The ‘Conspiratorial turn’ in NZ politics…?
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| Boy band 'The Internet Party' perform 'Moment of Truth', from their album Election 2017 |
The 2014 NZ parliamentary election was swathed in a
conspiratorial haze. Not long out from the election, leading NZ investigative
journalist Nicky Hager published Dirty Politics, a book exposing the
nasty and cynical behind-the-scenes workings of the John Key-led National Party
machine, as operated by figures such as blogger Cameron Slater and Minister
Judith Collins. Hager’s public service to NZers in revealing the moral rot within
the National party, along with its wider implications for NZ democracy, was
rewarded with a police raid on his house (due to his use of hacked e-mails from
the likes of Slater as primary sources), and a historic 47% vote for John Key’s 3rd term National
government. The Dirty Politics furore coalesced with the anti-National
electioneering of the upstart Internet Party. Founded by German-NZ internet
billionaire Kim Dotcom as a challenge to National (and no doubt as a personal
response to National allowing US authorities to stage a ridiculously
over-the-top SWAT raid on Dotcom’s Helensville mansion in 2011 over claims his
net empire was fostering online piracy), the Internet Party staged an
explicitly conspiracist public event at the Auckland Town Hall as part of its
election campaign. The ‘Moment of Truth’ revealed the purportedly ‘true’ nature
and extent of NZs involvement in the international 5 Eyes intelligence network.
The Orwellian spectre of democratic human rights being violated by intensive online
monitoring and gathering of personal data, in the service of an democratically unaccountable
Western intelligence apparatus, was gravely reinforced by whistleblowers like
journalist Glenn Greenwald and former US intelligence operative Edward Snowden
(via video-link from his Russian sanctuary). Dotcom’s chutzpah in taking on the
NZ political establishment in this way was rewarded with an abysmal voter
turnout for the Internet Party, and a historic 47% vote for John Key’s 3rd term National
government.
The prospect that the 2014
election may have led to a ‘conspiratorial turn’ embedding itself in NZ
electoral politics was one that lurked in the shadows of the recently
undertaken (Sept 23) 2017 general election. There were direct parallels with
2014: Nicky Hager released Hit And Run, a new expose into dodgy doings
within the corridors of power, and another high-profile millionaire, investor
Gareth Morgan, formed his own political party – TOP, The Opportunities Party -
with the aim of shaking up the NZ political establishment. However, neither of
these translated into electoral conspiracising. Hit And Run indicted the
NZ military establishment for covering up NZ Defence force involvement in
civilian deaths in Afghanistan, but wasn’t Dirty Politics redux. TOP
presented a resolutely ‘rational’ policy approach to NZ society that precluded
any dramatic appeals to conspiracism (as befitted the public persona of Mr
Dotcom): notwithstanding, this failed to get TOP over the 5% threshold required
to participate in government under the NZ MMP system. Overall, the
conspiratorial ‘dirty politics’ narrative of the 2014 election was replaced in
2017 by a narrative of revival and survival: the revival of the Labour Party
under the leadership of Jacinda Ardern, and the survival of small parties such
as the Greens (in the wake of Green co-leader Metiria Turei’s resignation due
to a scandal over her youthful welfare indiscretions), and NZ First (in
relation to voters switching to more traditional Labour-National axis).
Election
2017: the ‘leak’
Nevertheless, there were still
plenty of dirty politics on display in the 2017 election campaign, in the form
of the National Party’s use of two key weapons in the arsenal of modern
Machiavellianism: the leak and the lie. Both of these stratagems have
significant conspiratorial connotations. ‘Leaking’ refers to the informal and
illegal publicising of information that is normally kept private for specific
political ends. For conspiracy theorists, leaks are generally perceived as good
in that they reveal the inner workings of political and corporate power that
are normally kept hidden from ordinary citizens; this is augmented by the fact
that the person doing the leaking is usually a ‘whistleblower’, someone working
within institutions of power who feels a moral compunction to make the public
aware of what’s really going on. In a realpolitik context, Edward Snowden and
Wikileaks are prime contemporary exemplars of such ‘positive leaking’, in that
their revelations were intended to strengthen democracy by making the public
aware of abuses of power in modern democratic states. ‘Leaks’ have also been
integral to the vast domains of fringe conspiracism, from the likes of
‘disgruntled NASA employee reveals the truth about the Moon landings cover-up’
YouTube videos, to anti-Semitic conspiracist claims that the notorious
‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ was a genuine leaked document from a secret
meeting held by Zionist globalists.
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| I believe Winston is saying here that there are some leaks that can't be resolved by duct tape or incontinence pants... |
However, the leaking of information can just as easily be
used by those in positions of power to sabotage those perceived to be rivals or
threats. In the case of the 2017 election, the ‘leak’ stratagem was used as a
means of besmirching the political reputation of Winston Peters, leader of the
NZ First party. Near the end of August, someone leaked to media outlets a story
that Peters had been overpaid in terms of his NZ government superannuation
entitlement (aka pension), over several years. While a fairly minor scandal on a prima facie
level, the accusation was embedded with layers of connotation that were obviously
intended to damage Peters’ credibility as NZs leading populist politician, and
champion of superannuitant voters. To try and sum up these connotations in
words: “Winston Peters presents himself as the voice of the people, calling out
corruption and favouritism in the NZ government. But these overpayments show
that Peters is feeding at the taxpayers trough just like those other
politicians he criticises. Therefore he is a hypocrite, untrustworthy and
mendacious, and should not be the recipient of your votes”.
Peters response was
first, to enter damage control mode and downplay the nature of the overpayment
problem – something easily done, since the problem appears to have been a
systems error rather than any personal finagling – and, second, to go on the
offensive against those who may have had a political motive for leaking his
personal information. The
prime suspects were, unsurprisingly, officials in the governing National Party.
Not only were they the only ones likely to be able to access private
information collected by a state agency, but they also has good reason to
politically kneecap Peters’ as an election-year rival: NZ First’s support base
being perceived as largely conservative voters, who would likely vote National
if NZ First was no longer a viable political option. In the end, the stratagem
was ineffectual, probably because the ‘crime’ that was leaked was of such a
relatively trivial nature that it was easily addressed (Peters was upfront
about repaying the overpayment) and therefore failed to really tarnish Peters’
credibility and charisma, both of which have been developed and maintained over
many decades.
Election
2017: the ‘lie’
National’s initial assumption that the 2017 election would
be a cakewalk into a fourth term, because of the unpopularity of the opposition
Labour Party under the leadership of Andrew Little, was thwarted at the
eleventh hour by Little’s shock resignation at the start of August in favour of
deputy leader Jacinda Ardern. Despite the tight timeframe before the election,
Ardern’s youthful charisma proved highly appealing to voters, with Labour
rapidly shooting up in opinion polls to re-emerge as a genuine contender for
the next government. However, Ardern’s
last-minute rise up the ranks also carried risk, in the sense that the
electorate could perceive her (and the particular version of the Labour Party
she represented) as politically inexperienced and therefore not ready to govern
the country.
This situation impelled the
National Party to whip out what might possibly be the oldest technique in the
politics handbook: telling lies in order to damage the credibility of the
opposition. Lying – in its many different shades and forms – is absolutely
fundamental to both conspiratorial and mainstream views of politics. For
conspiracy theorists, politics is not so much about ‘governing a social system
on behalf of the collective interests of the populace’, as ‘official systems of
untruth designed to uphold the power interests of specific groups within a
population’. In other words, politics, by its very nature, is the art of lying
in order to create, gain and preserve political power. By comparison, the
ostensible majority of the populace who share a more mainstream view of politics
appear to adhere to the more cynical/realist viewpoint that lying is endemic to
the operations of modern democracies. While democracies are based upon noble
ideals (e.g. transparency and accountability), attempts to implement these
ideals in practice usually end up compromised by the messy forces of base
reality – two of these forces being human psychology and the capitalist drive
for profit (this perspective manifests as a collective ‘folk wisdom’ or truism
in most democratic societies, as reflected in the kind of populist opinion
polling that periodically rates the trustworthiness of politicians as on a par
with bastions of probity such as used car salespeople and drug dealers).
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| Nice infographic on the subject from the StopFake website. Read ahead, and then pick which category you think National's 'fiscal hole' strategy belongs to... |
Despite their differences, both the conspiratorial and
mainstream positions on the role of lying in politics outlined here outlined
here recognise a variety of types and approaches of political lying. The two
over-riding categories are misinformation (information that contains some
truth, surrounded by a swathe of distortion in order to confuse opponents about
how truthful and reliable it is) and disinformation (information that is almost
totally made up as a means of confusing and stymying opponents). The negative
political machinations of most politicians and political parties tend to
revolve around misinformation, coupled with avoidance techniques like ‘passing
the buck’ and ‘denial’, as outright disinformation can be seen to be
politically dangerous in that, if it fails, the lie involved is exposed in a
direct fashion that makes the ethical and moral failings of the liars clearly
evident.
The remarkable nature of the National Party’s use of lies
in the 2017 election was that they went for outright disinformation in the form
of a ‘big lie’. This was the claim that the Labour Party’s budget plan for the
policies they would implement in government was majorly flawed, and that there
was a massive shortfall between Labour’s promises and the actual monies
available in the government’s coffers – what National’s electoral crew like
Steven Joyce popularised in soundbite terms as a ‘fiscal hole’. Despite being
almost immediately discredited by economists and other pundits who bothered to
actually check Labour’s numbers, the National Party undertook a corollary of
the ‘big lie’ approach: persistent
reinforcement of the lie in the hope that repetition would eventually grant it
some legitimacy with the public. Although the lie may have been clearly debunked,
the straight-faced repetition of it by Prime Minister Bill English and finance
minister Joyce, alongside more legitimate attacks on the nature of Labour’s
taxation plans (such as a possible water tax on farmers), appeared to succeed
in reinforcing National’s message – that the Labour Party was indeed dangerously inexperienced in the realities of economic management – to a
substantial number of voters. Jacinda Ardern and Labour’s popularity plummeted
by several points in the week or so building up to the election, in which
National achieved the remarkable result of around 44% of the vote (adjusted for
special votes received after election day polling), Labour trailing well back
on 37% (figures rounded).
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| 2 National Party ministers can't be wrong... |
However, this result proved to
be a Pyrrhic victory for National, as, after several weeks of post-election
talks, the NZ First party – which held the balance of power in terms of forming
a coalition to govern the country – opted to throw its hand in with Labour (and
the Greens in a supporting role outside of coalition), providing the NZ left with a
historic and unexpected outcome. In a
touch of poetic justice, commentators speculated that one of the factors influencing NZ First’s decision was Winston Peters’ ire over the superannuation
story ‘leak' - an event that has marked one of his first major political actions as a member of the new government.
