Who Are The Conspiracy Theorists In Your Neighbourhood? #1: Forbidden History by John Dudley Aldworth - Part 1

Nice bit of eroded ignimbrite on the cover - sorry, I meant weathered statue of ancient Phoenician provenance

The starting point for this post was the following premise: given that every community will have members who adhere to some form of conspiracist belief (referring here to the more extreme/outre end of the conspiracy belief spectrum), there will be a least a few of these who are active local proselytisers of conspiracy theories through forms such as letters to the editor, posters, pamphlets, websites, and books.  Such a premise can certainly be validated in relation to the past and present activities of several locals in the small provincial city of Hamilton, New Zealand where I reside. This discussion will look at one of the most recent and egregious examples of community conspiracism in Hamilton: the 2016 tome Forbidden History, written by ex-Waikato Times journalist and Christian commentator John Dudley Aldworth. As is pretty typical, what I envisaged as a relatively concise single post ended up as a 5 page essay,  so for the purposes of online readability I’ve split it into two parts (twice the value eh?)

NZ Pseudo-History

As the title implies, Forbidden History is one of the latest contributions to New Zealand’s leading indigenous conspiracy subculture of ‘New Zealand pseudo-history’ (this appellation courtesy of NZ historian Scott Hamilton, who instigated a seminal discussion on this subculture for the Scoop book review site in 2008).  The claims made by such theorists may be summarised in the form of two key themes. Firstly, that the islands of New Zealand were discovered and, in some cases, settled by diverse peoples long before the Polynesian migrants who become the Maori. For the bulk of these theorists, these discoverers were white-skinned peoples from Europe and the Mediterranean. The second theme is that evidence for the veracity of pre-Maori settlement is being covered up by the NZ government, because it poses a challenge to the official history of Maori settlement and British colonisation that is integral to the existing nature of the Maori-Pakeha establishment: in particular, the historical fact that Maori were the tangata whenua or first people of New Zealand, a fact enshrined in NZ’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi. 

A potted cultural history of the subculture is necessary to provide context for a discussion of Aldworth’s book. Stories about pre-Maori discovery or habitation have been staples of NZ folklore for years. For instance, Robyn Jenkins’ popular book New Zealand Mysteries, published in 1973, has a chapter dealing with the purported evidence for such claims, such as the Tamil Bell and the buried wreck at Ruapuke Beach. Jenkins approach to these relics is a common-sense one, treating them as historical curiosities surrounded by layers of romantic confabulation.  The development of such folklore into an ideological tool of far-right Pakeha identity politics appears to be a response to the ‘Maori Renaissance’ that began in the 1990s. After years of activism, the NZ government in that decade initiated a Treaty Settlement program to address iwi grievances relating to historical land confiscations by the British in violation of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. This process of political and economic empowerment was complemented by more socially and culturally assertive forms of Maoridom, such as Te Reo education. Such empowerment challenged Pakeha complacency regarding their dominant status in NZ society, leading to reactionary manifestations of Pakeha identity politics in forms like the NZ pseudo-history subculture.  Martin Doutre’s Early Celtic New Zealand, published in 1998, can be considered the founding document of the subculture in terms of establishing its major tropes, which are: the existence of a utopian ‘white’ civilization in prehistoric NZ; barbaric Maori invaders who eradicated this civilization; archaeological ‘evidence’ for aforesaid civilization; and the conspiratorial suppression of this evidence by the Maori-Pakeha establishment. These core tropes have been reinforced, elaborated and disseminated by numerous pseudo-historians in the subsequent decades, notably self-styled Dargaville ‘archaeologist’ Noel Hilliam, and the editors of regional newspaper the Franklin E-Journal.

If it's self-published, it must be true...

The theories of Hilliam, and other prominent pseudo-historians such as Maxwell King, are restated in the latter chapters of Forbidden History as a complement to Aldworth’s main focus – his elaboration of the established pseudo-historical thesis that NZ was settled in prehistory by two main groups of people, the Patupaiarehe (also known as the Turehu) and the Waitaha.  Both of these groups were descendants of white-skinned Mediterranean peoples, notably the Phoenicians (Patupaiarehe) and the Egyptians (Waitaha). Both of these groups were also highly civilized and peace-loving, before being invaded and literally ‘eaten out of existence’ through cannibalistic genocide practiced by those Polynesian peoples who became the Maori.  As this precis suggests, this thesis reaffirms the core belief at the heart of the NZ pseudo-history subculture: that NZ was originally inhabited by civilized, morally superior white people from Europe, whose legacy was usurped and suppressed by barbaric, morally inferior brown people from Polynesia. It’s not too hard to see that the underlying cultural logic of this belief is one that inverts the historical realities of European colonialism in a way that provides emotional justification for Pakeha racism: white-skinned indigenes, living peacefully in their South Seas island paradise, find themselves colonised by brown aggressors, a process that results in most of the indigenes being killed, their lands forcibly taken, and their culture either appropriated or destroyed by the colonisers. In essence, the NZ pseudo-historians are constructing a mythic narrative in which white Europeans are actually the victims of Maori colonisation and oppression, rather than the other way round. 

Noel Hilliam and some typical evidence for pre-Maori settlement. Guess who didn't pass their 'geomorphology of volcanic rock 101' paper then...?

NZ pseudo-history as ‘weaponised narratives’

What makes Forbidden History a distinctive contribution to the subculture is Aldworth’s wilfully disingenuous approach in trying to present such an indubitably racist belief system as something possessing cultural validity from a Maori perspective. This approach has two main stages. The first stage consists of an introductory chapter entitled ‘A Plea to Maori People’, which is designed as a disclaimer against accusations of racism. This is clearly evident in the opening lines of the chapter: “This book is not against Maori people, nor written to stir up animosity against them ? (sic) That is not its purpose. Granted, some hard to swallow things are said about Maori slaughter of the earlier peoples of New Zealand and of themselves. But no more than Maori people themselves admit is true” (p 13). The fact that Aldworth then goes on to portray Maori as a race of (literally) demonic cannibals (as will be discussed in part 2 of this essay) implies that this disclaimer should be taken as an more elaborate example of the time-honoured Pakeha tradition of “I’m not racist, but…”, where the speaker expresses their respect for Maori before launching into some intensive criticism of Maori society and culture rooted in racist perspectives.

The second stage involves having the bulk of the book consist of the ‘true histories’ of the Patupaiarehe and Waitaha peoples as related by two surviving members of these peoples, Monica Matamua and George Connelly respectively (Matamua’s Patupaiarehe history is spread across chapters 2-12; Connelly’s Waitaha history chapters 14-15). Matamua’s fantastic testimony is ostensibly backed up by the ‘incontrovertible proof’ of DNA testing, that shows that Matamua possesses Mediterranean genes and ergo must be of Middle Eastern/European stock (the historical and biological complexities of human migration and related genetic exchange, that mean that just about all people alive on earth at the moment possess a polycultural DNA mix, is of course not addressed). These spokespeople proclaim themselves to be the repositories of this ‘forbidden’ historical knowledge, which has been passed on secretly for generations while both the remnants of the Patupaiarehe and Waitaha peoples were subsumed within Maoridom: a fate which explains why Matamua and Connelly are considered by the authorities to be Maori when they really aren’t at all. This set-up means that Aldworth can get away with presenting views that would be considered extremely racist if voiced by a Pakeha – ‘Maori were a bunch of cannibalistic savages who were on the verge of destroying themselves before the British arrived and brought salvation in the form of Western civilization’ – because he is presenting such views as deriving from Maori themselves (or, at the very least, a special ‘category’ of Maori). Therefore, if confronted by accusations of racism, Aldworth and his Pakeha milieu can deny responsibility: how can the book be racist if it is merely stating what Maori are saying about Maori? 

This set-up only works if the reader accepts that Matamua and Connelly are truthful, reliable testifiers, who are relating the ‘forbidden histories’ of their peoples in an attempt to draw awareness to past injustices. Outside of those details of these histories that strain credulity to the utmost, such as Matamua’s claims that her Patupaiarehe lineage can be traced back to “ an island in the Persian Gulf, offshore from present day Iran” at the time of the Persian Empire (p. 30), it is evident that the stories of both claimants reflect agendas pertaining to land ownership and the Treaty settlement process. Matamua’s testimony begins with a section in which she outlines how Tuwharetoa stole central North Island land belonging to the the Patupaiarehe, as identified with the iwi of Ngati Hinewai and Ngati Hotu, and sold it to the Crown (pp 22-29); while Connelly’s story includes the claims that the ‘royal bloodline of the Waitaha’ (of which he is (inevitably) one of the last descendants) were killed and oppressed by Ngapuhi in order to steal the ancestral Waitaha homelands on the Kaipara harbour (pp 173-178). The depiction of Tuwharetoa and Ngapuhi as land-stealing villains is taken to another level through both respondents emphasis on the horrific details of how these iwi literally exterminated their Patupaiarehe and Waitaha forebears: Matamua’s testimony, in particular, is replete with lurid details of Tuwharetoa massacres and cannibal feasts. Perhaps putting to use a journalistic penchant for race-baiting sensationalism gleaned from his overseas work experience as sub-editor for UK tabloid The Daily Mail, Aldworth cranks the ‘Maori barbarism’ angle up to the highest level of moral outrage by referring to the massacre of the Patupaiarehe as ‘the great genocide’ of NZ history, a historical crime comparable to the Holocaust (with Godwin’s Law making its inevitable appearance) (Chapters 8 & 9). 

Found this image linked to a blog called 'Treatygate' operated by prominent Pakeha racebaiter John Ansell. Who woulda thunk it?

A critical interpretation of all this testimony is that both Matamua and Connelly are constructing their own conspiratorial pseudo-histories within Maoridom as a means of demonising the more powerful iwi of Tuwharetoa and Ngapuhi, in order to stake moral claims to land ownership for their iwi under the Treaty settlement process. In other words, we have a culturally complex situation in which conspiratorial pseudo-histories are being constructed by iwi as ‘weaponised narratives’ as part of political machinations within Maoridom related to Treaty settlements, and are being picked up on by the likes of Aldworth because they can also serve as ‘weaponised narratives’ for use by racist Pakeha seeking to demean Maori empowerment as linked to the Treaty settlement process. Forbidden History works to the mutual benefit of both groups: Matamua and Connelly get their pseudo-histories (and their political agendas) publicised and validated in the epistemologically authoritative form of a book (written by a member of the Pakeha ‘establishment’, no less), while Aldworth is able to use Matamua and Connelly’s pseudo-histories to present his racist ideology in a more culturally ‘legitimate’ form. 

Part 1 to be continued...in Part 2!