Hey Douglas, Nice to hear from you. Really interesting perspective and I appreciate hearing about some of the 'on the ground' conditions in Wellington and Christchurch.
I do agree that if the Springbok Tour of 1981 was one inflection point, then Christchurch in 2019 is another. How do we rebound off this attack and end somewhere else? That's a massive question that I guess gets decided collectively. My own small contribution would just be that I see a lot of media articles focusing either on the evils of social media or on the everyday bigotry you mentioned, concentrating either on technical solutions or more inclusive relations. Already, for example, we're seeing ISPs implementing their vision of the future by censoring content. So there's a kind of bifurcation into camps and causes - it seems we're not very good at linking protocols and politics, hate memes and hate groups, or 'informational' surveillance and armed crowd control, as you pointed out. But the shooter's statements and manifesto pointed to the continuity of these aspects - the deep psychological conditioning that online environments can effect gradually over time, to the point where other humans become inhuman. Without reducing everything to an overly determined 'question of media', in the context of a network cultures mailing list like this one, it should foreground that these interests have significant stakes. best, Luke On Thu, 28 Mar 2019 at 01:28, Douglas Bagnall <[email protected]> wrote: > On 26/03/19 9:44 AM, Luke Munn wrote: > > > Sure, the Springbok protests were hugely formative, but I would say > boiling > > anything down to one event is placing too much emphasis on it. > > > > With respect, dating the 'beginning' of inequalities and civil unrest > back > > to 1981 is also a pretty Western/white perspective. Aotearoa has a long > > history of civil unrest, not least in the New Zealand wars / Land Wars > > beginning around 1845. > > Well yes, sort of. We have that *now*. Protest heritage seems to be a > curriculum subject at my children's school, jumping from the > Kororareka flagpole to Parihaka, suffragettes, 40 hour week, Waihi, > 1951, Vietnam, "damn the dam", 1975 land march, Bastion Point, 1981, > nuclear free, homosexual law reform, foreshore and seabed. But the > historical facts are not really what David/Simon are on about -- the > question is how [most] people understand their response to the > Christchurch attack, and how 1981 affects that. > > In 1981 we didn't have protest studies in primary schools (I was > there). There were protests -- half the canon was the produced in the > 70s -- but that was a fad, not linked to tradition. And there had been > anti-springbok protests for 20 years or so and they had sometimes been > successful. Tours were cancelled. That meant in early 1981 the > protesters had a well established organisational infrastructure but > faced widespread complacency. The tour would be stopped before it > started, so why join the protest? When everyone suddenly realised the > WWII-era farts in charge were going to have the tour at any cost and > the protests grew massively. The result was, on the face of it, a > failure -- the tour went ahead. But after that, even as the new right > fucked up the economy, the public service and the Labour Party > consisted largely of Springbok protest veterans, at least mildly > disposed toward rethinking the colonial past. In 1985 historic > Waitangi claims were unleashed, which -- combined with relative > contentment with diverse immigration -- led to the society you > describe. It doesn't matter whether the vision of these protest > veterans ("independent, racially tolerant society, a moral exemplar" > in Simon's words) was hypocritical bollocks or not -- the argument is > it drove us here from a very weird place. At that time New Zealand was > famous for being the country that *uniquely in the world* would play > sport with racist South Africa. There were Olympic boycotts against > us. Nobody had heard of Te Whiti. The treaty was a historical > curiosity. Our race relations were the best in the world, we said, our > past had finished, there was no depression in New Zealand. > > OK, so that's the argument for 1981's significance. But I don't see > the Christchurch response in those terms. Rather it is desperate and > existential -- we have no choice. We just want peace. Sectarian > violence is unimaginably foreign to us. It would be like death to end > up in a cycle of copycat and reprisal attacks, even if the statistical > chance of actual death was negligible. We will do almost *anything* to > keep the peace, though of course with spontaneous collective > responses, "anything" precludes nuance. If we plan we will bicker and > dither. So we smother the aggrieved with love and sympathy in the hope > they will not blame the rest of us, and we spurn the attacker so that > nobody wants to follow his path. Which is not to say the emotion is > contrived. We are *really* hurt. People cry in the streets. Where I > live in Wellington this is not surprising -- we are a soppy lot, > diverse and integrated, our walls plastered overnight with hundreds of > pieces of outraged and loving graffiti -- but I can also report from > suburban Christchurch where, for family reasons, I just spent a few > days in a quite different context. And people are devastated. In a > suburban mall the P.A. system asked us for two minutes silence. The > tills stopped and we stood and wept. On every day since the attack > there has been rally or vigil of various sorts, all across the > country. Often 10 or 20 percent of the town population turns out. > > The obvious question is what we do next? Or at least, what else do we > do? I am not going to answer now. Many people are trying to shift > positions as quietly as possible. A clutch of despicable talkback > hosts have been deleting their anti-muslim tweets and articles. One > even apologised and recanted. On the left, it is harder now to argue > against the existence of state spy agencies (though the focus of their > surveillance has been woefully inaccurate). All of a sudden the police > guarding crowds have guns and we do not question it. At the same time > as this response is an exemplar of spontaneous self-organisation, > stable anarchist society seems more far fetched than ever. > > I see people are urging each other to call out "ordinary" bigotry, > sometimes citing the theory that it allows extremist speech to hide as > if semi-normal. And perhaps I would, but I haven't heard any bigoted > speech in the last ten days (I am not on social media). This I think > is part of our collective effort: we will not add insult to injury, at > least not before the injured party is placated if not healed. > > In recent months I have seen warnings about our complacency. Tse Ming > Mok comes to mind, though I can't find the piece. The fascists are > emboldened, organised, here. The right wing media are getting > systematically worse. And so on. At the time I was spending my days > settling a three year old into a preschool where no ethnic group makes > up more than 20% of the class. When you are hanging out with a bunch > of happy three year olds you can't think the world is getting worse. > But now I know there was someone in our midst who would shoot them, or > 80% of them or 20% or some other number depending on their exact > theory (I have not studied the killer). This has opened up for us the > possibility of a future we cannot stand. > > Now, to link back to 1981, those old fuckwits Muldoon and Ces Blazey > wanted another racist tour for, well, god knows what reason. Lets say > they wanted more rugby and to spite everyone else in the world who was > trying to interfere with that. They would rub our noses in it. Rugby > rugby rugby and New Zealand would go on forever stinking like a beer > soaked carpet. They people reacted against this and the country > careered off in another direction entirely. Ha! Then this attacker, he > wanted something, racial disharmony, civil war, pogroms, crusades, > whatever. We won't do that. But can we rebound off this attack and end > up somewhere better? And how exactly? These questions are explicitly > discussed, though i haven't paid too much attention yet, being still > very caught up in the collective ache. > > Douglas > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: >
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