The Radical Right and Populism in Aotearoa with Paul Spoonley

In this episode our guest is Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley.  He is a highly regarded sociologist with expertise in the areas of demography, immigration, diversity, and political and ideological extremism. You might already know Paul because he is regularly asked to comment on social issues in the media. In our interview, we discussed the evolution of the radical right in New Zealand, the rise of populism and his ideas on how we can improve social cohesion.

Here are some resources Paul talked about in the episode:

Edelman Trust Barometer
https://www.edelman.com/trust/2023/trust-barometer

Histories of Hate
Matthew Cunningham, Marinus La Rooij and Paul Spoonley (eds)
https://www.otago.ac.nz/press/books/histories-of-hate

Nga Tangata Oho Mairangi
https://communityresearch.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/formidable/8/Southland-Region-Report-Final-with-Logo-RRN-5-2017-1.pdf

Hochschild, A. R. (2018). Strangers in their own land: Anger and mourning on the American right. The New Press.

Populism - A Global Advisor Survey 2024 (NZ Edition)

https://www.ipsos.com/en-nz/populism-global-advisor-survey-2024-nz-edition

Transcript

The Radical Right and Populism in Aotearoa with Paul Spoonley

Paul  

You know the way in which New Zealanders in a rather naive way, thought we were exceptional that there wasn't a, an extreme right in New Zealand. I thought no I'm going to look at this. And in the end, I looked at the extreme right that had emerged in New Zealand and the 1970s and 1980s. And I actually ended up with a list of over 80 groups now, some of them could have met in a telephone booth. You know, there were two men and a dog so you know, we need to put that in perspective. But there are political groups here that express a very deliberate racism.

Avery Smith 

Kia ora. I'm Dr. Avery Smith, and welcome to Unsettling Extremism, a podcast by He Whenua Taurikura. Today, our guest is Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley.  He is a highly regarded sociologist with expertise in the areas of demography, immigration, diversity, and political and ideological extremism. You might already know Paul because he is regularly asked to comment on social issues in the media. In our interview, we discussed the evolution of the radical right in New Zealand, the rise of populism and his ideas on how we can improve social cohesion. One of the things that struck me as I was talking to Paul was the perspective that his long career as an academic has afforded him. Let me introduce you to Paul.  Let's start off and just talk a little bit about you and your background. 

So, where did you grow up, Paul, and what were you like as a kid?

Paul 

I grew up in Hawke's Bay, and so our parents had moved from Upper Hutt where I was born to Hawke's Bay. So I had a fairly conventional upbringing, went to Havelock North primary and then to Hastings boys High. What was interesting about that was that this is a quite wealthy community, but then has a very significant and impoverished community alongside it, largely Māori. So it was quite an interesting place to grow up in.

Avery Smith  

Were you a good student? What did you think about school?

Paul 

No, I was not a good student. I did, okay. And I got through and got a bursary. But the school was a very conventional, very traditional school. I was not a conventional student. And so when I left Hastings Boys High, they declined to provide me with a reference. So I went to Victoria University of Wellington, to do a BA, and the transformation for me, in going to an institution, in this case, a university, which allowed you to explore and think was a real revelation really, it was, it was just chalk and cheese. So no, I did not enjoy secondary school, particularly. I did languages I did French and Russian, and I continued at university to do Russian, but I discovered sociology. And so I did a combined degree in geography and sociology. And that was the beginning of really, me beginning to understand the world around me the dynamics of that world. And it really provided me with a, an opportunity and a passion to understand society, both in the broad,  but also in terms of what I then began to look at, which was racism and identity.

Avery Smith 

What drew you to racism identity, what do you think that was?

Paul 

Well, it didn't really begin to coalesce for me, except that while I was at secondary school, here in Hawke's Bay in the late 1960s, a person that I knew was called nothing but a mongrel by a local magistrate. And that was the beginning of the Mongrel Mob, and I went to Whakatu freezing works, and I ended up on the slaughter board there. And so I was part of a gang, as in a work gang, not a not a Mongrel Mob gang. And of the seven people in my gang five were members of the Mongrel Mob. And so I began to see some rather interesting dynamics and be exposed to it. Because I went to university, I was Professor even, even though I hadn't completed a BA . They knew something that I didn't, and then later on, I was at Otago University And I had to pick a, a thesis topic for my master's. And I wanted to look at the arrival of Pasifika and in particular Niueans and I wanted to look at the reaction, and of course, remember that in 1973, the then Labour government was beginning to react to overstayers. By 1975, when I began my thesis, there was quite a strong demonization of Pasfika. And so I relocated to Auckland and began my research into Niueans. There was an interesting point in which I began to do the traditional anthropological exercise of learning the language of being immersed in the community, and I wanted to learn about the experiences of that community. And they said, Well, after a while, they said, Why are you studying us? Why aren't you studying the society we're coming to? And so I completely changed, like, continued the focus on new ones as the migrant group. But I looked at gatekeepers in education, real estate, employers, and looked at how they were responding. And so it was, I was influenced by some of the work that was coming out of the UK, that was beginning to look at migration to metropolitan centers, and the racism that migrants experienced. 

Avery Smith  

So it was really the talking to the Niueans who were like, Hey, why aren't you Why aren't you looking at some other things too, right? That kind of

Paul 

Yes, it was. It was. It wasn't. It was more than talking to Avery they were politely telling me. I was looking at that I needed that I needed to, I needed to refocus, and I did.

Avery Smith  

And you listened and that's good.

Paul  

I did listen. Yes, it was, it was one of those moments where, you know, in terms of an academic doing research in communities and with communities, that it was a very important life, as well as academic lesson. So

Avery Smith 

you shifted your research. And was that your masters? Is that what you were talking about? That

Paul 

was my that was my M asters from Otago, but I did it while teaching in the sociology program at Auckland because of course, that was where migration was the, you know, that was that was the nexus that was the that was the center of migration to New Zealand for Pasifika.

Avery Smith 

When you finished with your masters, what did you do after that?

Paul 

I decided to go to Bristol and do a, I thought I'd do a PhD but the British government doubled the fees for the overseas students and then doubled them again. And so the funding agency wasn't prepared to accept the additional costs which had now got quite prohibitive. So I went to Bristol and did a MSc in race relations under Michael Benton. And at Bristol, there was a collection of academics who were doing some very innovative research. So anybody who's looked at the history of research into racism, will probably know Bob Miles name and Bob, I came to know as a friend, but he introduced the idea of racialization. He looked at the way in which the metropolitan and capital centers, which were the destination for migrants were treating these new migrants. And also at Bristol was the Center for the Study of interrace relations. I can't remember the title now, but it was a funded research centre. So I, I did three courses, which was part of the program and I studied with some very eminent people already, Henri Tajfel, who was a psychologist who did some amazing research into intergroup relations. And then there came a moment when I had to pick a dissertation topic and I was struggling really. And what happened was a couple of incidents occurred. One of them which was really profound was that near me, in Bristol, a young Pakistani, I think it was about 13-14 year old was held on the ground by a young National Front activists and a swastika was carved in his stomach with a razor blade. And I was the son of a migrant from the UK who was liberal and open and politically very tolerant and socially very tolerant. And I just could not understand an event like that.  So I then decided to look at the the National Front is my topic and so that began my journey, not only into racism but a particular form of racism, which was being expressed politically in the UK, in the 1970s. So that the big March at Lewisham, where the police came out to protect the National Front, marching through a Black community and expressing their racism towards those Blacks, I again I found very difficult to explain. And so that's, that became my thesis topic.

Avery Smith  

You completed your Pete, your PhD in the 80s. Right? And you were looking at the radical right?

Paul  

I did. What was interesting, my earlier life as a freezing worker, it still interested me. So I, I tried to do my PhD on the freezing works as a microcosm of society really of, you know, where people came together. But the people who own the freezing works in New Zealand didn't want me looking, looking at their work sites. So they turned me down. So after about a year and a half of beginning that, that is a PhD topic, I then turn to the extreme right in New Zealand. Now, what was interesting was when I came back in the late 1970s, and I took up a position in 1979, at Massey University, I'd gone to the various agencies, the police, New Zealand security, intelligence service, and others Human Rights Commission, which was then called the race relations conciliators office. And all of them had denied that there was an extreme right here in New Zealand. And I only encountered one or two people. Bert Roth, who was a librarian at Auckland University said, Yeah, of course there is. And here's my notes and my collection of of material on them. So I thought, well, I can't do my work on the freezing works. But yeah, I think there's an issue here. And I think, you know, the way in which New Zealanders is it in a rather naive way, I thought we were exceptional that there wasn't a, an extreme right in New Zealand, I thought, no I'm going to look at this. And in the end, I looked at the extreme right, that had emerged in New Zealand and the 1970s 1980s. And I, I actually ended up with a list of over 80 groups now, to some of them could have met in a telephone booth, you know, there were two men and a dog. So you know, we need to put that in perspective. But there are a political groups here, that expressive, very deliberate racism, which drew its inspiration, and I put quotation marks around that, from what was happening in Europe, from the 1930s, but also from the 1970s, and 1980s. And I completed that in 1986.

Avery Smith  

So there's always been this global connection, it feels like in the way that some of these ideologies draw from each other and get inspiration from each other. It sounds like

Paul  

Absolutely. And I think for me, over those years, since the 1980s, the big shift has gone from being focused on imitating what was happening in Britain. So again, we had the National Front and, you know, various forms of that National Socialist white People's Party, drawing their inspiration from Europe, and particularly from the UK, to the more contemporary, far right, which tends to draw its inspiration, not completely, but largely from the US so that over the time that I've looked at it, that's been one of the major shifts. The other shift has been that in the 1980s, the groups were almost uniformly anti semitic. And that remains, but since 9/11, in particular, but given the politics, global politics around the world, then contemporary far right groups tend to be very strongly Islamophobic as well. 

Avery Smith  

So you kind of got to see that change in real time. 

Paul 

Yes, I did. And there are there are different epochs if you like, which makes it sound grander than it is. But in the 1980s the events like the Springbok rugby tour, saw the appearance of a whole lot of groups who were arguing for white rule in southern Africa, what was then called Rhodesia, and of course, South Africa itself. So they were arguing for a continuation of a white empire and white rule on the grounds that non-whites were incapable of understanding or participating in democratic process. And then we had in the 1990s, the appearance of the skinheads in New Zealand and the way in which a younger demographic became recruited by and mobilized by some groups. And then, of course, after 2000, we began to get the emergence of groups like right-wing resistance and right-wing resistance are interesting, because, of course, they are one of the few groups if not the only group, where it began in New Zealand with Kyle Chapman, but then got exported around the world. And so, to this day, there are groups in Australia, the USA, parts of Scandinavia, that label the sounds right wing resistance, and which take their origins from New Zealand. And then of course, the most recent period has been really, you can date it from about 2016, I mean, began to emerge in Europe much earlier than that. And of course, we got that, that book that emerged in 2012 in France, which began to argue the replacement theory, and, we've got the Identitarian movements occurring in Europe. And then the in 2010, the emergence of the Tea Party, and I began to get a sense of that, because I was a Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. And the Tea Party were emerging. And so I went along and, and took a bit of notice on them. And so we, we've got that recent wave, but it really didn't begin to appear in New Zealand until after really the election of Donald Trump. 

Avery Smith

I'm curious with all of the perspective that you have of, you know, the history of the of these movements, how are you making sense of what happened at Parliament, the occupation of Parliament? Yes.

Paul  

In 2006, I wrote well co-wrote, There were four of us, a cabinet paper on social cohesion. And we got some things wrong, we thought that social cohesion was really about immigrants. And of course, it's not, it's about much broader than that. We didn't include te Tiriti o Waitangi in that earlier focus. And I think we got that wrong. But what we didn't anticipate was really the impacts of social media, online media, and, of course, COVID. And I think, what we began to see, when we looked at trust and social cohesion, which we began to come back to as part of Koi Tu in 2020. In the early phase of the New Zealand, public health response, we saw very high levels of social cohesion. But by 2021, we're beginning to get those arguments that were emerging from around the world, but particularly from the US around the nature of COVID. And I think there were a number of constituencies, the anti-fluoridation people, the anti-5G tower, the anti-1080, the anti-compact on migration, they began to coalesce and come together. And of course, there were new people who were being recruited into a conspiratorial, and of course, ultimately a Q Anon view of the world. And I think that combination of declining trust, which had always been there, but was exacerbated, combined with the influence of social media began to produce a fringe in New Zealand, which was much louder than I've ever seen before. And when I went and looked at what was happening in Parliament, and I actually attended a parallel protest in Picton. You didn't need to go far to see the racism, the anti-semitism, sometimes the Islamophobic arguments, that we're now merging with the anti-government, the COVID skepticism, the conspiracy views that were beginning to circulate. So I've been really surprised and rather caught out by the level of interest amongst some New Zealanders in these conspiratorial and racist views that have merged over recent years through COVID. And I was struck by that early research by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, international strategic dialogue, which showed that the pro rata The number of people in New Zealand who are accessing far-right Facebook sites was double what it was in the in Australia and triple what it was in Canada. So I think there's a underlying dynamic, which is really seen the appeal of some of these views grow in New Zealand over recent years, which is deeply, deeply concerning.

Avery Smith 

Right. And what I mean, you know, it's hard to say exactly, but what would you what would you think the underlying dynamic is? To see such an increase in that? Is it the lack of social cohesion, is that what you're seeing the lack of trust?

Paul 

Well, I think that's part of it. I think that if we look at the Edelman Trust Barometer of 2023, and see the decline and trust, and the trust in governments and media, and experts around the Western world, just collapsed during COVID. I think that's part of it. I think the the availability of alternative views, conspiratorial views online, is part of it. I think those are all significant drivers. I think what we saw in the Tea Party in 2010, but we saw in the election of Donald Trump was the disaffection and the disengagement, or the dealignment, if you like, of political bases, and representatives. So when I look at the US, you know, the traditional supporters of the Democratic, some of the traditional supporters of the Democratic Party, not only the white working class, but also parts of the middle class, really began to transfer the loyalty to new political voices, and particularly, of course, the voice of Trump. And in 2010, there was a very interesting moment at Berkeley, when we had a meeting and a seminar day-long seminar, where various researchers came together to look at what was happening in the States. And many of them said, well, the Tea Party doesn't represent a constituency, it's not going to be anything. It is made up of ill-informed marginalized people. And Arlie Hochschild, who was there who went on to write strangers in their own land in 2016, which came a New York Times bestseller. Ali said, no, no, you're misunderstanding what's happening in terms of our communities. And she'd been going around the US and interviewing people in working-class and middle-class communities, particularly in the Midwest, but in other parts of the country as well, who no longer felt that politicians represented them. And they were feeling economically marginalized. But they also, as she described that the American dream, they were in the queue to attain the American dream. And they, as they saw it was seeing Latinos or Afro Americans or Trans, although Trans wasn't a big issue then, members of the rainbow community getting or women getting into the queue ahead of them. And they were feeling pissed off really at that. And if you haven't read the Arlie Hochschild book, I think it's a very good commentary on the dynamics, which have produced the politics of the US and I think apply equally here. And I hope somebody will write the Arlie Hochschild book for New Zealand to explain this. The final thing I would say Avery is that we had a female prime minister, who was very articulate and who was at the very center of the COVID response. And what surprised me again, was the rise and rise of misogyny in New Zealand. And I remember attending a Groundswell protest in Auckland. And what struck me was the absolute focus on Jacinda Ardern,  and the way she was portrayed, and I'm not going to repeat it because I think, I think a lot of it's deeply offensive, but the way in which she was characterized the way in which they describe what they'd like to do to her, you know, misogyny has been part of New Zealand, but the level of public expressed misogyny there was something that was really quite profound in terms of a shift in terms of our politics. 

Avery Smith  

So what I'm hearing you say, Now, correct me if I'm wrong, and as an American, I'll add my own my own spin on this, right. Sure. You were seeing entitlement in that white middle class and working class folks had to the quote unquote American dream, when that dream when that entitlement to that dream appeared to be fading is when there had to be a way for people to understand like why this was happening and it was because the other people are, are getting ahead of us is that is that kind of what you're saying? 

Paul

Yes, and I think we've been on a journey. And when I say we, I think both the New Zealand with regard to Te Tiriti and Tino Rangatiratanga here, but in the US minority rights, and the recognition of those rights and their place in a liberal political democracy, then you began to see white anxiety, a sense that people were feeling marginalized in terms of a political system. But of course, remember, they were economically facing struggles. I mean, if we think of the Midwest, and we think of the car industry in the US, then we're seeing that old industrial system beginning to crumble. And the people that had earned good money and had careers in terms of combustion engines, or the oil and coal industry, or, you know, all of those old industry sectors, then you began to see communities that were struggling economically. And I think as the as the time has gone on, and if you think of the last five to seven years, and the cost of living the cost of housing, difficulties of getting access to good quality education or health care, then you begin to see communities that are saying we don't want to vote for traditional Republican or Democratic leaders, because they're part of the problem. And of course, people are not, if not aware of the origins of Q Anon and their beliefs around the belief that there was a group of elite Americans that came together to meet in a pizza place in Washington, and that they were involved in, you know, various nefarious activities, and we're acting against the interests of, quote unquote, the American people, and of course, we, when we say American people, we're talking about white Americans, middle-class working class, but yeah. And so I think it's, it's part of the backlash. What's interesting for me is that, in most parts of the democratic world, a high-income world that has expressed itself an anti-immigrant, as well as anti-minority politics, and so right throughout Europe, France, most of Scandinavia, Germany, RFD in Germany, but also the US in terms of the Trump politics, it's anti-immigrant. Whereas here, I think it's been expressed, not completely, but largely as anti-Tiriti Politics and anti- Māori rights politics, so a slightly different element. And it's useful to look at the earlier survey from Ipsos around populism in New Zealand here. And not only to look at how the dial has shifted, and New Zealand is right up there in terms of anti-government or some cynicism about government, and what's happening there. But also, who is likely to express those politics, an element of that dynamic has to see that Māori communities as those who feel marginalized, politically and economically, are very likely to express distrust and governments.

Avery Smith 

So we just made a shift to talking about populism a little bit, Could you could you kind of talk about what populism is and how you understand it. 

Paul 

For me, populism is in its contemporary forms as a form of exclusive nationalism. It seeks to go back to something so it's, I've talked about it as a form of political nostalgia. And going back to the way we never were, I mean, it's, there's a there's a sense in which you rewrite your past. Yeah, yeah. in which in which politics and who is who, who provides our leadership who, who governs us, how we're governed, is reimagined in a new way. And so populism seeks to express itself as articulating the will of the people. But the people is a very exclusive conception because when you dig through it, it really is talking about a white middle class, and the way in which their anxieties are coming to the fore and in which they are beginning to say, we shouldn't have large numbers of migrants. We shouldn't be respecting Jewish or Muslim communities for who they are. We should not be implementing Te Tiriti or Māori rights, Tino Rangatira rights. So it's looking back to an imagined past. And so that the populism aspect of it is that you claim that the media don't speak for us, most politicians don't speak for us. The political system is against us. And we are seeking alternative voices in terms of our political representatives. But I think underneath that, there's a lot of people who simply don't trust any politicians whatsoever. And so you get that those alternative political parties, which are deeply cynical, deeply suspicious of any sort of traditional politics, any sort of traditional politician. 

Avery Smith 

So there's a couple of layers to it, it sounds like in your understanding in that, that nationalism and that nostalgia for, as you said, the way things never were, but also sort of holding it up is this sort of unspoken ideas about who is a American who is a New Zealander. And it's pretty exclusionary to anyone who's not a white, white person yet. And there's those are those unspoken ideologies that sort of prop it up. Is that Is that what you're saying?

Paul 

Yeah, except them when we think of, you know, Trump, or Le Pen or the RFD, or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. And when we think of some of our politicians at the moment, I think it is spoken, I think, yeah, yeah, I think I think it's not spoken in the round and the way that we're now talking about it. But if I use the language that some of our social scientists would have used to talk about the welfare state, and translate that into a contemporary, there's the sort of deserving and non-deserving and the deserving tend to be the white folks the people that are feeling anxious, who are feeling that politicians are not really representing who they are. And for me, part of this has been the way in which our media voices, because the media do represent a diversity in New Zealand, I mean, might perhaps we want to see more, and we want to see more in depth journalism for some of us but hat the way in which the media are not connecting with some of these communities, because and so they are going to alternative media voices, Counterspin, for example, The Platform, you know, We've talked a little bit about how this looks internationally. And we've started to speak a little bit about what it looks like here in New Zealand. But I wonder if you could help us try to make sense of what this populism is looking like here and now in this country? Well, for me, and I'm still interested in the far right, in terms of its organization mobilization, its voices, they have tended through COVID to merge, not with mainstream but some of the more conservative elements in the community. And I think there's a degree of overlap there. But the last election brought into Parliament, some of those voices that might have been heard through for example, Hobson's Choice. And you're beginning to see a degree of agreement around how this country faces some major economic and other changes in terms of, you know, a digital revolution, some demographic changes, I mean, the rise and rise of the Māori population, we've now got 978,000, people who self-identify as Māori, it's going to hit a million quite soon. And when we look out to our future, more and more of our community are going to self-identify as Māori, but they're also going to be what I rather loosely referred to as the Kohanga Reo generation, they're going to be immersed in their tikanga and the te reo and their identity as Māori. So we're going to have a larger assertive Māori community in this country. And of course, this country over recent years have seen very significant inward migration and so we are one of the most super-diverse countries in the world. Auckland is now ranked the fourth most super-diverse city in the world, just behind Toronto. So I'm not at all surprised that we've got parts of our community that are feeling as though events have moved in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable. And that anxiety is beginning to express itself politically, what I want to do is try and understand, I would leave it to others to understand how it's expressed in terms of our political systems and our elections. And you know, somebody like Richard Sure, I think does that really, really well. But I think when I need to, to go back, and I'm doing this as the moment I'm preparing material for a new book, and I'm trying to understand how the far right has changed in New Zealand does it have new adherence does it? Has it mobilized new communities. And of course, I go back to March 2019, and the events in Christchurch. And I say, how did that happen? In this country? And of course, part of it, I want to say, well, we weren't paying attention. We argued many of us argued, I hope the us doesn't include me, because I hope I made my own views clear, but many of us argued that somehow New Zealand was exceptional in terms of somebody who could kill 51 Muslims in this country. Dreadful, dreadful moment, and we will be known, and a part of an international set of views around the world where the shooter and that event are cited. But they're cited in ways that affirm what happened in Christchurch. How did that happen? So for me, the task and preparing this material for the book is to understand the contemporary dynamics of the far right, how far it extends, how it continues to populate social media, in ways that recruit new people, new communities, new constituencies in New Zealand. So I'm not sure whether I've answered your question. particularly well, Avery. But that's the challenge for me.

Avery Smith

And what are you noticing as far as because we've talked a little bit about sort of the merging of different kinds of belief systems and ideologies, some of the literature I read, they call it mixed, unclear, unstable ideologies. And it's bringing in just a lot of disparate sort of belief systems coalescing, it's where you start seeing maybe it started with people who were who were questioning COVID and then got into perhaps a social media group that started talking about anti trans, and then it got into anti immigrant. And then there are all of these different kinds of belief systems that are sort of going on now within like a similar movement. Have you noticed that as well, in what you're looking at, what have you seen?

Paul 

Yes, I have noticed that. And I think the combination of the platform that social media provides, and the anxieties that emerged during COVID have meant that there's a and I would regard it as a tenuous but a tenuous, coalescing or coalition. And I think it's tenuous because I've been surprised at how stickable some of the views that emerged during COVID have been, and I see them around the ongoing preoccupation with Jacinda Ardern. I see it around the cynicism and the lack of trust in government and in experts. And of course, I'm thinking particularly of medical experts. So there's an ongoing suspicion around anything that those experts say and do when it comes to, in this case, a pandemic. And what I also see as the ongoing influence, in particular, of American politics, and in particular, the sort of views that you see, both from Q Anon in particular, but more broadly. And, you know, as part of my reading, I read Arlie Hochschild, because, you know, she had had quite an influence on me in terms of explaining what was happening in the US, but I also read Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance. Oh, you did? I did. And I was impressed. I was impressed. And I thought, well, this is a guy who's struggled and has then gone on into the military gone on to get a qualification at elite private university in the United States. And then I've watched JD Vance. In his own journey, you know his conversion to Catholicism, but a bit particular sort of Catholicism. And then, of course, now his appearance as a running mate to Donald Trump. And what he was expressing back when he was writing the Hillbilly Elegy, I had no idea that he would move so far to the right. And then his articulation of some of the views, you know, the comments after the attempted assassination of Trump. And the JD Vance position, which identified the Democrats as the reason, you know, the sort of blaming of a particular group. So for me, I'm deeply concerned and somewhat frustrated at the way in which a lot of social and economic issues are seen, but seen in a highly, highly partisan way, in a deeply polarized way, this tribal politics that have emerged and you wonder, Where is the middle? Where's the agreement? Where's the, you know, even if I sit in different parts of the House, or the Senate or the Parliament, and I have different political views? To me, can't I have a respectful discussion about issues that we both share? Can I have a discussion around, you know, the level of migration that is appropriate the way in which we should receive and welcome those migrants the way in which we should talk about social cohesion? And a lot of that common ground seems to have evaporated. In a lot of democracies, and including New Zealand.

Avery Smith

I'm wondering, you know, you talked about JD Vance, are you seeing anything similar to that here? That, you know, that same level of rhetoric and that popularity of some of those ideas? Are you seeing anything like that here?

Paul 

Yes, I am. And in terms of New Zealand, what's interesting is the coalition government and we have a, an old school nationalist party in New Zealand First, which I've been a slightly surprised at, in terms of where they've come from, because, of course, they came into Parliament in 1996, on a very explicit platform of being anti-immigrant and not just anti-immigrant, but largely anti-Asian immigrants. So they have a long history of being suspicious of immigrants, and of wanting to dive back, who should come to New Zealand, but of course, also mixed in there to some of the politics we've seen elsewhere in the world. And then off to one side, we've got those who wanted to enter politics. So like Destiny Church, which has been very explicit, and in the more extreme way of being anti-Muslim, and beginning to articulate some of those kernel views more explicitly. And then on the other side of the coalition government, we've got a Libertarian Party in Act, which has wanted to move away from anything, which identifies people in terms of their ethnicity, or their gender, or the gender identities. And to de-ethnicise is that a word? I'll make it up de-ethnicise what we do in New Zealand. And of course, as part of that, take out the treaty. So we've seen in terms of, you know, the events at Pharmac, where, you know, they've had instructions, a letter of expectation, which says, you should not treat Māori as a particular client group, you should treat people in terms of need, you should not privilege in any way or address in any way Te Tiriti or Waitangi. So I do see some of those politics coming out in New Zealand, in terms of wanting to move away from that journey that we began in earnest probably in the 1970s, which the 84 to 89 Labour government embedded into both policy and in terms of legislation, which, interestingly enough, the 1990 Jim Bolger government continued, particularly the Treaty of Waitangi settlements. And I thought there was a degree of consensus and I thought we'd matured in terms of that journey, but we're seeing quite explicit attempts to move away from that social contract really with Māori and to take the Māori voice, but also some of those key policy priorities out of how we deliver policy and services in New Zealand. If I take a long view of it, when I look at the increasing diversity of New Zealand, the increasing articulation or confidence in expressing that diversity. And I look at the journey that we've been on, and I think about the future demography, but also the, the sort of politics of a future New Zealand, if I'm putting on my optimistic hat, I see some of the attempts to roll back the history of diversity recognition and of treaty recognition and New Zealand as being a short term set of politics. When we look at New Zealand, we looked at New Zealand and 2038. A research project called Nga Tangata Oho Mairangi. And when I think of New Zealand in 2038, and I think of our composition, but also the way in which communities are now here and are not going away in terms of, you know, asserting a particular set of identity politics, then you've got to say that the there'll be a group that feel anxious and are prepared to support anti-diversity politics, if that's the label we give it. But there'll be another set of communities that are very committed to pursuing diversity recognition and Tino Rangatiratanga. So that's my optimistic view. In the long term.

Avery Smith 

Yeah. Well, I mean, this sort of brings us back to the idea of social cohesion and our connection as a society. Right. So we've talked a little bit about how, you know, trust has been falling in the government's over the past several years. But I wonder if you have any ideas about what could be done to increase sort of social cohesion in Aotearoa,

Paul 

We recently wrote about this, because I think we got in that cabinet paper in 2006, a number of things wrong. So you know, it was a way of writing those wrongs and trying to rethink it. I do think there are some practical, pragmatic things we need to do in terms of social cohesion. My first principle is that I've worked at government level in terms of social cohesion, and we've looked at it recently, as part of Koi Tu, Sir Peter Gluckman, and the group of us have, have looked at social cohesion. For me, social cohesion only works when it is from the bottom up, when communities are involved when, you know, when governments dictate social cohesion, it does not work. So there are government policies and statements around social cohesion. I doubt very few of us would know them, I doubt very few of us would see them in action. And I would like to see a movement around communities, local communities in New Zealand, thinking about what social cohesion means for them. That's my, that's my starting point really. I think the treaty offers says some values whakawhanaungatanga for example, manaakitanga, for example, care and support for others. So we don't need to agree but how do we respectfully discuss issues that have common interest to us?  I think we've got to do something around online hate. I mean, under the previous government, but also under the current government. The sense in which you shouldn't do anything or you can't do anything, I think is misplaced. And, when we look at FIANZ, the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand and, and their comments around what they experience online in New Zealand at the moment, what the Jewish community experiences online at the moment, then shouldn't it be part of our makeup as a broad political community to say that some of us some in our community are experiencing things which they should not experience? What should we do around that? And I do think that as part of that, we do need to think about online hate and what we could do there and some other countries are doing it much better than us. I think we need to provide particularly our young in New Zealand much better tools for engaging online. So digital literacy, absolutely. But there's a group at Wakatipu High, Sticks and Stones which have sought to reduce the level of harm and hate which teenagers in New Zealand experience. I think that's a really noble attempt to address some of these issues. I do think we need to address the anxieties that have emerged in Māori and non-Māori communities. And that might be around diversity. I mean, the thing that strikes me as a gap is that we make these big changes. So in 86-87, the Labour government made changes around immigration, we saw that first wave in the early 1990s, we've seen three waves since including currently in New Zealand, of migration, which is fundamentally changing our diversity. So what do we do to help those new migrants to New Zealand to settle in, you'll experience this Avery but, you know, yes, we speak English, but it's not the same English as, as spoken in the USA. So, you know, what do we do to enable people to operate in this in this country, the society, but also what do we do to help New Zealand communities and what they should do in terms of welcoming migrants and responding to this new diversity? How do we, how do we, how do we do diversity really, in terms of New Zealand, and that means a common language. And I do think leadership, you know, that leadership might come from local communities, it might come from some of the communities that are experiencing hate online, but we should not leave it to those communities. And in fact, we should support them. And we should look for other voices to articulate what a New Zealand that respects diversity, which embraces diversity should look like. And I think, you know, I, I just think that there are that leadership at the moment is not as apparent as it should be not as, and I, I take responsibility in a personal sense for this, but is not articulating a vision of New Zealand, which word to use the word I've just used, embrace diversity and respect, diversity.

Avery Smith 

Thanks, Paul, for talking with me today. I really appreciate it.

Paul 

Thank you for your thanks. But I want to thank you because, you know, podcasts are an opportunity to reach new audiences, and to hear a range of views. So thank you for doing the work that you're doing as well.

Avery Smith 

Thanks for listening to Unsettling Extremism. Paul shared with us a wealth of information about the radical right movements in New Zealand, and how they're situated in both international and local contexts. Paul ended by talking about the leadership that's necessary to create a vision for New Zealand that embraces and respects diversity. And that is something where we can all definitely play a part. Please share this episode with your community. We are going to be taking a short break after this the sixth episode, so that we can continue bringing you the expertise and high quality analysis that this podcast provides. Like and Subscribe to Unsettling Extremism on your preferred podcast platform so you never miss an episode. See you next time. Ma te wa