Best of Anzac day 2016

I have been meaning to write here for some time, but for various reasons it just hasn't happened. Top of my list is to write about the year 1916 - the year of the first Anzac day commemoration, and also the year conscription was introduced. It's a dark and shameful year in New Zealand's history, in which the rhetoric of sacrifice is the driving force behind the move to introduce compulsory military service. Was the first Anzac day commemoration a significant part of this lead up to the introduction of conscription? How did people opposed to New Zealand's involvement in the imperialist slaughter deal with the emotionally charged atmosphere of the time? Hopefully I will have the time soon to do justice to these questions.

In lieu of anything original, here are my Anzac picks of 2016:

The best and most prominent act of counter propaganda was without doubt the fantastic Archibald Baxter - field punishment - "guerilla installations" dotted around Wellington. What makes this even better is the Stuff article and the accompanying video, unusually positive for this time of year: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/last-post-first-light/79299545/conscientious-objector-archie-baxter-remembered-in-guerilla-wellington-sculpture

Peace Action Wellington may or not be responsible for this, but they have some really good pictures of the Archie mannequins: https://peaceactionwellington.wordpress.com/

Renee Gerlich takes on the grotesque spectacle of Peter Jackson's 'Scale of our War' exhibition at Te Papa, and does a fine job of cutting it down to size. I was somewhat depressed when I visited Wellington recently and saw for myself the massive ques of people lining up to see this exhibition. If only they could all be directed to this:

Not only does Te Papa seek to re-sell the “grand adventure” story all over again, but to bond us to it, have us identify with it. Through the uniforms you can don, the questions you are invited to answer, the poppies you can leave heartfelt messages on – but also through its insistence on speaking in the first person plural. It’s the scale of “our” war. “We” were in Egypt when they told “us” that “we’d” be invading Gallipoli. “The Turks had sided with the Germans in the war, and we were itching to take them on… that’s where the action was.” That text is not even quoted from a letter or a journal. That’s just Te Papa speaking – as your quintessentially Kiwi, male war hero “mate”.

Read the full blog here: https://reneejg.net/2016/04/22/gallipoli-the-scale-of-our-war-propaganda/

Over the ditch where the Anzackery is even more hyped and pumped by gazillions of state dollars, not everyone is buying the same old story. Historian and aboriginal activist Gary Foley contrasts the attention paid to Anzac day with the denial of Australia's own colonial history: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/gallipoli-not-the-only-war-to-define-australian-warfare-20140424-zqymi.html

I posted last year about Scott McIntyre, the sports reporter who was fired from his job after a series of 'offensive' tweets about Anzac day. McIntyre referred to several historical episodes which are typically ignored by Anzac commentators: the so called 'battle of the Wazza', the Surafend massacre, the raping of Japanese women by Anzac soldiers and our complicity with the mass murder of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. It is not hard to imagine the immense pressure someone in McIntyre's position must have come under after this episode, so I am very impressed to see that he has not succumbed and continues to offend people blinded by Anzac nonsense: http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/25/former-sbs-reporter-scott-mcintyre-repeats-anzac-day-accusations-on-twitter

Finally, this youtube video of a debate between Australian academics is really worth a look. I think it might be from a year or two ago, but I only discovered it today thanks to the sharing miracles of facebook. The moot is the proposition "Anzac day is more puff than substance", and the first speaker (Jeff Sparrow) absolutely nails it. He starts about seven minutes into the clip, and doesn't talk too long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk5MgWXDM2A&feature=youtu.be&t=7m16s

Archibald Baxter vs. the TPPA

There’s a real sense of optimism and excitement after the massive protests against the TPPA signing in Auckland recently. I’ve taken part in several anti TPPA protests myself, and it’s been great to see the movement building strength and momentum. The standout feature of these protests has been their vociferous and disruptive militancy: roads are blocked, arms are linked and dildos get thrown. There is at the same time a debate going on about the appropriateness of various tactics used, with a great deal of anxiety around the issue of ‘violence’. I’m firmly on side with the rude disrupters on this issue, and it’s fairly easy to draw a line connecting these dots: fences broken and rugby fields occupied in 1981, nuclear ships and subs challenged by fleets of boats and canoes in 1985, motorways blocked by TPPA protestors 2016. All of these non violent protest actions are the embodiment of principled passion, they are ‘rude’ in-your-face gestures intended to wake people up.

When it comes to Anzac day, these sorts of confrontational protest gestures don’t always work. The most recent high profile Anzac protest was in 2007, where Valerie Morse and others burnt a New Zealand flag during the dawn service. Morse and others instantly became the subject of righteous and indignant outrage, and although the protest was brave and principled, it did not have the desired effect.

With these thoughts in mind I was pleasantly surprised to read about an anti-TPPA protest action in Te Papa museum, in which Renee Gerlich and Pala Molisa draped a massive banner over the “Gallipoli: The Scale of our War” exhibit. The words now read “Our Imperial War”, and were accompanied by a picture of Archibald Baxter – ‘We Will Not Cease – TPPA No Way!’. With the streets of Auckland blockaded on the same day, and dildos being thrown just a couple of days later, this creative and provocative protest didn’t get much coverage. One News picked it up, and fairly predictably packaged the story using the tweeted outrage of a talkback radio host: “Extremely Disrespectful TPP protestors target Anzac Exhibition”. Someone told Cameron Slater about it, and (again fairly predictably) the slimy bowels of the Whaleoil comments section spat threats and abuse against Gerlich.

I spoke to Renee on the phone a few days ago, and she told me about how she had planned and carried out the protest action together with fellow activist Pala Molisa. The cost and logistics were quite challenging – the banner they draped over the exhibition title measured 8m by 8m, and needed to be carefully crammed into a tramping backpack. Pala and two signwriters constructed the scaffold and did the painting (with some assistance from a trusty OHP projector), check out these photos to get an idea of the Scale of This Protest:

Renee was surprised by the immediate response: embarrassed and decidedly non-angry security guards escorted her away from the scene, no charges were laid. She also made the point that by using Te Papa as the site of her protest, she was being faithful to what public museums should be – places where dialogue about the past can occur, as opposed to the monolithic sentimentalism of Peter Jackson’s Gallipoli.

From Pala and Renee's press release:

The designer of the art intervention, Renee Gerlich, states, “The standard line in our commemorations is that New Zealand soldiers fought and died to defend democracy for future generations. The 4th of February TPPA signing is fundamentally anti-democratic, and in breach of both the treaty and human rights law.”

“The TPPA has been made behind closed doors and favours the interests of corporations over the public. The TPPA flies in the face of democratic culture.”

Dr Pala Molisa states, “The signing of the TPPA today punctuates a long series of corporate-driven policy changes that systematically undermine all our foundational democratic institutions.”

Gerlich concludes, “So it gives the lie to this ‘democracy’ line. It is unacceptable for our government and social institutions to be glorifying the deaths of thousands of soldiers for a cause they are at the same time prepared to completely undermine.

This action questions whether our soldiers actually died for democracy. We believe they were unjustly forced into an imperial war. We also believe that this imperialism continues, and that the TPPA is an example of its current form. This is the reality that our social institutions, like Te Papa should be encouraging public dialogue about, rather than exhibiting nationalistic propaganda, which undermines the truth about our glorious dead.”

I’m impressed by the connections this action makes between the militaristic imperialism of WW1 and the economic imperialism of the TPPA. Finance capital, transnational corporations, nation states and power politics: books and academic theses can and have been written on these topics, just as the TPPA has already generated an intricate and sophisticated discourse about its economic and political implications. The image of Archibald Baxter cuts through the obtuseness of economics and history: a working class farmer who says No to great Powers, someone who will not cease from mental fight. As a protest icon Baxter was very significant during the Vietnam war era, so why not draw on his legacy now in 2016?

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Just how rigorous and solid is the link between imperialism in 1914 and the TPPA? There’s a very good article by Christian Fuchs which argues for the relevance of Lenin’s concept of imperialism in today’s world. Key terms include ‘finance capital’ and ‘nation states’: Critical Globalization Studies: An Empirical and Theoretical Analysis of the New Imperialism

There’s also a very convincing portrait of the economic background to New Zealand’s involvement in the TPPA: Jane Kelsey’s FIRE Economy. F stands for finance capital …

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Renee and Pala also made use of the spirit of the Anzacs in another protest action on Buckle Street by Massey:

The speech bubbles read "If we died for democracy then why is New Zealand now being sold?". Threatened with arrest by the police for the use of Disrespectful Stickers, this protest didn't last too long but still deserves recognition.

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Pala Molisa is a committed anti TPPA activist who also writes a blog, check out his speech at a recent TPPA rally here: http://blackstone.net.nz/2015/11/14/march-against-the-tppa-a-talk-outside-parliament/

The Origins of Archibald Baxter’s Pacifism - part one

Over the past couple of months I have been working on an article provisionally titled 'The Origins of Archibald Baxter's Pacifism'. It's going to cover the period between the Boer war (1899 - 1902) and 1916 (conscription), with a focus on the young Archibald Baxter and the Otago region. There will be three main sections:

• 1899 - 1902: Alfred Richard Barclay and the Boer war
• Keir Hardie's visit to New Zealand in 1908
• Compulsory Military Training and the Passive Resister's Union (1912) 

I’m hoping to have this article up to a publishable standard by early next year, but until then here is a draft version of the first part on A R Barclay and the Boer war. This is just a blog, so I can theoretically say anything I want, but with this sort of thing I strive for factual accuracy. If anyone reading this can spot a mistake, or would like to make any comment at all, please leave a comment or email me.       

The Origins of Archibald Baxter’s Pacifism

PART ONE: Alfred Richard Barclay and the Boer war

Archibald Baxter’s We Will Not Cease is rightly famous as an incredibly powerful pacifist statement. Of the fourteen conscientious objectors who were forced on board the troopship Waitemata in 1917 and taken to the trenches, Baxter is the only one who wrote a memoir. Out of the thousands of New Zealanders who resisted the pressures of the hegemonic pro – war forces in the years between 1914 and 1918, Baxter was one of a small handful who actually experienced the horrors and brutality of the trenches in Europe.

Anzac Day and the Politics of Forgetting

This is the full text of a speech I gave recently for the International Socialist Organisation in Wellington and Dunedin. For a shorter version of the speech, go to the ISO website: http://iso.org.nz/2015/07/22/the-anzac-spectacle-gallipoli-peter-jackson-and-the-politics-of-forgetting/

This year New Zealand and Australia commemorated the 100^th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign. One hundred years ago thousands of Allied troops invaded what was then the Ottoman Empire on April 25^th 1915. The ensuing eight month battle was a grim and bloody affair fought within a tiny section of the Mediterranean coastline. Casualties were heavy on both sides, with the number of Turkish / Arab deaths being by far the highest. It was the first major battle the newly christened 'Anzac' soldiers had been involved in, and the large number of deaths had a profound impact upon the people of New Zealand and Australia. The following years of battle took an even heavier toll, but this first shock assumed a sort of mythic status, and now the date of April 25^th is the focus of WW1 commemoration in New Zealand and Australia.

Links Update - war profiteering, a potential peace initiative, Archibald Baxter Memorial Trust

A few months ago I received an email from Stuart Moriarty - Patten, with a link to his article about War profiteering in the Gisborne Herald. I should have put up a link then, but never actually did. I noticed that the same article got reprinted in the 'No Glory' website here:

http://noglory.org/index.php/articles/478-war-is-a-racket-how-new-zealand-was-hurt-by-ww1-profiteers-too 

World Military Expenditure

I’ve been studying the SIPRI military expenditure database quite closely, trying to get my head around the statistics to do with world totals. The first challenge is the sheer size of the data: billions and trillions of $US. According to the latest SIPRI factsheet (April, 2015), world military expenditure in 2014 was $1776 billion. If you look at the raw spreadsheet data, you get a more exact figure of

$1776.15478538343 (billion)

That’s this number: $1776154785383.43

New Zealand’s Military Expenditure

A few weeks ago Bryce Edwards wrote an interesting column called ‘New Zealand’s Military future[i]’. He provided links to numerous recent articles which discussed the current government’s Defence Review, and the question of how much New Zealand should spend on its military. The most prominent commentators Edwards linked to were Chris Trotter and Karl du Fresne, both of whom argued that New Zealand should seriously consider increasing its spending on “defence”.

I’m going to declare my cards very clearly before going any further: I think that increasing New Zealand’s “defence” spending is both wrong and absurd, and I agree with commentators like Bob Jones and Richard Jackson that New Zealand’s “defence” budget should be zero dollars. I think that a much better and more historically appropriate term for “defence spending” would be “offence spending”. But for the purposes of this blog article I am going to strive to put my ideological position to one side. I will use the neutral term “military spending”, and I will refrain from making any comments about imperialism, nationalism, how nasty and dangerous China might be in the future, and so on.

Instead, I will focus very narrowly on some claims both du Fresne and Trotter make about the size of New Zealand’s military spending and how it compares to other countries. Both commentators blithely and confidently claim that New Zealand doesn’t spend very much at all on its military, especially in comparison to its major allies: the US, UK and Australia. Trotter says: