We Didn't Start the Fire

The anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests across the country last week demonstrate eroding trust in the economic and political system and our institutions. This lack of trust is in part the product of an increasingly frail social contract. It is not enough to dismiss the protestors as irrelevant or condemn them as deplorables. It is true they do not represent the views of most of us, but they reflect legacies of colonialism, embedded and deepening wealth inequality and a society organised around the pursuit of profit, individualism, and anti-intellectualism. The increasing popularity of disinformation, conspiracy movements and right-wing extremism reflect how broken things are. For now, these movements remain marginal but If we do not tackle the root causes drawing people to them we can only expect them to continue to grow. This is not inevitable, the pandemic offered us a rare opportunity to do things differently, even Finance Minister Grant Robertson acknowledged that. Rather than grab the opportunity to transform society for the better, the government acted to preserve a dysfunctional status quo, a decision that may come back to haunt us all.

In 1984 the Fourth Labour government tore up New Zealand’s post-war social contract and began dismantling social democracy. This social democracy was born from a compromise between the working and the owning classes in the aftermath of the war. The core of this truce was founded on a simple premise, that we lived in a society. Amidst the ruins left by a laissez faire capitalist system that prioritised profit over people and a world war a new consensus emerged. It was this: the state had a role to play in regulating the worst excesses of capitalism and ensuring there is a social floor that no one falls beneath. To this end a portion of the surplus generated from economic activity should be taken and used to fund public or essential goods and services. These goods and services were necessary to ensure people, society and indeed the economy functioned, maybe even prospered- as such they were brought under public ownership and accountability. Social democracy was by no means a utopia, legacies of colonialism and institutional racism meant that Māori and Pasifika were often excluded from this social contract. Likewise, patriarchal ideas and gender roles stopped women from fully participating in society as well. Still, the aspiration of social democracy of universal public services and a social floor was one that inspired anti-racist and feminist movements. There was a demand to expand social democracy and make it truly universal, not destroy it. Instead, the Fourth Labour ripped up the consensus, the social contract forged in struggle.

In doing so the government rejected that simple idea that we lived in society. No, in this new era society was a fanciful thing, it was not affordable or pragmatic, there were individuals, men, women and families but there was no such thing as society. The role of the state was to facilitate the accumulation of wealth and capital. This was a business, neoliberal capitalism had entered the building.
If the Fourth Labour government sowed the seeds then the Sixth Labour is reaping the fruits of this legacy. The transformation of New Zealand from a society to New Zealand Incorporated uprooted civic society, decimated the trade union movement, and has starved our public services. This is all well documented. The pandemic has exposed the true legacy of this transformation though you can see it elsewhere if you look- the housing crisis, Victorian levels of wealth inequality, our bareboned public services limping along. The increasing number of people falling through the enormous holes in the once sturdy social floor.

Yet still the media, our politicians and business leaders remain in denial about the social consequences of tearing up the social contract, of denying there is a society. We can observe it plainly in the increasing popularity of far-right and conspiracy movements. Trust in the system and each other is fraying. The thing about pretending there is no such thing as a society is that there objectively is- denying that does not make it less material but it does make it incredibly dysfunctional.
The public health crisis we currently find ourselves in reveals this plainly. In a 180 degree turn governments across the globe were forced to acknowledge that we exist in relation to each other and our health and wellbeing are intertwined with others. It turns out there is no way around this in a pandemic. New Zealand was no different, Jacinda Ardern compelled us to be a part of a team of 5 million working together to defeat the virus. The elimination strategy required a collective effort, it embodied collectivism and community at its best. It was partly the reason that this time last year trust in the system seemed to be going up and most people thought the country was heading in the right direction.
Fast forward to now and New Zealand is in a state of flux and those trends are reversing. We find ourselves bumpily transitioning from a ‘smug hermit kingdom’ safe from the pandemic protected by a world-class Covid elimination strategy to suddenly being confronted with the realities of living with the virus and all the upheavals and new normals that entail. It is a rough time, the full weight of the pandemic and the political turmoil it produces seem to have suddenly hit us. The protests echo and reflect images we have seen elsewhere with the far-right and conspiracy theorists finding the pandemic fertile soil to recruit people to their cause.

The collective ethos that had undergird the government's elimination strategy represented a brief flicker of an alternative to the otherwise individualistic and alienated nature of life under neoliberalism. The end of elimination and the pivot to a public health response that emphasises personal responsibility and blames system failures on individuals for not following the rules is a depressing return to form. That is not to say we could have continued to pursue elimination and close ourselves off to the world forever but how we transition matters, how the government frames the response to the pandemic matters. The shift from collectivism to individualism betrays the very thing that saw them gain trust and led a majority to believe the country was heading in the right direction. The pivot away from this alongside an inequitable vaccine roll-out and a stark emphasis on profit over people with reopening business taking precedence over public health advice

leaves behind the most marginalised and vulnerable communities. These are communities already living under the legacy of colonialism and the reality of austerity. These are people whose trust has been broken again and again. Now once more they are left behind and to add insult to injury blamed for not playing their part.

The success of the vaccine roll-out hinges on the idea of social solidarity, it demands we acknowledge we live in a society. We are not only getting vaccinated to protect ourselves but our communities and public health system. Is it any wonder that such an ask, a reminder that we have responsibilities and obligations to each other sounds alien to those who have never been shown it, have never felt that the government and our institutions act in their interests? It was the Fourth Labour government in 1984 that tore up that contract, that reneged on its commitment to provide a social floor that no one could fall through. Now the status quo is creaking under the weight of its own contradictions. The government is asking us to do our bit and get vaccinated, yet they have neglected to do theirs, they have not tackled the housing crisis, they have failed on climate justice and they have not provided adequate support to low-income people during lockdown.

We are not yet living through a right-wing insurgency or fascist uprising but the sight of thousands of anti-vaccine protestors descending on parliament decrying the fake media and communism is certainly troubling. We tend to focus on the role of social media in spreading disinformation or moralising on the character of the protestors, we forget that while social media adds fuel to this fire, it also needs oxygen and heat to keep burning. In other words, people increasingly distrust institutions because they recognise at a gut level that they do represent or act in their interests, that they do not work for them. The absence of a social contract, a social floor, a pervasive denial of the fact that we live in a society has fractured social solidarity and cohesion. Rather than dismiss the protestors as irrelevant or deplorable, we need to point the finger at the system itself. The growing popularity of conspiracy theories and far-right politics is the product of the social void left by neoliberalism. If we want to put out this fire, we need to understand what started it.


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