StrypeyJan 7, 2025

"In many ways, we are a less free society event than the US. Because we're so small, and we're so easy to turn the tap on or off, for a particular set of ideas."

https://www.1of200.nz/podcast/1200-s2e115-kayfabes-odyssey

Huh? I would say exactly the opposite. In a small society it's harder to avoid rubbing shoulders with people who see the world differently. Which makes it harder to lazily write off everyone who disagrees with you as a "fascist". Because that probably includes your family and friends.

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#podcasts #1of200

1/200 S2E115 - KayfAbe's Odyssey — 1/200

What are the early signs of discourse for 2025, and what might they signal in politics and culture for the year ahead?

1/200
Show threadStrypeyJan 7, 2025

As a consequence, we're more likely to get direct access to what the other half *really* think, instead of cartoon parody of it, presented by demagogues. Allowing us to to learn about the genuine concerns and aspirations that underlie our opponents beliefs.

This gives us more opportunities to compare and contrast our thesis with their antithesis, and come up with a synthesis that we can build a popular coalition around. So sometimes, things actually change for the better.

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Show threadStrypey

1/200 also made the point that the nation-state model doesn't work for New Zealand, because it fundamentally relies on the mythos of a unified nation. Most of Aotearoa has openly rejected this myth since the 1980s in favour of bi-culturalism, which if you really take it seriously, requires us to acknowledge that NZ is a multi-nation country.

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#NationState #NewZealand #Aotearoa #BiCulturalism

Jan 7, 2025 at 3:13amWeb
Show threadStrypeyJan 7, 2025

This project of preserving the single nation myth came to a head in the 2007 Operation 8 raids. Which many of us understood as an attempt to de-nationalise Ngāi Tūhoe in the lead up to their Waitangi Tribunal settlement, and force them to cede sovereignty.

Arguably Tūhoe negotiators did accept a watered down Waitangi settlement. What else can you do when the bully next door puts you in headlock and threatens your children? But by this point the djinn was well and truly out if the bottle.

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Show threadStrypeyJan 7, 2025

Other iwi who hadn't settled yet, saw what the NZ state did to Ngāi Tūhoe, and the level of recognition they still got for their mana motuhake (political autonomy) in the subsequent settlement.

Ngāpuhi in particular shifted their strategy, directly asking the Waitangi Tribunal to rule on the question of whether they'd ceded sovereignty by signing Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The ruling agreed that they didn't. Leading directly to the previous government's limited concessions to co-governance.

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Show threadStrypeyJan 7, 2025

The current government's reversal of co-governance and its Treaty Violation Bill is the NZ state's last ditch attempt to hold onto the one nation myth. Because when (not if) a NZ government faces up to the reality of a multi-nation country, there's some very painful institutional re-architecting to be done.

So what could this look like? Both conceptually and in practice?

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Show threadStrypeyJan 7, 2025

Zooming back out to the nation-state as a political technology, it came about as a solution to the problem posed by the collapse of belief in the divine right of kings. The essentially theocratic states that had dominated Europe for centuries held themselves together by replacing the concept of a divine right of the state to rule, with an equally mythical idea of the state as an expression of the popular will of "the nation".

In a country with not one nation, but many, this breaks down.

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Show threadStrypeyJan 7, 2025

From a dogmatic anarchist PoV this problem is easily solved by abolishing the state. But this doesn't really offer much guidance on how to replace all the useful functions currently organised via the convenient fiction of "the NZ government".

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Show threadStrypeyJan 7, 2025

If the reality is that we are many nations, cohabiting on an island archipelago, how do we maintain nonviolent conflict resolution between those nations?

How do we provide for the social welfare of all? Not only because it's the ethical thing to do, but so that we're not put at risk by the desperation of impoverished neighbours.

How do protect the environmental health of our shared islands and oceans?

What could replace the nation-state as a unifying structure for all this?

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Show threadStrypeyJan 7, 2025

This is the can of worms the NatACT First government has torn open, ironically by trying to weld the lid back on and hide it in the back of the cupboard. The select committee process for the Treaty Violation Bill - and its sinister companion piece the Regulatory Standards Bill - is going to be ... interesting.

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