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strypeyFair warning, this gets long. Very long. That's why I've broken it into sections, so you can skip the boring bits:
Prologue: Who am I and why do I care enough to write this, carefully edit it over weeks, and then make it public? Not a Green member, but a Green ally.
Part 1: My "identity politics" problem; How could a socially liberal anarchist have a problem with identity politics?
Part 2: All Greens are equal, but some Greens are more equal than others? What happens when paying your dues becomes secondary to being born with the right identity markers?
Part 3: Is the universal compassion and egalitarianism that underlies green values and policy at risk? Do identity mandates make parties more vulnerable to entryism?
Part 4: How many one-off incidents can you fit in a trend line? Everything that goes wrong in public is the tip of an iceberg, and there's been a bunch of things of late.
Part 5: Diversity and inclusion for who? Has enforcing a narrow framing of "diversity" reduced the capacity of the Greens to hold space for other forms of diversity?
Part 6: Radical solutions to address root problems; dissent is collective error-checking, limited terms are good for MPs, diversity can be cultivated organically.
Epilogue: Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. What can happen to movements that keep going the way the Greens seem to be headed?
Coda: Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Or what goes around, comes around.
In one of the pinned posts on my fediverse account, I describe myself as a greenie and human rights activist, with loud opinions about media and technology policy. With an overall political bent that could be described as left-libertarian or anarchist (of a vaguely Chomskian/ Graeberian variety).
Drawing on both revolutionary theory and my own readings of history, as well as my observations over three decades of political activity, it's clear to me that electoral politics is limited in its ability to address the problems created by capitalism. But it's equally clear to me that where a pluralistic electoral system exists, elected representatives can do measurable good within those limits, and that refusing all participation allows it to become an uncontested tool for capitalists and other authoritarians. Which seems best avoided.
So while electoral politics has never been the central focus of my own activism, I have become a member of a number of small parties to help them get the numbers to register a party list. As an act of solidarity with friends and allies involved. The most involved I've ever been in electoral parties was a one-off candidacy for the Cannabis Party - running against United Future MP Peter Dunne in Ohariu in 2008 - and my brief stint as the elected Communications Officer for the Pirate Party of NZ, short-lived as it was. During which my main achievement was to convince the rest of the board, and then the membership, that decisions about the party could be made through online participation by its members.
I've never been a member of the Green Party of Aotearoa (and quite likely I'd be rejected if I applied). But a lot of people I consider friends and political allies have been members, even officials and MPs, or still are. I still consider the party an important political ally of the environmental movement and the progressive left. If they believe what they say about taxing wealth, to rebuild our rotting infrastructure in ways that are both sustainable and futureproof, and to restore universal public services - and I believe they do - I want to help them succeed.
So this not a public airing of internal disagreements, nor am I rubbing my hands with glee as the Greens struggle from one crisis to another. Quite the opposite. I'm aware that as an outside ally I can openly publish what concerned party members may only be able to whisper in private. So my intention here is to offer an outside perspective, in the hopes that it can help - in some small way - to right the ship.
As befits any rational humanist who advocates for human rights, I'm very socially liberal. Annoyingly so, as my oldest friends would no doubt confirm.
Since my early teens, I've spoken up both privately and publicly for the equal rights of women, Māori, immigrants of colour and their descendants, homosexuals, gender non-conformists, people with disabilities (whether physical, intellectual or cognitive), non-human animals, and the ecosystems we're all embedded in. Pretty much anyone that conformist mainstream culture has tried to treat as an inferior, with less rights, just because they differ from the mythical "average New Zealander". Despite what I say here - in fact because of it - I intend to keep doing this for as long as I draw breath.
So while I am, technically speaking, a heterosexual Pākeha, and a man born a man, I'm not a right-wing nut job, who thinks that anyone who doesn't have my in-born privileges should know their place. Convenient as that accusation may be when I'm openly critical of the strategy and tactics of "identity politics", for similar reasons to the ones Frances Lee explains beautifully in a series of pieces they wrote in 2017.
This paradox seems to annoy some people.
But quite frankly, that's their problem. Being annoyed is a pretty minor downstream effect compared to being publicly shamed, or viciously smeared, or losing your livelihood, or having CSAM injected into your server in an attempt to get you put in jail. I think it's high time to stop rationalising this kind of behaviour and start talking about the rampaging elephant in the room.
So what does any of this have to do with the Greens?
Over the past decade or so, I watched with growing concern as the public communications and internal rules of the Greens began to change in ways that were clearly alienating people. Including some of their most enthusiastic early supporters and members, some them since the proto-Greens party known as Values. As time went on, newcomers to the party were increasingly being pushed into high level positions, including on the party list. Often at the expense of long-serving party members, whose ability to do the job as well - if not better - was never in question.
Why? Perhaps because of things like rule changes guaranteeing spots on the party list to people with certain identity markers (see section 8.2 of the 2022 Candidate Selection and List Ranking Procedure). Rather than being corrected against, oppressive hierarchies based on in-born identity, such as gender, ethnicity, or sexuality, were being enforced in reverse. Other values, such as long term commitment to the green movement and the party, diplomacy and persuasion skills, and the ability to keep a cool head under fire, seemed to become secondary to the otherwise laudable goal of diversifying representation.
This doublethink version of "identity politics" - popular with corporate managers, neoliberal bureaucrats and reputation launderers - has become a sacred cow within the party. So much so that careerists and bullies regularly use it to shield themselves - and the party - from legitimate criticism.
Solving problems begins with identifying them. To this end, I recently posted on the fediverse about my theory that those identity marker mandates in the candidate selection rules - and the discourse surrounding them - could be the vulnerability that allowed someone like Darleen Tana to become a Green MP. Despite being a person co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick later described as "completely at odds with our party’s values, policies and kaupapa", and having no experience as a Green candidate before the 2020 election.
What I said was;
Read in context, these are shorthand references to the political scandals surrounding these MPs, not personal attacks on them. The Kerekere affair was certainly a failure of caucus unity and membership solidarity, whoever was at fault, but I still don't know what to make of her ousting. While it's hard to have much sympathy for Tana, or her husband, I'm definitely sympathetic to MPs like Ghahraman, and Julie Anne Genter, who are clearly buckling under intense workplace stress. As I most certainly would in their place, and much quicker too.
Many of the replies to this post were thoughtful and open-minded. But inevitably some of them resorted to strawman arguments, based on the smear that I feel threatened by seeing positions of power and influence held by women, or brown people, or homosexuals. I couldn't have asked for a better demonstration of the miasma of nonsense that allows a Darleen Tana to avoid critical scrutiny for long enough to become a Green MP.
Here's a summary of my exchange with the chip on one person's shoulder;
1) I post a structural criticism (see above)
2) The reaction is a deflection and a thinly-veiled personal attack implying I'm a "RWNJ" (Right Wing Nut Job)
3) I respond in good faith, attempting to bring the thread back to the point of the original post
4) The reaction puts words in my mouth, misrepresenting my structural criticism as a personal attack on Golriz Ghahraman ...
> "DEI hire"
... and then doubles down on the hyperbolic ad-hominem;
> I think you're pushing a barrow for misogyny and racism
I can just imagine them thinking as they posted this; 'He'll never see this razor sharp critique coming!'. Or to put it another way...
Nnnnnnobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Cardinal Fang... bring out... the Comfy Chair!
I welcome disagreement, if it's well argued and fact-based, and I'm more than willing to admit when I get it wrong. But the style and tone of these posts demonstrate that it doesn't matter to this person whether I'm right or wrong. If it did, they would be addressing the arguments I actually made.
What mattered to them is that I was spouting heresy - and worse I'm an apostate - and I must be punished. In my experience - both online and off - warning shots like these, if not heeded, proceed to presistant campaigns of character assassination and calls for ostracism.
The age of the film this meme references makes it clear there's always been people like this in activist politics. They've always been part of the Green Party of Aotearoa, and that's fine, they need representation too. The problem is they've been allowed to make rules for the whole Green party, and until recently, control its political strategy too.
The narrowed political vision resulting from these ideological blinders can be seen in things like staging a leadership coup against James Shaw, but missing the step of coming up with even a single candidate to run off against him. Let alone one capable of doing the job.
Or the other co-leader at the time, Marama Davidson, issuing a delirious hot take on camera, blaming people of a particular gender and ethnicity for all the country's violence. Practically rolling out the red carpet for political opponents, who quickly started handwaving at statistics produced under her own ministerial portfolio, which painted a very different picture.
Now you can point out that she was ambushed by camera-wielding Useful Idiots, after having been run down with a motor vehicle by others, and that's true. Obviously I condemn those actions. But a competent political strategy team could have planned to avoid this.
This happened after Davidson participated in an aggressive counter-protest, against a professional concern troll whose gigs are well known to attract actual fascists. For a start, competent strategists would have anticipated that this could result in counter-escalation, and damaging media coverage.
Really competent strategists would have convinced Davidson not to be there. For the same reasons Jeanette Fitzsimons, Rod Donald and Russell Norman weren't at the National Front's flag-waving stunts at the Cenotaph during their co-leadership, despite supporting the counter-protests against them. Maybe I'm being unfair to the Green strategists. Maybe they tried and Davidson wouldn't be convinced. That would point to a huge failure of leadership and good sense on her part, and more evidence of the party pushing people into jobs before they're ready to do them well.
But even in those circumstances, competent strategists could have protected the party - and Davidson herself - from the worst potential consequences of that decision. By making sure there was a team around her at all times running interference, and having transport ready to get her offsite as soon as things got heated, so there wouldn't be a chance for riled up reactionaries to aim a motorbike or a camera at her.
Coming back to Golriz Ghahraman, perhaps I'm wrong that she would been just as effective - and much happier - as an extra-Parliamentary activist than as an MP. Or perhaps I'm right.
But even if I am wrong on that, competent strategists would have convinced her to stand down. Well before she started coping with her stress by stealing designer handbags, bringing herself and the party into disrepute. For her sake, as much as anyone else's.
Besides, those focusing on a perceived personal attack on Ghahraman are missing the forest for the trees. If it was just Ghahraman, or just Kerekere, or just Tana, it would be fair to dismiss it as an abberation. Like we did when Ian Ewen-Street decamped to National after two terms as a Green MP. Because it was an isolated incident in an otherwise unified caucus.
But what we have here is a trend, and anyone with eyes to see can tell it's getting worse. I've offered one theory that might explain at least some of it. I've yet to see anyone offer a more convincing theory. That in itself, and the bad faith argumentation offered instead, are all data points worth considering.
Even as they were gold-plating an ideologically narrowed "diversity" and holding it up as a sacred cow, the Greens have in many ways become less socially and politically diverse. In the 1990s, although their pet policies didn't necessarily make it into the party platform, the Greens included a wide range of activists who have since been pushed out, or simply walked away in frustration.
Alternative economics people who advocate for community currency projects, who I've heard high-ranking Greens sneeringly dismiss as "funny money" people. People who oppose 1080 or water fluoridation. People who are passionate about holistic health, and sceptical of vaccines. Whatever your opinion on these issues, some of these people helped to build the party from the ground up, in good faith.
Then there's people who champion freedom of expression and internet freedoms, who were alienated by the majority of Green MPs voting for the Harmful Digital Censorship Act (hat tip to the three who crossed the floor to vote against it, including Gareth Hughes, who championed the crowdsourced Internet Rights and Freedoms Bill). Just as they would have been if Greens had voted for the TICS and GCSB Acts that turned the GCSB into a proto-Stasi.
During my time in the Pirate Party I met a lot of young libertarians who leaned rightward economically, but told me they voted Greens because of their principled positions in defence of privacy, media freedoms, copyright minimalism, transparent government, democratic participation, and so on. I doubt they still voted Green in 2023.
As the old saying goes, the left looks for traitors, the right looks for recruits. The Greens' loss has been the right's gain, aside from those who left for other left-wing parties like Mana, and more recently the rejuvenated Te Pāti Māori. A lot of those alienated people decamped to the Outdoors Party, Internet Party, TOP, ACT, and pre-COVID Winston First. Others to Billy Te Kahika's Public Party and a plethora of other tiny post-COVID paranoia parties, and to post-COVID Winston First.
The inevitable counter-argument is that these people were always right-wingers or bigots, or both, and the Greens are better off without them. But I've known and worked closely with a lot of these people, and in the vast majority of cases it simply isn't true. This elitist attitude is a combination of sour grapes, and exactly the kind of essentialism that's rightly rejected when it's applied to people from minorities who commit crimes. Greens ought to know, better than any other political movement, that we are all shaped by our environment, in political development as much as biological.
The failure of the Greens to keep holding space for contradictory views, and working towards consensus, is a sad failure to enact another of their key principles; appropriate decision-making. One practical consequence is that it has lost them members, allies and voters. Existing and potential.
For a single-issue activist network, where keeping the focus on a specific set of shared beliefs and goals can be more important than the size of the support base, this is nothing to worry about. For an electoral party that can't just spend money to reach potential voters, depending instead on boots on the ground is any many neighbourhoods and interest groups as possible, it's an existential threat that needs to be taken seriously.
This is not a counsel of depair. For anyone in the Greens who is ready to acknowledge that there's a problem and do something about it, I have three suggestions.
Those who remember the 1980s Labour government know that political parties - even those born of grassroots social movements - can become professionalised and lose touch with their activist base. That when that happens, they become vulnerable to being hijacked by their political opponents.
One of the key tactics of these hijackers is to push a strict party line and characterise dissent as disloyalty. In a truly democratic party, open dissent is to be encouraged - even when its wrong-headed - not shouted down. Disagreed with, definitely, argued with, sure. But with the dignity and respect and commitment to intellectual honesty that were once the universal hallmarks of the Greens' approach to politics.
So I'm not proposing you cancel the cancellers, shout them down, or marginalise them. That would be a continuation of the problem, not a solution. Just that you need to stop walling off their opinions and tactics from internal criticism.
Party members or allies who have reservations about identity mandates, or anything else, deserve to be heard. Without being condemned, shamed, or smeared. Even if their thinking is being warped by subconscious bias. Even if they've got it totally wrong, having people listen to understand, is the first step to helping them get it right.
Allow members to serve as many 6 year terms as they like, for as long as they have the support of the party membership to do so. But ensure they take a least a 3 year break between them.
This in itself would allow for more diversity of Green representatives. It would increase the pool of Greens with Parliamentary experience, who could serve as mentors to first-time MPs, or as support people for MPs who are struggling. But more importantly, it would mitigate the accumulation of stress that leads to compulsive shoplifting, or bullying of other party members, or standing over people in Parliament.
Without those, there's no reason to parachute people like Darleen Tana into the party list, often with little or no history with the party, just to make sure you can meet quota. For every highly capable MP like Chlöe Swarbrick, or Teanau Tuiono, or Efeso Collins, or Lan Pham, you risk a Tana or an Elizabeth Kerekere.
Sure you need bunch of other policies and structures to make sure a diverse range of people are recruited into the party, and given training and opportunities for advancement. So the candidate pool is inclusive enough to produce a diverse party list organically. With regular reviews to see how well it's working and improve it as necessary.
But from what I've observed, the Greens were always good at that stuff. So even if my suspicion is wrong and the mandates cause no problems whatsoever, I still don't think they're necessary.
In the first decade of this century, there was a thriving anarchist movement in Aotearoa that had been growing since the 1980s. With affinity groups and practical projects all around the country, supporting a dizzying range of activist campaigns and infrastructure projects. From local infoshops, social centres, community gardens, and food rescue teams, to country-wide print zines, and news gathering and online publishing projects.
So what happened? The same things I've seen happening in the Greens over the last decade or so, taken to truly disturbing extremes.
Rumour-mongering and manipulation replacing honest and open critcism, and robust but respectful debate. Oppressive hierarchies being reversed instead of abolished. People being censured and banished without due process, including for breaking rules about things you can't say (out loud).
In any political movement built on the passion of volunteers, rather than the spending of astroturf funding, this stuff is cancer. People become confused, and distrustful, and afraid, and then exhausted, and alienated. Sooner or later either they too get purged, or they just shrug their shoulders and walk away.
Having been active in the movement for over a decade by that point, helping to start a bunch of those infrastructure projects, including Aotearoa Indymedia, I was hard to purge. Wisely or not, I was too stubborn to give up easily. I spoke out, in face-to-face conversations, in meetings and in writing, about exactly what I was seeing, and why I was concerned about it. But most people were too afraid of drawing fire, and it was too little, too late.
I was misquoted, bullied, and ostracised (selectively, they still wanted to benefit from my technical skills and infrastructure maintenance). I was misrepresented as speaking up for oppression, bigotry, bullying and violence. The very things I was trying to expose and help fix.
Eventually the social environment became too toxic. I cut my losses, resigned from my roles in any groups or projects the cancer had spread to, and moved on. Hanging my shingle at disintermedia.net.nz, and working with organisations like Permaculture in NZ and NORML NZ. Co-founding CreativeCommons Aotearoa/NZ (now TohaToha), which led to my association with NZ Open Source Society, and supporting the Loomio Cooperative in their early days.
I think Peak Absurdity was reached not long after, when a handful of leftist identitarians turned up to protest against an activist-organised Climate Camp, complete with megaphone and comically huge banner. Why? Because a person once accused of abuse - under very questionable circumstances I might add - had been allowed to help the project, in a purely off-site technical capacity. As Karl Marx famously quipped; history repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce.
These days, you have to look hard to find the remains of that once-thriving anarchist movement. The Aotearoa Indymedia website, once a clearinghouse of activist news from a wide range of citizen journalists and activists groups around the country, is gone from the web. After years as a zombie project, the features column a private blog for a narrow group of activists, the open publishing newswire choked with unmoderated spam and tofu.
Why am I publishing this? Because I'd hate to see the Greens go the same way.
One advantage of having been cancelled already is that I've lost the fear of it that makes people censor themselves. Someone has to be the unsophisticated child who says out loud that the Emperor wears no clothes. Since I'm a longtime ally of the Greens, not a members, and not subject to their internal "accountability", it might as well be me.
"... violence often refracts within and around a political movement that endorses it".
- Timothy Snyder, Professor of History
Perhaps the saddest example in radical history of this self-consuming dynamic was the decline of the Situationist International. A network of highly creative post-Marxist groups, whose members played key roles in political uprisings all around the world in 1968. The most famous being in Paris, home of SI guru Guy Debord.
After this peak, the SI starting purging members and whole groups, one by one, until there was only Debord and one other member left. Debord purged him too, of course. Eventually, in a final reductio ad absurdum, he purged himself, by ending his life.
Debord's writings are full of insights that remain relevant to anyone wanting to leave the world better than we found it, maybe even more relevant than they were in his time. But his final act offers a tragic illustration of the old anarchist principle that rather than our actions being justified by the beneficial outcomes we're trying to achieve with them, the outcomes we get are unavoidably determined by the kinds of actions we take. As well as Snyder's insight that the treatment we aim at our political opponents, inevitably reflect back on our own.
Prologue: Who am I and why do I care enough to write this, carefully edit it over weeks, and then make it public? Not a Green member, but a Green ally.
Part 1: My "identity politics" problem; How could a socially liberal anarchist have a problem with identity politics?
Part 2: All Greens are equal, but some Greens are more equal than others? What happens when paying your dues becomes secondary to being born with the right identity markers?
Part 3: Is the universal compassion and egalitarianism that underlies green values and policy at risk? Do identity mandates make parties more vulnerable to entryism?
Part 4: How many one-off incidents can you fit in a trend line? Everything that goes wrong in public is the tip of an iceberg, and there's been a bunch of things of late.
Part 5: Diversity and inclusion for who? Has enforcing a narrow framing of "diversity" reduced the capacity of the Greens to hold space for other forms of diversity?
Part 6: Radical solutions to address root problems; dissent is collective error-checking, limited terms are good for MPs, diversity can be cultivated organically.
Epilogue: Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. What can happen to movements that keep going the way the Greens seem to be headed?
Coda: Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Or what goes around, comes around.
Prologue: Who am I and why do I care enough to write this, carefully edit it over weeks, and then make it public?
In one of the pinned posts on my fediverse account, I describe myself as a greenie and human rights activist, with loud opinions about media and technology policy. With an overall political bent that could be described as left-libertarian or anarchist (of a vaguely Chomskian/ Graeberian variety).
Drawing on both revolutionary theory and my own readings of history, as well as my observations over three decades of political activity, it's clear to me that electoral politics is limited in its ability to address the problems created by capitalism. But it's equally clear to me that where a pluralistic electoral system exists, elected representatives can do measurable good within those limits, and that refusing all participation allows it to become an uncontested tool for capitalists and other authoritarians. Which seems best avoided.
So while electoral politics has never been the central focus of my own activism, I have become a member of a number of small parties to help them get the numbers to register a party list. As an act of solidarity with friends and allies involved. The most involved I've ever been in electoral parties was a one-off candidacy for the Cannabis Party - running against United Future MP Peter Dunne in Ohariu in 2008 - and my brief stint as the elected Communications Officer for the Pirate Party of NZ, short-lived as it was. During which my main achievement was to convince the rest of the board, and then the membership, that decisions about the party could be made through online participation by its members.
I've never been a member of the Green Party of Aotearoa (and quite likely I'd be rejected if I applied). But a lot of people I consider friends and political allies have been members, even officials and MPs, or still are. I still consider the party an important political ally of the environmental movement and the progressive left. If they believe what they say about taxing wealth, to rebuild our rotting infrastructure in ways that are both sustainable and futureproof, and to restore universal public services - and I believe they do - I want to help them succeed.
So this not a public airing of internal disagreements, nor am I rubbing my hands with glee as the Greens struggle from one crisis to another. Quite the opposite. I'm aware that as an outside ally I can openly publish what concerned party members may only be able to whisper in private. So my intention here is to offer an outside perspective, in the hopes that it can help - in some small way - to right the ship.
Part 1: My "identity politics" problem
As befits any rational humanist who advocates for human rights, I'm very socially liberal. Annoyingly so, as my oldest friends would no doubt confirm.
Since my early teens, I've spoken up both privately and publicly for the equal rights of women, Māori, immigrants of colour and their descendants, homosexuals, gender non-conformists, people with disabilities (whether physical, intellectual or cognitive), non-human animals, and the ecosystems we're all embedded in. Pretty much anyone that conformist mainstream culture has tried to treat as an inferior, with less rights, just because they differ from the mythical "average New Zealander". Despite what I say here - in fact because of it - I intend to keep doing this for as long as I draw breath.
So while I am, technically speaking, a heterosexual Pākeha, and a man born a man, I'm not a right-wing nut job, who thinks that anyone who doesn't have my in-born privileges should know their place. Convenient as that accusation may be when I'm openly critical of the strategy and tactics of "identity politics", for similar reasons to the ones Frances Lee explains beautifully in a series of pieces they wrote in 2017.
This paradox seems to annoy some people.
But quite frankly, that's their problem. Being annoyed is a pretty minor downstream effect compared to being publicly shamed, or viciously smeared, or losing your livelihood, or having CSAM injected into your server in an attempt to get you put in jail. I think it's high time to stop rationalising this kind of behaviour and start talking about the rampaging elephant in the room.
So what does any of this have to do with the Greens?
Part 2: All Greens are equal, but some Greens are more equal than others
Over the past decade or so, I watched with growing concern as the public communications and internal rules of the Greens began to change in ways that were clearly alienating people. Including some of their most enthusiastic early supporters and members, some them since the proto-Greens party known as Values. As time went on, newcomers to the party were increasingly being pushed into high level positions, including on the party list. Often at the expense of long-serving party members, whose ability to do the job as well - if not better - was never in question.
Why? Perhaps because of things like rule changes guaranteeing spots on the party list to people with certain identity markers (see section 8.2 of the 2022 Candidate Selection and List Ranking Procedure). Rather than being corrected against, oppressive hierarchies based on in-born identity, such as gender, ethnicity, or sexuality, were being enforced in reverse. Other values, such as long term commitment to the green movement and the party, diplomacy and persuasion skills, and the ability to keep a cool head under fire, seemed to become secondary to the otherwise laudable goal of diversifying representation.
This doublethink version of "identity politics" - popular with corporate managers, neoliberal bureaucrats and reputation launderers - has become a sacred cow within the party. So much so that careerists and bullies regularly use it to shield themselves - and the party - from legitimate criticism.
Part 3: Is the universal compassion and egalitarianism that underlies green values and policy at risk?
Solving problems begins with identifying them. To this end, I recently posted on the fediverse about my theory that those identity marker mandates in the candidate selection rules - and the discourse surrounding them - could be the vulnerability that allowed someone like Darleen Tana to become a Green MP. Despite being a person co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick later described as "completely at odds with our party’s values, policies and kaupapa", and having no experience as a Green candidate before the 2020 election.
What I said was;
"I support political parties having robust processes to ensure their people are not being blocked because of identity markers (gender, ethnicity, sexuality etc), from promotions they deserve. That demonstrates a genuine commitment to social justice.
But when ticking identity boxes become a primary criteria for candidate selection, that's how you end up with debacles like Elizabeth Kerekere, Golriz Ghahraman, and now Darleen Tana."
Read in context, these are shorthand references to the political scandals surrounding these MPs, not personal attacks on them. The Kerekere affair was certainly a failure of caucus unity and membership solidarity, whoever was at fault, but I still don't know what to make of her ousting. While it's hard to have much sympathy for Tana, or her husband, I'm definitely sympathetic to MPs like Ghahraman, and Julie Anne Genter, who are clearly buckling under intense workplace stress. As I most certainly would in their place, and much quicker too.
Many of the replies to this post were thoughtful and open-minded. But inevitably some of them resorted to strawman arguments, based on the smear that I feel threatened by seeing positions of power and influence held by women, or brown people, or homosexuals. I couldn't have asked for a better demonstration of the miasma of nonsense that allows a Darleen Tana to avoid critical scrutiny for long enough to become a Green MP.
Here's a summary of my exchange with the chip on one person's shoulder;
1) I post a structural criticism (see above)
2) The reaction is a deflection and a thinly-veiled personal attack implying I'm a "RWNJ" (Right Wing Nut Job)
3) I respond in good faith, attempting to bring the thread back to the point of the original post
4) The reaction puts words in my mouth, misrepresenting my structural criticism as a personal attack on Golriz Ghahraman ...
> "DEI hire"
... and then doubles down on the hyperbolic ad-hominem;
> I think you're pushing a barrow for misogyny and racism
I can just imagine them thinking as they posted this; 'He'll never see this razor sharp critique coming!'. Or to put it another way...
Nnnnnnobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Cardinal Fang... bring out... the Comfy Chair!
I welcome disagreement, if it's well argued and fact-based, and I'm more than willing to admit when I get it wrong. But the style and tone of these posts demonstrate that it doesn't matter to this person whether I'm right or wrong. If it did, they would be addressing the arguments I actually made.
What mattered to them is that I was spouting heresy - and worse I'm an apostate - and I must be punished. In my experience - both online and off - warning shots like these, if not heeded, proceed to presistant campaigns of character assassination and calls for ostracism.
The age of the film this meme references makes it clear there's always been people like this in activist politics. They've always been part of the Green Party of Aotearoa, and that's fine, they need representation too. The problem is they've been allowed to make rules for the whole Green party, and until recently, control its political strategy too.
Part 4: How many one-off incidents can you fit in a trend line?
The narrowed political vision resulting from these ideological blinders can be seen in things like staging a leadership coup against James Shaw, but missing the step of coming up with even a single candidate to run off against him. Let alone one capable of doing the job.
Or the other co-leader at the time, Marama Davidson, issuing a delirious hot take on camera, blaming people of a particular gender and ethnicity for all the country's violence. Practically rolling out the red carpet for political opponents, who quickly started handwaving at statistics produced under her own ministerial portfolio, which painted a very different picture.
Now you can point out that she was ambushed by camera-wielding Useful Idiots, after having been run down with a motor vehicle by others, and that's true. Obviously I condemn those actions. But a competent political strategy team could have planned to avoid this.
This happened after Davidson participated in an aggressive counter-protest, against a professional concern troll whose gigs are well known to attract actual fascists. For a start, competent strategists would have anticipated that this could result in counter-escalation, and damaging media coverage.
Really competent strategists would have convinced Davidson not to be there. For the same reasons Jeanette Fitzsimons, Rod Donald and Russell Norman weren't at the National Front's flag-waving stunts at the Cenotaph during their co-leadership, despite supporting the counter-protests against them. Maybe I'm being unfair to the Green strategists. Maybe they tried and Davidson wouldn't be convinced. That would point to a huge failure of leadership and good sense on her part, and more evidence of the party pushing people into jobs before they're ready to do them well.
But even in those circumstances, competent strategists could have protected the party - and Davidson herself - from the worst potential consequences of that decision. By making sure there was a team around her at all times running interference, and having transport ready to get her offsite as soon as things got heated, so there wouldn't be a chance for riled up reactionaries to aim a motorbike or a camera at her.
Coming back to Golriz Ghahraman, perhaps I'm wrong that she would been just as effective - and much happier - as an extra-Parliamentary activist than as an MP. Or perhaps I'm right.
But even if I am wrong on that, competent strategists would have convinced her to stand down. Well before she started coping with her stress by stealing designer handbags, bringing herself and the party into disrepute. For her sake, as much as anyone else's.
Besides, those focusing on a perceived personal attack on Ghahraman are missing the forest for the trees. If it was just Ghahraman, or just Kerekere, or just Tana, it would be fair to dismiss it as an abberation. Like we did when Ian Ewen-Street decamped to National after two terms as a Green MP. Because it was an isolated incident in an otherwise unified caucus.
But what we have here is a trend, and anyone with eyes to see can tell it's getting worse. I've offered one theory that might explain at least some of it. I've yet to see anyone offer a more convincing theory. That in itself, and the bad faith argumentation offered instead, are all data points worth considering.
Part 5: Diversity and inclusion for who?
Even as they were gold-plating an ideologically narrowed "diversity" and holding it up as a sacred cow, the Greens have in many ways become less socially and politically diverse. In the 1990s, although their pet policies didn't necessarily make it into the party platform, the Greens included a wide range of activists who have since been pushed out, or simply walked away in frustration.
Alternative economics people who advocate for community currency projects, who I've heard high-ranking Greens sneeringly dismiss as "funny money" people. People who oppose 1080 or water fluoridation. People who are passionate about holistic health, and sceptical of vaccines. Whatever your opinion on these issues, some of these people helped to build the party from the ground up, in good faith.
Then there's people who champion freedom of expression and internet freedoms, who were alienated by the majority of Green MPs voting for the Harmful Digital Censorship Act (hat tip to the three who crossed the floor to vote against it, including Gareth Hughes, who championed the crowdsourced Internet Rights and Freedoms Bill). Just as they would have been if Greens had voted for the TICS and GCSB Acts that turned the GCSB into a proto-Stasi.
During my time in the Pirate Party I met a lot of young libertarians who leaned rightward economically, but told me they voted Greens because of their principled positions in defence of privacy, media freedoms, copyright minimalism, transparent government, democratic participation, and so on. I doubt they still voted Green in 2023.
As the old saying goes, the left looks for traitors, the right looks for recruits. The Greens' loss has been the right's gain, aside from those who left for other left-wing parties like Mana, and more recently the rejuvenated Te Pāti Māori. A lot of those alienated people decamped to the Outdoors Party, Internet Party, TOP, ACT, and pre-COVID Winston First. Others to Billy Te Kahika's Public Party and a plethora of other tiny post-COVID paranoia parties, and to post-COVID Winston First.
The inevitable counter-argument is that these people were always right-wingers or bigots, or both, and the Greens are better off without them. But I've known and worked closely with a lot of these people, and in the vast majority of cases it simply isn't true. This elitist attitude is a combination of sour grapes, and exactly the kind of essentialism that's rightly rejected when it's applied to people from minorities who commit crimes. Greens ought to know, better than any other political movement, that we are all shaped by our environment, in political development as much as biological.
The failure of the Greens to keep holding space for contradictory views, and working towards consensus, is a sad failure to enact another of their key principles; appropriate decision-making. One practical consequence is that it has lost them members, allies and voters. Existing and potential.
For a single-issue activist network, where keeping the focus on a specific set of shared beliefs and goals can be more important than the size of the support base, this is nothing to worry about. For an electoral party that can't just spend money to reach potential voters, depending instead on boots on the ground is any many neighbourhoods and interest groups as possible, it's an existential threat that needs to be taken seriously.
Part 6: Radical solutions to address root problems
This is not a counsel of depair. For anyone in the Greens who is ready to acknowledge that there's a problem and do something about it, I have three suggestions.
First and most importantly, stop letting the People's Front of Judea run the party.
Those who remember the 1980s Labour government know that political parties - even those born of grassroots social movements - can become professionalised and lose touch with their activist base. That when that happens, they become vulnerable to being hijacked by their political opponents.
One of the key tactics of these hijackers is to push a strict party line and characterise dissent as disloyalty. In a truly democratic party, open dissent is to be encouraged - even when its wrong-headed - not shouted down. Disagreed with, definitely, argued with, sure. But with the dignity and respect and commitment to intellectual honesty that were once the universal hallmarks of the Greens' approach to politics.
So I'm not proposing you cancel the cancellers, shout them down, or marginalise them. That would be a continuation of the problem, not a solution. Just that you need to stop walling off their opinions and tactics from internal criticism.
Party members or allies who have reservations about identity mandates, or anything else, deserve to be heard. Without being condemned, shamed, or smeared. Even if their thinking is being warped by subconscious bias. Even if they've got it totally wrong, having people listen to understand, is the first step to helping them get it right.
Secondly, set a maximum term limit for Green MPs of 6 years.
Allow members to serve as many 6 year terms as they like, for as long as they have the support of the party membership to do so. But ensure they take a least a 3 year break between them.
This in itself would allow for more diversity of Green representatives. It would increase the pool of Greens with Parliamentary experience, who could serve as mentors to first-time MPs, or as support people for MPs who are struggling. But more importantly, it would mitigate the accumulation of stress that leads to compulsive shoplifting, or bullying of other party members, or standing over people in Parliament.
Thirdly, get rid of any and all identity mandates.
Without those, there's no reason to parachute people like Darleen Tana into the party list, often with little or no history with the party, just to make sure you can meet quota. For every highly capable MP like Chlöe Swarbrick, or Teanau Tuiono, or Efeso Collins, or Lan Pham, you risk a Tana or an Elizabeth Kerekere.
Sure you need bunch of other policies and structures to make sure a diverse range of people are recruited into the party, and given training and opportunities for advancement. So the candidate pool is inclusive enough to produce a diverse party list organically. With regular reviews to see how well it's working and improve it as necessary.
But from what I've observed, the Greens were always good at that stuff. So even if my suspicion is wrong and the mandates cause no problems whatsoever, I still don't think they're necessary.
Epilogue: Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away
In the first decade of this century, there was a thriving anarchist movement in Aotearoa that had been growing since the 1980s. With affinity groups and practical projects all around the country, supporting a dizzying range of activist campaigns and infrastructure projects. From local infoshops, social centres, community gardens, and food rescue teams, to country-wide print zines, and news gathering and online publishing projects.
So what happened? The same things I've seen happening in the Greens over the last decade or so, taken to truly disturbing extremes.
Rumour-mongering and manipulation replacing honest and open critcism, and robust but respectful debate. Oppressive hierarchies being reversed instead of abolished. People being censured and banished without due process, including for breaking rules about things you can't say (out loud).
In any political movement built on the passion of volunteers, rather than the spending of astroturf funding, this stuff is cancer. People become confused, and distrustful, and afraid, and then exhausted, and alienated. Sooner or later either they too get purged, or they just shrug their shoulders and walk away.
Having been active in the movement for over a decade by that point, helping to start a bunch of those infrastructure projects, including Aotearoa Indymedia, I was hard to purge. Wisely or not, I was too stubborn to give up easily. I spoke out, in face-to-face conversations, in meetings and in writing, about exactly what I was seeing, and why I was concerned about it. But most people were too afraid of drawing fire, and it was too little, too late.
I was misquoted, bullied, and ostracised (selectively, they still wanted to benefit from my technical skills and infrastructure maintenance). I was misrepresented as speaking up for oppression, bigotry, bullying and violence. The very things I was trying to expose and help fix.
Eventually the social environment became too toxic. I cut my losses, resigned from my roles in any groups or projects the cancer had spread to, and moved on. Hanging my shingle at disintermedia.net.nz, and working with organisations like Permaculture in NZ and NORML NZ. Co-founding CreativeCommons Aotearoa/NZ (now TohaToha), which led to my association with NZ Open Source Society, and supporting the Loomio Cooperative in their early days.
I think Peak Absurdity was reached not long after, when a handful of leftist identitarians turned up to protest against an activist-organised Climate Camp, complete with megaphone and comically huge banner. Why? Because a person once accused of abuse - under very questionable circumstances I might add - had been allowed to help the project, in a purely off-site technical capacity. As Karl Marx famously quipped; history repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce.
These days, you have to look hard to find the remains of that once-thriving anarchist movement. The Aotearoa Indymedia website, once a clearinghouse of activist news from a wide range of citizen journalists and activists groups around the country, is gone from the web. After years as a zombie project, the features column a private blog for a narrow group of activists, the open publishing newswire choked with unmoderated spam and tofu.
Why am I publishing this? Because I'd hate to see the Greens go the same way.
One advantage of having been cancelled already is that I've lost the fear of it that makes people censor themselves. Someone has to be the unsophisticated child who says out loud that the Emperor wears no clothes. Since I'm a longtime ally of the Greens, not a members, and not subject to their internal "accountability", it might as well be me.
Coda: Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering
"... violence often refracts within and around a political movement that endorses it".
- Timothy Snyder, Professor of History
Perhaps the saddest example in radical history of this self-consuming dynamic was the decline of the Situationist International. A network of highly creative post-Marxist groups, whose members played key roles in political uprisings all around the world in 1968. The most famous being in Paris, home of SI guru Guy Debord.
After this peak, the SI starting purging members and whole groups, one by one, until there was only Debord and one other member left. Debord purged him too, of course. Eventually, in a final reductio ad absurdum, he purged himself, by ending his life.
Debord's writings are full of insights that remain relevant to anyone wanting to leave the world better than we found it, maybe even more relevant than they were in his time. But his final act offers a tragic illustration of the old anarchist principle that rather than our actions being justified by the beneficial outcomes we're trying to achieve with them, the outcomes we get are unavoidably determined by the kinds of actions we take. As well as Snyder's insight that the treatment we aim at our political opponents, inevitably reflect back on our own.
