This Is What Happens When Identity Politics Takes Control

It’s no secret that, as Americans, we mostly focus on domestic politics in our own country. Unlike, say, Canadians, we don’t obsess over the daily comings-and-goings of other nations. It’s virtually impossible to find a single American who can name a Canadian Supreme Court justice or member of parliament, for example. I know I certainly can’t. By contrast, Canadians can tell you all about Clarence Thomas and Matt Gaetz and so on. This is a well-established phenomenon and it makes sense, because the United States is a lot more important than any other country.

But even with that in mind, every once in a while, something happens in the parliament of a foreign country that’s hard for us to ignore here in America. Maybe a lawmaker in Taiwan steals a bill and runs away with it, in order to prevent it from being passed into law. That’s something that happened, and was hilarious. Or maybe a member of parliament in India pepper-sprays his colleagues when they don’t vote the right way. Or maybe Italy’s parliament descends into a bench-clearing brawl, which requires one politician to leave the chamber in a wheelchair. These are all well-documented incidents that may not always have a lot of direct relevance to us, but more often than not, at the very least, they’re entertaining to watch. It’s a whole genre on YouTube, actually.

The viral moment that just took place in the parliament of New Zealand, on the other hand, does have relevance for Americans. It’s one of the more important political stories of the year, even though it’s taking place thousands of miles from our borders. In case you missed it, several politicians in New Zealand just broke out in a primal, stone-age war dance called the “Haka,” to protest a piece of legislation that’s working its way through parliament. They won’t stop doing the chant, and eventually parliament has to be shut down. Watch:

This dance is very dangerous because it may cause everyone in the vicinity to die of secondhand embarrassment. It’s hard to watch this video and not have the same reaction that the speaker of parliament has. It’s painful to sit through. Thankfully a few people have dubbed the audio in various ways. There’s one remix that turns it into a jazzy little piano number from 1925. It actually works surprisingly well. 

Because it’s a Friday we might as well play it. Plus, it shows you another angle, so we can justify it that way. Watch:

It’s a lot less cringe when you dub in some real music, instead of the prehistoric grunting. Now, it’s a little hard to see in all the pandemonium, but they’re getting in the face of a politician named David Seymour, who introduced a bill they don’t like. The people doing the screeching identify as “Maori,” meaning they see themselves as the allegedly indigenous people of New Zealand. They’re chanting like barbarians and making gun gestures at David Seymour while saying something that apparently translates to “evil.” 

Before I get into the specifics about this vote and what it’s about, it needs to be reiterated that this whole “Haka” thing is silly and embarrassing. Maybe you’re not supposed to say that, but it’s obviously true. Everyone who sees it knows that and feels the same way. Yes, we’re supposed to pretend we find it somehow powerful and cool because it’s part of a non-white culture. We’re not allowed to have any negative opinions about anything that a non-white culture does. Even if it’s lame and stupid as hell, and we all know it.

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But the truth is, these people are embarrassing themselves. Always and everywhere, in every context, the “Haka” is cringeworthy to an immeasurable, painful degree. Here for example was the “Haka” that New Zealand’s basketball team performed at a tournament in 2014, just before getting blown out by double-digits by Team USA. Just look at the reactions during this:

There’s nothing like a fearsome war chant before a basketball game where everyone looks at you like you’re crazy. And then you get completely destroyed. Honestly, it just doesn’t work. You can’t do a fearsome war dance on behalf of a conquered people, and then get conquered some more. It’s just sad at this point. The Maori have been doing this dance for centuries and just getting beaten every time, in every context, in every type of battle they’ve ever been in. I think it might be time to hang it up and call it a day. 

In any event, back to the viral clip everyone’s talking about. The so-called “indigenous” people had a meltdown in parliament over a bill. What you may not have seen is what preceded that moment. David Seymour laid out some rational and calm arguments in favor of his legislation. And then the so-called “Maori” politicians launched into a volley of personal attacks. Watch:

Already, this is how you know these people have no argument. They’re only capable of shouting “shame” and resorting to personal attacks, to the point that they repeatedly get thrown out of parliament. Meanwhile David Seymour is sitting there calmly, saying he wants equality.

Admittedly, I’m not an expert on the finer details of New Zealand politics. So I went looking through some New Zealand outlets to try to get as complete a picture as I could.

It turns out that the concept of “equal protection under the law” is actually extremely controversial in New Zealand.

Here’s the background. Hundreds of years ago, around the late 13th century, Polynesian settlers arrived by canoe in New Zealand. They became the “Maori” people. Depending on who you ask, they were either the first to arrive, or they massacred everyone else who was there. In any event, before long, the Maori wiped out a different tribe called the Moriori, who were pacifists living in the Chatham Islands in the east. They got enslaved and beheaded and cannibalized by the Maori, because apparently that’s what civilized cultures do.

And to be clear, this kind of thing wasn’t out of character for the Maori. The Maori routinely enslaved and brutalized their enemies. The moment they acquired muskets from European traders, they fought a series of battles among themselves called “the Musket Wars,” which led to tens of thousands of deaths and even more slavery. These are wars that, of course, the Maori now blame the British for. They also bartered with severed heads, which they called “Toi moko.” They would cut people’s heads off, tattoo them, and then use them for trading. This is what Maori culture was all about. Cutting heads off and cannibalizing each other. 

Eventually the British came in and provided some stability with something called the Treaty of Waitangi. The idea was that New Zealand would become a British colony, but that the Maori would have their rights protected. They could keep their land and so on, to the extent that was possible. Then in 1975, New Zealand recognized this treaty in law for the first time. But there was still a big gray area as to what exactly this treaty required. It established tribunals and led to a lot of “rulemaking” by judges, but parliament mostly stayed out of it.

With this new bill, David Seymour is trying to change that. He’s proposing concrete legislation that will clarify that everyone in New Zealand — whether they’re “Maori” or not — is entitled to the full protection of the law. He also wants to make it clear that New Zealand is self-governing. The Maori are not a nation within a nation. Here’s how one New Zealand station describes the proposed clarifications:

These are clarifications that, if you want to live in a modern civilization — instead of a backwards, third-world tribal hellhole — seem pretty reasonable. But it does mark a change from what’s happening at the moment.

Right now, New Zealand explicitly provides reparations to people who identify as Maori. In addition to affirmative action, they just announced a quote “financial redress of $30 million plus interest” to Maori tribes, along with a fund of more than a million dollars to assist with “cultural revitalization.” New Zealand politicians also regularly give lengthy apologies to the tribes, like this one. Watch:

This kind of thing has been going on for decades in New Zealand. They fly the Maori flag, they apologize to them, they pay them millions of dollars. And in the end it’s not enough. The demands keep coming. As a result, now their news reports are barely comprehensible, because they’re all speaking a foreign language. 

Here for example is how that New Zealand television station explains what the Maori are so upset about:

Yes, one of the main criticisms of the bill is — whatever that is. They have to translate it so that people in New Zealand can understand what’s even going on. So it turns out that the Maori want the ability to remain autonomous from New Zealand, which in a democracy seems pretty questionable. The opposition wants to put that up for a democratic vote, and of course the Maori are refusing. They don’t care what the people of New Zealand think about what should happen in New Zealand.

But the people of New Zealand should care. And we should care as well. What’s happening over there is a case study that we should pay attention to. New Zealand has bent over backwards apologizing for the alleged evils of “colonization.” They’ve paid out reparations and flown the Maori flag and everything. They’ve centered their whole society around “land acknowledgments” and so on. And now there are pagan chants breaking out in the middle of parliament. The Maori are explicitly campaigning against autonomy and equal rights. They’re threatening politicians who don’t agree with them. This is the sort of “enrichment” that western societies can expect when they start apologizing for their own existence.

And as Douglas Murray has pointed out, none of this makes any sense given the Maori’s history. If we’re going to play the game of generational guilt, they should be apologizing to all the people their ancestors have enslaved. Watch:

So the Maoris were a violent, brutal people. They practiced cannibalism and many other forms of horrific brutality. But just because they made it to New Zealand a few hundred years before Europeans, we are supposed to see it as some great tragedy that the Europeans took over. In fact we’re supposed to blame Europeans for engaging in violent conquest over people who themselves engaged in even more violent conquest.

Keep this absurd, debasing spectacle in mind whenever you hear about “reparations” in this country, or about how oppressed some “indigenous” group allegedly is. Even if you give these people what they want, for decades, they will always want more. No matter how much you apologize to them and pay them millions of dollars, it doesn’t matter. The moment you suggest withdrawing some of their privileges, they will revolt. They will descend into primal chants on the floor of parliament. They will turn your entire government into an international laughing stock.

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That is why the only approach to dealing with people like this — the one that New Zealand should have adopted a long time ago — is to deny them any special privileges in the first place. As the saying goes, “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” At this point, now that stone-age war chants have broken out in parliament, it’s probably too late for New Zealand to correct their mistake. And that should be a pretty big clue to everyone in this country that — unless we also want to return to the stone age — we should take a very different approach.

We should affirm the greatness of western civilization. We should take pride in our heritage and our culture. We should reject false narratives about our history. That’s how you neutralize the grievance mongers and the guilt-merchants so that they have no power. They can do their stone-age chants in the shower. The rest of us will be doing what New Zealand is apparently now incapable of: We’ll be living in a functioning, self-governing democracy.

And if there’s one lesson from these bizarre and embarrassing clips out of New Zealand, it’s that no one should ever take that for granted.