, I wrote an article for The Press about the widespread sale of golliwogs in NZ. In response to the article, several people wrote into the paper and to The Press website bemoaning the sort of "PC madness" that tries to stop people buying and enjoying what, they argued, is "just a toy".

In the article I suggested that all those white people who manufacture and collect "gollies" stop for a moment to consider the origins and meaning of what, for many people, is part of a racist iconography that played a key role in the creation and perpetuation of negative racial stereotypes in the Jim Crow era in the USA.

I asked them to put these collectibles into the social and historical context in which postcards, like the one of a photo of black toddlers on a river bank with the caption, “Gator bait”, were manufactured and collected.  I also suggested people read about the 1916 lynching of Jesse Washington because I wanted them to consider the role that racist icons like the golliwog played in stereotyping and dehumanising black people, and why black people and a lot of progressive white people cannot see it as "just a toy".

I wanted them to consider what drove a large mob of white people to drag an illiterate 17-year-old farmhand from the court where he had pled guilty to murdering his white employer, to beat and castrate him, to hang him over a fire, to lower and raise his body to prolong his suffering, to cut off his fingers to prevent him trying to haul himself out of the fire, to cut and break off pieces of his charred body to keep as souvenirs, to drag his body across town behind a horse and hang it up for public view – and to take photos of the whole monstrous business  and turn them into postcards?  

Those white American men, and the women who colluded with them, who carried out that monstrous act would have seen themselves as civilised and as good Christians, possessors and upholders of the sort of Western values that are being lauded by some people today in contrast to the "mediaeval savagery" of Islamic extremists.

Behind that white mob's acts of unspeakable cruelty lay a complex web of historical, economic, religious, racial and sexual factors which help explain how otherwise seemingly normal people could behave with such sadistic ferocity – and not once, but over and over.

What was moving in the hearts and minds of those white Americans who committed that most extreme of extremist acts? Who spread the rumour that the murder victim had also been raped, and why did a claim that a black man had raped a white woman always intensify the ferocity of lynchings?  Did law enforcement officers cynically pressure Washington to confess by telling him if he did they would protect him from the lynch mob? Why did the police not intervene, and why was not one single person ever held to account despite all the photographic and witness evidence?

Only by seeking to explain and to understand an atrocity such as this (or any of those being committed by extremists today) may we be able to begin to create the conditions in which it never happens again. 

A start point is to accept that the behaviour of that lynch mob was a product of our much vaunted Western civilisation – just as the Holocaust, the terror bombing of German, Japanese civilian targets in WW2, and rural Cambodia and Laos in the 1970s, the aerial spraying of millions of litres of hyper-toxic defoliants in Vietnam, the use of napalm, white phosphorous and depleted uranium in weapons, the support of noxious regimes with appalling human rights records when there's money to be made or national interests to protect, and the uncontrolled plundering of the natural word that threatens all life on the planet – ALL were and are products of our civilisation.

There is so much to respect and to treasure about our history and our way of life but we DO NOT have a monopoly on rationality, reason, common sense or decency, and we need to acknowledge that a great deal of our history and our current practice is characterised by the very opposite of those qualities.

If our "leaders" were indeed the rational, reasonable, decent, fair minded and far-sighted human beings they claim to be they would know that they will NOT stop religious extremism with more of what gave rise to it, i.e. by inflicting more violence and injustice. 

To paraphrase Terry Eagleton, the answer to religious extremism is secular justice – not more extremism.

I struggle to find words to express my horror of and opposition to people who commit casual acts of cruelty and destruction in the name of Islam, who display their own brand of callous indifference to life and their own brand of hypocrisy – claiming to reject the West while actually replicating many of its worst excesses  – but I am no less horrified by or opposed to any other brand of proselytising, patriarchal religious fundamentalism, or the economic fundamentalism the West has such an irrational attachment to.

When the CIA master-minded the military coup that ousted Sukarno in Indonesia as part of its drive to derail the growing Non-Aligned Movement, militant Muslims did much of the killing of between 500,000 and 3 million Communists, but Hindus also joined in, egged on by their religious leaders and rich land owners.

Events in the USA make it easy to imagine extremist Christian fundamentalists and angry rightwing athiests behaving in the same way towards Muslims and / or left-wingers if the circumstances dictate or permit.

Militant Islam was born in and nourished by violence and injustice, some of it, it must be said, of its own making. However, the most consequential role has been the West's cynical use of Islamic sectarianism and extremism to help it scorch the soil in which the seeds of socialist and progressive nationalist movements were growing. Then, when the fundamentalists' ranks were swelled by the dispossessed, the angry, the humiliated, the marginalised and the grief stricken, the west demonised them and made them the replacement for defeated communism as the justification for its perpetual war economy.

All over the world over the last century or so, the actions of the west and its allies have had specific local objectives that sit within the broad global objective of destroying socialism and progressive, non-aligned nationalism. In every country in which the USA and its allies have overtly or covertly undermined progressive forces, the situation of the mass of the population has worsened and as always, the American's literal and ideological scorched earth policy has a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable.

When the CIA funded and armed the Mujaheddin to fight Afghani socialists and to suck the USSR into an unwinnable war, they did so to destroy socialism. In so doing, they set the stage for the emergence of the pathologically puritanical Taliban, which curtailed the corruption and the heroin trade but imposed a different set of oppressions. Women who may have been safer from rape were at risk of stoning, whipping or acid attacks if they tried to break free from the shadows of that potent symbol of patriarchy, the burqa.

When the CIA used militant Islam to oust an Iranian leader who wanted to nationalise oil, and replaced him with the corrupt, despotic tyrant, they set the stage for the subsequent Islamisation (and demonisation) of the country. They also deepened the sectarian divisions in the region – in keeping with their key guiding principle – divide and rule.

Militant, sectarian Islam has been a very useful weapon in the West's specific and broader objectives.  When it is helping to destroy progressive movements in a given country or region it is branded as fighting for freedom; then, having served its purpose it is rebranded as terrorism and becomes the substitute for Communism as the enemy within and without.

An enemy that threatens us both at home and abroad justifies and legitimates both a perpetual and aggressive militarism internationally and the erosion of domestic democracy alongside the growth of mass surveillance and the other coercive machinery of the state.

Stripped of all its hype, the global and domestic strategy of those states which have become the openly wielded tools of corporate capitalism is to dumb down, divert, distract and divide – in order to rule. 

So far that strategy has been devastatingly effective. 

Rugby, Rowing and Blur

It's as if cupidity has mated with stupidity and its awful offspring have taken over New Zealand. The talking heads are busy filling in the most recent paint by numbers picture of John Key as a gracious, inclusive - almost humble - "man of the people" who spoke from the heart in his victory speech and who has learned his lesson about unwise contacts with unscrupulous bloggers.  


So anxious is Key to represent all New Zealand he's even going to address child poverty – after he's sold off enough state houses to offset the drop in milk profits and pay for TeamNZ to contest the America's Cup.

Some in the media are shifting their feet. They are perhaps a tad uncomfortable with what Labour's comprehensive loss will result in and are a bit anxious about the part they played in that defeat through their acts of omission or commission.  Other, less sensitive and more overtly ideological souls, are openly revelling in being on the winning team. The resultant spectacle is unedifying to the point of needing a health warning.

Speaking of health warnings, Cameron Slater is desperately trying to reinvent himself as person of courage and integrity and his mates are busy persuading their witless supporters to fork out large sums of money to "take down" those who exposed Whaleoil's bile-full excesses.  

The usefully vacuous Paula Bennett is being carefully groomed, rebranded and promoted as future National Party leadership material. It is a terrifying prospect.

And Labour still shows no signs of doing a Lazarus after its media assisted political suicide. 

The election was a resounding victory for dirty politics. The exposure of a series of scandals that should have lost the election for Key and Co, ended up hurting the opposition.  Seemingly sensible and decent people were persuaded it was politically and morally wrong to buy or read "that book" because it was the product of a 'left-wing conspiracy" and based on stolen material.  

Not having read the book, or even accurate commentaries about it, they were easily persuaded that the dirty politics were the left's creation and intended to sully the whiter-than-white reputation of John Key. 

In fact, looking at how well it all turned out for Key & Co, one could almost be forgiven for thinking Dirty Politics was a big rightwing master plan. But, however cunning and devious rightwing political plotters are, they really aren't that clever. They could not have been as successful in sliding out from under Hager's revelations had they not been facing a fractured opposition, sections of which were engaged in the political equivalent of self-harming.

Election material that had David Cunliffe's image or name alongside candidates was seldom seen. Exhortations to give party votes to Labour were notable for their lack of prominence. The message sent out to the electorate, which dovetailed nicely with that of a largely hostile media, was "a lot of us don't trust our leader". 

Other than attacking Cunliffe and Labour's "five new taxes", National's winning strategy was to be as vague as possible about policy, to promote Brand Key as synonymous with National, and to link Key to international sporting successes – a winning trifecta of rugby, rowing and blur.

Rowing is not quite as far removed from the lives of ordinary Kiwis as America's Cup sailing, but it is an elite sport. Its appeal is that it is one at which Kiwis excel. The image of a slick, professional rowing eight heading towards the right juxtaposed against a lumbering rowboat going in circles was used to denigrate and demoralise the opposition and to fuel the right's tendency towards swagger and triumphalism.

Rugby is the country's unofficial religion. Whoever can coat tail the All Black brand is onto a winner. Key's expressed preference for the black flag with a silver fern to replace the current flag was not accidental. Nor was posing on the cover of Rugby News in an All Black shirt at the head of a phalanx of All Black forwards, including Ritchie McCaw. 

McCaw's "yes you can" text to Key at the opening of National's election campaign was an unofficial endorsement of Team Key by the All Blacks.  Key's gauche claim to want to be reincarnated as Ritchie McCaw would have been mocked mercilessly had David Cunliffe made it. The election day pro-National tweets and Facebook posts by former and current All Blacks and elite rowers to their thousands of followers would have resulted in a media firestorm had they been in support of Labour. 

And so, we are left with Captain Key still in charge of the ship of state. It doesn't really matter to him if she's dragging her anchors and drifting onto the rocks.  He's got his life raft well stocked and fuelled and can abandon ship any time he chooses, as can his uber-rich supporters. It's the rest of us need to be worried about how badly our ship will be damaged when the next big economic storm hits.

The Neo-Liberal Agenda

1. Remove controls on the movement of capital. 

This is the foundation stone of the project. It will enable the global free market to create wealth that will trickle down to the base – thus enriching everyone. 
(Note:  It is  critically important to obscure the fact that wealth will do the opposite, i.e. accrue exponentially to the rich. See Agenda Item 4)

2. Mechanise any large scale production that is to remain in the developed world and relocate labour intensive production to countries with more amenable labour costs and environmental laws.

This process is essential to the increase of profits as it will enable the reduction of labour costs and reduce Health & Safety and environmental overheads.  It will also break the backs of the industrial trade unions.
Market on the basis of the drive for  "economy, efficiency and effectiveness".  
(Note: It is necessary to have achieved all elements of agenda item 3 before embarking on this.)

3. Undermine the Left and organised labour. 

Use all available anti-communist / anti-socialist memes.  

Create and publicise examples of "loony leftism", "political correctness", the dominance of the "left elites" in media and academia etc.

Label trade unions and the left as the "enemy within" which is conspiring to undermine traditional values. It is of course important to remain vague about what traditional values are for fear of alienating some sections of support. 
(Note: It is essential to have achieved Agenda Item 4 before embarking on this.)

4. Control the mass media.

Use new technology to break the print unions which will leave journalists vulnerable. 

Make journalists responsible for as many other jobs as possible.
Narrow the range of raw news from agencies.
Dumb down news content.  

Sell off as much of public funded media as possible.

Promote the meme of the left's control of the media to justify stifling of dissent among liberal journalists and commentators.

5. Depress pay and conditions for domestic working class.

Abandon collective agreements and introduce individually negotiated (confidential) contracts which will promote competition (and distrust) between workers. 

Aim for extensions of the working day and abandonment of overtime payments. 

Devolve health & safety responsibility to workers.

Utilise contractors as much as possible and off-shore where possible. 

Aim to make workers responsible for as much of the costs of their employment as possible.
Introduce "flexible" working conditions and market these as a benefit to workers e.g. contrast with rigid hours of work demanded in traditional industrial / factory operations. 
Ultimate aim is full casualisation ie. zero hours contracts.

6. Ensure there is a well paid and politically loyal middle class.

This is vital to ensure political stability and the length of tenure of governments committed to the project.

It stimulates consumption, promotes the ideology of meritocracy and provides useful buffer zone. 

It is especially important to reward the top echelons of the public sector and the link to pay rates in the private sector  can be used to justify this.

7. Open the public sector to competition through the contract culture. 

Sell this to the public as improving public sector efficiency, effectiveness and economy through the  application of private sector methods and values. 

The anticipated reality is that local taxes / rates will increase and quality of services decrease which can be managed so as to ensure Item 8 works to our advantage. 

8. Prevent local government from being a locus for political opposition to the global project.

Use amalgamations or partitions, boundary changes etc to ensure greater central government control.
Increase compliance demands, strengthen the management/governance split and contract culture. 

Sack any elected authority which promotes a left wing agenda and /or blocks business interests.

Surcharge any uncooperative elected officials if harsher lesson is needed.

9. Sell off publicly owned assets.

Market this as opening up investment opportunities for ordinary citizens and claim that the resulting competition will yield better quality services at lower cost. 
When that does not eventuate, claim the market is not yet free enough or blame it in any vestiges of workers' rights etc.

10. Encourage cults of personality in elections. 

Focus on positive family-centric images of the Head of State and key politicians. 
Link the chosen candidate wherever possible to popular celebrities and sporting icons as their success reflects back on the Head of State.

11. Encourage identity politics.

Portray IP as alternative to/competitor with the traditional labour movement.
Promote the idea of the labour movement as unprogressive and unresponsive to the rights of women and minorities. 

Continue to make concessions to demands for extensions of individual freedoms whilst making it harder for people to exercise them.

12. Denigrate environmentalists 

Use sympathetic scientists, PR / advertising specialists and lobbyists to counter and misrepresent green arguments eg. "snails-before-jobs" etc and devise, disseminate derogatory labels e.g. "tree-huggers".

13. Consolidate global debt culture.

Make nations dependent on World Bank / IMF loans that are dependent on government implementing measures to privatise corporate profits and socialise corporate debt.

Ensure governments implement required austerity measures and are briefed on how to blame the need for these on the Left.

14. Extend private debt.

A key support of the global project is the extension of private debt. Not only does this debt yield excellent returns, it promotes consumption, and most importantly, it is a set of shackles people don freely and may even be persuaded to wear proudly.