The Post: When violence beckons as a political solution, we must find a better way
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If you are in a party of seven people around a restaurant table, one of you – on average – will believe that political violence is now justified. This was the grim finding of a Curia poll, reported earlier this week, that had 14% of New Zealanders saying violence may be needed “to get the country back on track”.
Such surveys are, of course, a free hit, a chance to vent; I suspect few Kiwis would actually bear arms for their cause. But still: the poll points to something bad. And so do other stats.
Earlier this month, psychology researchers reported that 17% of white New Zealand men – around one in 10 of the total population – believe they are victims of discrimination. And while some of those men will genuinely be struggling, at least economically, many are simply reacting angrily to having their behaviour challenged by #MeToo and other such movements.
One-third of young men believe, against all the evidence about gender pay gaps and domestic violence, that equality for women has “gone too far”. Political insiders, meanwhile, predict an especially ugly election campaign next year, one potentially scarred by a renewal of anti-immigrant rhetoric.
On the populist front, we already have New Zealand First’s Shane Jones threatening to “exterminate” any public servant activity that slows down his beloved fast-track process, while Winston Peters calls broadcasting regulators “the Stasi” for daring to hear complaints against Sean Plunket’s The Platform.
Each data point, like a reading on a political thermometer, signals a rising temperature. Although New Zealand is not yet overturned by the roiling anger that we see in places like America, a non-negligible segment of the population is poised for unrest.
And there are lessons to learn from overseas. The political scientist Katherine Cramer, who has spent years interviewing rural Americans, argues that Trump voters feel they are denied their fair share of three key things: good incomes and the other fruits of the economy, political decision-making power, and respect for their way of life.
One can see all three forces – economic, political and cultural – at play in New Zealand, where 60% of the population lack the liquid assets needed to sustain themselves for just three months at the poverty line. Economic precarity is, global research suggests, the single greatest predictor of support for authoritarian populists.
OECD data shows most Kiwis think their government doesn’t listen to them. Politics is too top-down, too distant from ordinary people’s lives. No wonder disaffection is growing and local election turnout lamentable.
How, then, can reasonable, non-violent people respond to this rising tide of anger?
Central here are two forms of security, their duality embodying a wider need for both “hard” and “soft” responses.
On the hard side, our politicians – especially the women and ethnic minorities most often targeted – will need greater physical protection, and the police must take online threats more seriously.
But as well as facing down the unacceptable elements of political anger, we should acknowledge that it sometimes has comprehensible roots. So we also need a politics that provides people with material security: one that reduces economic disparities, ensures everyone has the financial foundation of a better future, and restores the Kiwi dream in which hard work buys an affordable house and a good family life.
Our outdated political system, meanwhile, must open up more space for people to participate in democracy – not just on election day but on every other day of the year.
Cramer’s final driver of authoritarian support – a perceived lack of respect for certain lifeways – also merits a dual approach.
Respect shouldn’t be accorded to authoritarian worldviews where they involve xenophobia and other bigotry. We must be clear that some politicians are now testing democratic limits and weakening human-rights norms. We have to defend persecuted minorities and turn up to protests.
But we also mustn’t fall into the trap of screaming “dictator” at every turn. We have to recognise that urban liberal politics can sometimes seem condescending.
I frequently disagree with farmers, for instance, over their unwillingness to take responsibility for their planet-heating emissions and riverine pollution. But I am uncomfortable with the reflexive urban dislike of farming, the failure to appreciate the hard manual labour and care for the natural world that – at its best – that sector represents.
In short: we won’t get far with either a purely “soft” approach (“we just need to hear everyone’s opinions”) or a purely “hard” one (“anyone who dissents from metropolitan liberalism is a proto-fascist”). We need a complex double movement, navigating between extremes.
Alongside the hard space of protest, then, we must create the softer spaces of encounter: the forums where reasonable people from different backgrounds can meet each other and articulate their views robustly – but with an underlying respect for one another.
We have to find ways to take down the political temperature, lest it take us down instead.