My
worst fears might be realised.
Kiwibloggers
discuss assassination of “terrorist” Winston Peters
22
October, 2017
Right
wing online forums are going to reach new levels of toxicity over the
next 3 years. Someone really needs to monitor them. Yesterday
Kiwibloggers were discussing and upticking the assassination of
“terrorist” Winston Peters. There will be worse to come.
Extracts
–
—
Some screen shots from Young Nats FB
8:01 PM - 21 Oct 2017
Dark
Transactions: Winston Peters Decision To “Go Left” Has Already
Set His Enemies In Motion.
Chris Trotter
Navigator Of The Dark Side: Winston Peters, the man who broke the Winebox Scandal; wheeled and dealed with the big fishing companies; wined and dined the princes of New Zealand’s bloodstock industry; and took private calls on secluded New Zealand beaches from the US Secretary of State; knows better than just about any other New Zealander how the business of this world gets done.
22
October, 2017
IN
ALL ECONOMIES, and in every political system, there are roped-off
areas of shadow and hidden places swathed in deliberate darkness. In
these light-starved locations all kinds of disreputable economic and
political transactions take place.
If
there’s one politician in New Zealand who is familiar, to the point
of intimacy, with this unmapped and unacknowledged territory, it’s
Winston Peters. The man who broke the Winebox Scandal; wheeled and
dealed with the big fishing companies; wined and dined the princes of
New Zealand’s bloodstock industry; and took private calls on
secluded New Zealand beaches from the US Secretary of State; knows
better than just about any other New Zealander how the business of
this world gets done.
That
Peters, with bitter personal experience of just how dark our politics
can get, nevertheless persuaded NZ First to throw in its lot with
Labour and the Greens, is astonishing. He must have known that the
formation of a government unwilling to settle for “a modified
status quo” but determined to usher in “real change”, would
instantly mobilise all the initiators and beneficiaries of New
Zealand’s neoliberal revolution against him.
Like
Franklin Roosevelt before him, however, Peters appeared not to fear
the enmity of the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful individuals
and institutions, but to welcome it. Without the slightest
hesitation, he lifted up the banner of resistance to the
red-in-tooth-and-claw Capitalism that, since 1984, New Zealanders
have grown to fear and detest:
“Far
too many New Zealanders have come to view today’s capitalism, not
as their friend, but as their foe. And they are not all wrong. That
is why we believe that capitalism must regain its responsible – its
human face. That perception has influenced our negotiations.”
Such
an open declaration of war against the neoliberal establishment was
bound to draw an equally belligerent response. And who better to lead
the charge than one of the prime movers of the neoliberal revolution,
Richard Prebble. Never one to mince words, Prebble began his opinion
piece to the NZ Herald with the following, extraordinary, accusation:
“Let’s
not beat about the bush: There has been a coup.
“The
political scientists can tell us it’s legal but the fact remains -
it is undemocratic. For the first time in our history who governs us
is not the result of an election but the decision of one man.”
That
there is not a word of truth in any of this (as Prebble, an
experienced lawyer and politician must surely realise) matters much
less than the deep emotional impression such an inflammatory charge
is likely to make on all those New Zealanders bitterly disappointed
to see the National Party denied the parliamentary majority it needed
to remain in government.
What
Prebble is setting up here is a politico-historical narrative
alarmingly akin to the Dolchstosslegende – the “stab-in-the-back”
legend concocted by far-right German nationalists to explain the
Fatherland’s defeat in World War I. According to this “Big Lie”,
the German army wasn’t defeated on the field of battle, but by the
treachery of the “November Criminals” – Jews and Socialists –
who signed, first, the armistice that ended the war, and then, the
hated Treaty of Versailles, which imposed a Carthaginian peace on the
German nation.
Prebble
is nothing if not inventive – embellishing his delegitimising
narrative with a vivid political metaphor drawn from Japanese
history:
“New
Zealand is now a Shogunate. In Japan the Emperor had the title and
the Shogun had all the power.
“Jacinda
has Premier House and Shogun Peters sets the policies.”
This
is highly sophisticated political writing. Not only is Peters cast as
the new government’s eminence grise, the power behind the throne,
but the status of Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s new Prime Minister,
is also reduced to that of a naïve puppet. It is “Shogun Peters”
who gets to wield the real power.
As
if Prebble’s historical musings weren’t insulting enough in
themselves, they are heavy with an additional, if unspoken, menace.
Those familiar with modern Japanese history know that in 1868 the
Shogunate was overthrown by forces determined to restore the power of
the Emperor by making him Japan’s ruler in fact as well as in name.
In other words, although Peters is in no way guilty of staging a
coup, Prebble, himself, is implying that should the new Labour-NZ
First-Green Government be successful in installing an anti-neoliberal
“shogunate”, a restorative coup-d’etat may be in order.
Prebble
is quite explicit about how such coup might begin:
“I
predict bureaucratic opposition to this government will be
significant. It will start leaking from day one. Everyone knows this
coalition of losers has no mandate to implement Winston Peters’
interventionist policies.”
None
of this will come as any surprise to Peters. He has had to weather
similar attacks many times before in his political career. To Jacinda
Ardern and James Shaw, however, such reckless mendacity is likely to
be received with a mixture of alarm and dismay. Both leaders are
going to need Peters hard-won knowledge of how New Zealand’s “Deep
State” operates if they are to mount an effective defence against
the Neoliberal Establishment’s dark transactions.
And
not only Peters’ protection will be needed. Every progressive New
Zealander who understands the magnitude of the fight which Peters’,
Ardern’s and Shaw’s decision to pursue “real change” has made
inevitable, must be prepared to come to the aid of the three parties
– Labour, NZ First and the Greens – which have committed
themselves to fulfilling the hopes and dreams of the 50.4 percent of
the New Zealand electorate who voted for them.
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