The Fifth Acceptance of alternative centrism is the acceptance that the Alternative Left is correct when they speak of the importance of justice.
Aristotle considered justice, and the application of justice, the basis of civilisation. “Justice is the ordering of the political association,” he wrote in Politics I.2. His reasoning was that society comes together for the sake of securing and achieving justice. It’s with this aim that individuals form family households, families form village associations and villages become city-states. It’s in the bonds of justice that civilisation can develop.
The Alternative Leftist will claim that justice is the most important feature of society. Without it, no order, freedom, peace or truth is possible.
Injustice is the basis of all political dissent. Most other forms of suffering can be endured with little resentment, but the suffering of injustice tends to bring with it a particular form of humiliation that leads rapidly to political action. The Alternative Leftist would argue – and the Alternative Centrist would agree – that great levels of injustice are why the Western World is in so much chaos at the moment.
The logic of the Alternative Left, and the logic of the Fifth Acceptance, is that all of the previous four positions are unjust in their own way. Therefore, they are all insufficient in their own way.
Without justice, no order can be possible because people will fight incessantly. The Alternative Left argues that the Establishment Right errs on the side of excessive order when it refuses, stubbornly, to countenance the redistribution of property on the grounds that it would be destabilising. Aristotle’s concept of distributive justice suggests that injustice occurs when the wealthy end up with all of the resources, and the lower classes with nothing.
If one looks back at the times of extreme disorder in history, whether global or local, they were usually preceded by times of extreme injustice. Even if the winners of the wars arising from the disorder decide, post facto, that the losers had no legitimate grievance, the perception of one is enough to start a war over it. As David Icke would remind us, perception is reality. As long as the perception of injustice exists, there will be disorder.
Neither will there be any freedom without justice. Most obviously, this is because the unjust will take it away. Examples abound in the countless free speech abuses committed by various totalitarian governments. The injustice of the War on Drugs is a further example. If the unjust are allowed into power, they will inevitably strip freedoms from anyone they don’t like.
The absence of justice has a suppressive effect on freedom even without legislating it away. Just knowing that injustice is rife in a society is enough to make its members watch their backs, speak in hushed tones, stop trusting their neighbours and to withdraw from life. Injustice leads directly to hate and fear, which both restrict freedoms in the search for control.
Without justice, there is no peace for the same reason as there is no order. Injustice leads to resentments which lead to violence. The victims of injustice sometimes choose to not let their oppressors rest. The greater and more widespread the injustices, the more powerful this sentiment. If it gets powerful enough, revolutions or civil wars break out.
Finally, without justice there can be no truth. It might seem that the usual problem is a lack of truth leading to a lack of justice, but it can also be the other way around. As Basil Liddell-Hart wrote in ‘Why Don’t We Learn From History’, unjust people keep telling lies to gain unjust advantage over others. So wherever you have injustice you also have falsehood. Only just people can be relied upon to tell the truth.
As anyone who has studied psychology knows, finding the truth is often hard not because of the intelligence requirement, but because of the honesty one. As soon as people have political or religious loyalties, they also have an interest in telling lies. Invariably, one’s political or religious in-group will eventually commit some immoral deed, and then loyalty to that in-group will make one tell lies to save face. Injustice, then, directly destroys truth even more than it destroys order, freedom or peace.
Thus it can be seen that, from the perspective of the Alternative Leftist, justice is the ultimate value, and that, without the Fifth Acceptance, none of the others can be realised. The Fifth Acceptance accepts that holistic perspectives are sometimes necessary, particularly because they are broad enough to encompass everyone’s needs.
There is a lot of injustice in today’s world, for many reasons. Inherited privilege is one of those reasons. This inherited privilege, over generations, tends to replicate a feudal system, as the inheritors of property can charge rent on it, and then use the rent money to buy more property and so on. Unless there is a major readjustment, in the form of wealth redistribution or revolution, everyone else gets reduced to serfdom. This is why the Alternative Left pushes the idea of universal basic income so hard.
This motivation to push a universal basic income follows the observation that the Establishment Left have abandoned the poor. This abandonment is the essential aspect of the Establishment Left, and how they got to be part of the Establishment in the first place. But it vacated an empty space on the Left for an alternative movement. The Fifth Acceptance acknowledges that the Establishment Left have betrayed the truly disadvantaged, and that the Alternative Left are rightfully filling that empty niche.
The Alternative Left are, in the minds of many, synonymous with Social Justice Warriors. In this sense, they are the new moral puritans, challenging the Establishment Right for most disdain for sex and alcohol. This is one manner in which they are different to the Establishment Left, who have degenerated to the point where they care about freedom more than propriety. The wowserism of the Alternative Left, exemplified by their prudishness around age gaps in dating, reveals clearly that Communism is a religion.
One of the major social trends powering the Alternative Left (as with the other alternative positions) is the rapidly changing nature of information. However, awareness of this has yet to reach the people in power. The heavily-mocked conception of the Internet as “a series of tubes” has hardly been updated since first uttered in 2006; old people still don’t get the Internet or Internet culture. Hence the need for alternative conceptions of justice, fit for the Internet Age.
The Fifth Acceptance agrees that new thinking about justice is required. In some ways, this will require going back to Aristotle; in some ways, this will require a 21st Century perspective.
The obsession with justice goes too far when it becomes an obsession with equality. It’s obvious that people are different, whether individuals or groups. Even if it were true that, on some ultimate metaphysical level, all people have precisely the same spiritual value, this would not manifest as perfect equality by every material measure. To deny this is simply stupid.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote “Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.” Hence the Alternative Centrist believes that justice, just like order, freedom, peace and truth, also needs to be moderated, else it begins to destroy the other qualities.
This stupidity of insisting that justice must mean equality by every possible measure is what gives rise to the Fifth Rejection.
*
This chapter is from The Alternative Centrist Manifesto, the upcoming work of political philosophy that offers the answers to the political problems of the West.
The left and right factions of the Australian Establishment came together this week to strip freedom of speech from the Australian nation. This happened in the form of the Labor and Liberal parties joining forces across the aisle to pass new hate speech legislation. This will be the most aggressive hate speech legislation ever passed in Australia. The Australian Greens have suggested the bill is so restrictive that it will become illegal to criticise Benjamin Netanyahu.
Under the new bill, the head of the secret intelligence service will be given the powers to ban any political group the Australian political establishment doesn’t like. This extreme measure, reminiscent of NKVD or Gestapo control systems, will mean that anyone organising to challenge the Australian political establishment will risk simply getting banned before any real challenge can be made.
The differences between this system and a one-party totalitarian state are minor.
One common, but naive, argument made about hate speech laws is that they protect people from being degraded or abused. Well-meaning people then get suckered into supporting them in the belief they will only impact white supremacists and terrorists. This is wrong, but an easy trap to fall into.
The primary danger with hate speech laws is that literally anything can be defined as hateful. Even the most innocuous-sounding statement can be declared to be “associated” with some hate group or ideology. So, in practice, whether or not a person gets prosecuted for hate speech depends on the whims of whoever is in power, not on any objective moral or legal standard.
VJM Publishing first came to national attention in New Zealand in 2019, when we were attacked in the mainstream media by the Human Rights Commission for selling ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ t-shirts on TradeMe. The media beat-up took every possible opportunity to link the sale of the shirts to white supremacy and to Brenton Tarrant, declaring that I was racist, hateful, divisive etc. Presstitutes like Kanoa Lloyd told the country, without any evidence at all, that the t-shirts “were intended to ‘shock and hurt’.”
If the Human Rights Commissioner takes to the mainstream media to call you hateful and racist for saying something, you can best your last dollar that you’d also get prosecuted for a hate crime for saying that thing if hate speech laws were in effect. Therefore, it’s logical to assume that saying “It’s Okay To Be White” will be considered hate speech under the new laws. Saying that it’s okay to be you will be a crime, if the political establishment doesn’t like you and hate speech laws are in effect.
It might be argued that people will resist these laws. The ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ incident proved otherwise. TradeMe head of Safety George Hiotakis initially stated, perfectly accurately, that t-shirts saying ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ do not violate any rules about racist slogans. “Items which marginalise individuals or promote one race at the cost of another cannot be sold onsite,” Hiotakis said [quoted from The Independent link above]. ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ clearly does neither.
Paul Hunt wasn’t giving in that easily, though. Using his full influence as Human Rights Commissioner, Hunt persuaded masses of people to contact TradeMe to lay a complaint. Hiotakis eventually caved to this frothing mob, cancelling the listing and banning the shirts from sale.
This proved an important point, of extreme relevance to the hate speech discussion: whether something is considered hate speech depends on whether a mob has been whipped up about it. If there’s a mass of people mad about some statement, no matter how innocuous, then it’s hate speech. If no-one, or only a few people, are mad about it, then it’s legitimate speech.
Rule by law goes out the window once hate speech laws are brought in. Because hate cannot be defined accurately – as proven by the ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ debacle – hate speech laws represent rule by mob, not law.
However, this perfectly suits those with power and influence. Because Paul Hunt has the power and influence to stir up a mob and have me cancelled, and I don’t have the power to impact him, such laws give the ruling class the power to strike down any wrongthinker they please, with no risk. All that needs to happen is for Hunt or some other powerful Government figure to take to the mainstream media denouncing the wrongthinkers, and the herd falls in line.
It’s impossible to think of a single example of anything that could not be considered hate speech if the definition of hate was broad enough. The ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ example is proof of this. Saying it’s okay to be white is the exact opposite of hatred: it’s affirming the moral okayness of white people in the face of constant media demonisation. But the ruling class can nevertheless declare it hate speech and destroy the people saying it, and get the consent of the masses to do so, on account of their overwhelming narrative control.
Once hate speech laws are brought in, the people who brought in those laws will then decide what other people are allowed to say. This is because the people who brought in the laws can arbitrarily define absolutely anything they don’t like as hate. Hate speech laws in New Zealand will be used for one purpose: to crack down on everyday Kiwis criticising the political establishment. It’s imperative that free and decent people resist them to the maximum extent possible.
‘Clown World’ is a term used to describe the idea that ordinary life has become like a twisted circus where nothing is as it should be. The term is used everyday on any Internet forum devoted to cyberculture, in particular on imageboards such as 4chan. Clown World not only describes the end result of the Black Iron Prison, it heralds the overcoming of that same prison.
The term ‘Clown World’ is a development from the concept of ‘Bizarro World’, which is a fictional planet appearing in the DC Comics Universe. Thanks to the success of these comics, the term ‘Bizarro World’ entered popular culture as a term describing a world where everything was inverted, or the opposite of how it ought to be.
In the digital age, Bizarro World has transformed into Clown World. Like Bizarro World, Clown World is where everything is the opposite of Normal World. But, unlike Bizarro World, Clown World refers to the environment we find ourselves in here and now, and not some distant, fictional planet. The term is used by people who feel that something is deeply wrong with today’s society.
In Clown World, the mainstream media confuses instead of informs. Law enforcement agencies harass instead of protect. Spiritual authorities no longer believe in anything beyond the material. The University system no longer knows truth from political expedience. Medical authorities seek profit before health. Government agencies, instead of defending our interests, corral us like cattle.
In the digital age, people are no longer astonished by strangeness. Novelty, instead of alleviating boredom, merely adds to the confusion of overstimulation. So today, instead of life seeming bizarre like it did 50 years ago, it seems like a demented clown show.
Although this concept sounds dark, the point of it is not to dwell on that darkness. The underlying idea of Clown World is that the current difficulties of life in the West can be overcome by laughter. This is why my book on the subject, Clown World Chronicles, is written as a satire (if a grim one).
The green cartoon frog on the front cover of Clown World Chronicles is named Honkler. This character can be found any time something truly absurd is happening. The horns in both of his hands provide the musical backdrop to Clown World: an obnoxious honking, like something from a cheap carnival show. The mockery of Honkler calls us to see the humour in Clown World, instead of falling into despair.
Although some contend that the Clown World concept is inherently a right-wing idea, particularly associated with the alternative right, this is not accurate. It’s true that the counter-culture of 2026 is primarily right-wing, unlike the counter-culture of 1972, which was primarily left-wing. But the humorous element of today’s counter-culture comes from the alternative centre.
The alternative centre rejects the Establishment, but they also reject the alternative left and the alternative right, who they consider dangerous extremists. In the eyes of the alternative centre, the alternative left and alternative right are almost as responsible for Clown World as their opposite numbers in the Establishment.
Clown World is all around us today. It can be found any time someone says “That’s ridiculous!” in response to a news report that sounds too absurd to be true – but is.
Honk Honk!
The Causes Of Clown World
Clown World is the result of two principal forces.
The first is a natural historical decay process. This is often summarised in cyberspace as the “Hard times lead to strong men, strong men lead to good times, good times lead to weak men, weak men lead to hard times” cycle.
First outlined in Plato’s Republic, this process describes how the initial state of Nature was tamed by determined pioneers, who created great wealth. The comfort provided by this wealth led to people becoming soft, and this softness led to bad decisions which eventually recreated the poverty of the original state of Nature.
In the modern timeline, the economic golden decades following World War II led to greater wealth than at any other time in history. Never before did people have access to such a wide range of material comforts and pleasures. But this led to a uniquely entitled and infantilised population.
At this point in the decay cycle, society places its worst members in charge.
Right now, the West is in the “weak men lead to hard times” part of the cycle. The people captaining the Western Ship of State have never known struggle. This is why they are preoccupied with trivial issues, and it’s why they are incapable of standing up for the truth.
The second major force behind Clown World is deliberate agitation and destruction for the sake of control. This agitation and destruction is wrought by globalist interests known collectively as the Globohomo Gayplex, or Globohomo for short. Globohomo is the sadistic force that controls today’s mainstream media and culture.
These controllers are themselves divided into two major groups, who operate in alliance against the rest of us.
The first, and most powerful of these, are the neoliberals. Neoliberalism is the prevailing economic paradigm of the Western World, and has been ever since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher pushed it on us in the 1980s. According to neoliberalism, borders are an impediment to economic growth, and therefore the West needs to import as much cheap labour as possible.
Neoliberals are the same enemy that the human race has faced since that enemy invented usury in Babylon – silver magicians. Their obsession with money has led them to put immediate, material concerns above long-term, spiritual ones. The end result is a tawdry, soulless consumerism that leaves people in despair.
The second major group of people responsible for Clown World are the Marxists. These are the same pseudo-revolutionaries that destroyed Russia, China, Cambodia and dozens of other places, and who wish to radically transform the West along similar lines.
In Clown World, these Marxists aim to cause as much chaos as possible. Their belief is that society must be destroyed so that a new one can be built on revolutionary principles.
Unlike the old Marxists, who were obsessed with the question of class, the new Marxists care only about race. The vanguard of this new Marxism are the Brown Communists. These people push the same resentment-fuelled hate narrative as the regular Communists, only they hate white people instead of the bourgeoisie, and they claim to speak for brown people instead of the proletariat.
How They Push Clown World On Us
Clown World is pushed onto us by both the neoliberal and the Marxist wings of Globohomo, working in concert. Their main strategy is to normalise low-frequency behaviours, emotions and attitudes. They achieve this by controlling the information we receive, and feeding it to us in such a way that it warps our perceptions of reality.
The neoliberals can achieve this perception control through their control of the apparatus of propaganda, i.e. the mainstream media. The vast majority of mainstream media concerns are ultimately owned by international banking and finance interests such as BlackRock and Vanguard, and these interests instruct the media to only run stories that serve the globalist agenda.
By showcasing debates between two apparently opposing sides, the mainstream media can create the impression of lively political discourse. But, inevitably, the two sides showcased will both be loyal to the same set of globalists behind the scenes, and will not criticise them ever.
The most typical way Globohomo creates the illusion of genuine political exchange is by setting up debates between neoliberals and Marxists, both globalists. The ensuing debates over trivial issues create the perception that anything is up for discussion and questioning, except globalism itself. Anyone arguing for the well-being of their own people in the face of globalist interests is never given a platform.
By not platforming certain ideas, the masses come to think that those ideas don’t exist, or that they have very little popular support. Aldous Huxley once observed that “By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.” This is just as true of neoliberal totalitarians as of Nazis or Communists.
Control of the media narrative is also used to stifle dissent by destroying the reputations of any wrongthinker who can find a platform. The globalists achieve this in two major ways: either they smear their enemies as insane, or they smear them as evil. In practice, the method chosen depends on the competency of the target: if incompetent then insane, if competent then evil.
This smearing is then used to manipulate our fear of social exclusion. The television tells us that, if we agree with the people smeared as insane or evil, then we will be targeted next.
The Marxists achieve perception control through the influence gained from their successful completion of the Long March Through the Institutions. This was the name given by Marxist activist Rudi Dutschke to the strategy of transforming society by infiltrating all of society’s institutions, and then subverting them to serve Marxist interests.
Thanks to their control of the institutions, particularly the educational institutions, the Marxists have been able to normalise all kinds of false and destructive ideas, particularly ideas about how the lowest should be championed and the highest torn down. Modern classrooms are now places of indoctrination and not learning. Any student who questions the dogma is humiliated into silence by the rest of their class.
Neoliberals and Marxists, despite their surface differences, have come together as a globalist anti-spiritual alliance. This is typically seen when a Marxist journalist student writes some propaganda for a mainstream media outfit, and then the neoliberal editor of that outfit approves it for publication because it serves the interests of his globalist paymasters.
The end result is that Clown World is normalised through the mainstream media, making it seem inescapable.
Where Clown World Is Going In 2026
The future of Clown World looks like an extremely unpleasant place. Globohomo is eager to turn up the heat and bring the rest of us further into enslavement. From today’s vantage point, four existing trends are likely to worsen into 2026.
The first trend is physical control. This will be tightened through increasing surveillance.
Advanced facial recognition technologies are now a reality thanks to the greater bandwidth afforded by 5G. This has made it possible to set up a network of cameras that can track multiple details about a person in real time. Not only their movements, but also their emotional and mental state can be detected from cameras connected to algorithms that can recognise signs of distress, anxiety, tiredness, hunger, rage etc.
This data enables the authorities to see precisely who each of us interacts with, and when, and where, and for how long. They can also make a good guess at why we’re interacting with those others. If their algorithms detect that people might be gathering to conspire against them, pre-emptive arrests become a possibility.
The second trend is emotional control. This will be achieved through provoking fear and apathy.
The mainstream media will reach new levels of hysteria next year. We can expect that hype about an impending war with China will reach unprecedented levels. As with the coronavirus hysteria, which also dominated media space, anyone who doesn’t go along with it will be ostracised for not doing their part towards the greater good.
The foremost methods for provoking apathy will be increasing doses of pharmaceutical drugs and increasing levels of climate alarmism, nihilistic attitudes and general despair on the mainstream news shows. These shows will continue to preach the message that not only is the world a terrifying and awful place in which to live, but it will get worse, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
The combination of fear and apathy results in an inability to resist the Clown World ruling class. The thought of resistance is made to seem too daunting, too unrealistic, and our fellow man too unworthy of it.
The third trend is intellectual control. In principle, this has already been achieved long ago. But in 2026, it will intensify.
Globohomo will forbid the discussion of certain ideas by destroying the reputations of anyone who tries. Anti-globalists and nationalists will continue to be demonised as white supremacists and potential terrorist threats. Anyone considered a wrongthinker will be compared to Adolf Hitler, Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant.
This tightening of intellectual control will be starkest in the research institutions. As discussed in the previous section, globalists have already infiltrated the university system to the extent that they can expel non-globalists at will. In fact, they can expel anyone for wrongthink at any time, and the definition of wrongthink can change on a daily basis as objectives change.
The globalists will be aided in this by artificial intelligence. Algorithms already exist that can detect content of a particular nature and scrub it from social media. Because the large social media companies are all owned by globalists, they can work in concert to delete unwanted content before it can spread to a wider audience.
The fourth trend is spiritual control. As with intellectual control, globalists have already achieved this long ago and intend to tighten it in 2026.
The controllers of Clown World will increase their spiritual control over the rest of us by continuing to subject us to the Clown World Fork, which is when we are forced to choose between an Adharmic religion or atheism. Anyone following a Dharmic religion is then smeared as insane or evil, and thereby prevented from holding real political power.
The most influential of the Adharmic religions are the Abrahamic cults and their atheistic equivalent: Marxism. All of these religions prioritise the destruction or enslavement of outsiders as a legitimate means of gaining control. The consequence of promoting these religions today, as it has been for centuries, is to divide and conquer by sowing discord and strife. As such, Globohomo happily promotes any and all of them.
Related to this will be the continued resistance of Clown World governments to the legalisation of spiritual sacraments such as cannabis and the psychedelics. Knowing these sacraments to be medicines that liberate people from spiritual slavery, the controllers of Clown World will continue to demonise users of them as insane, and to dismiss the treasures of spiritual insight as worthless.
The net result of all of these trends might not be significantly worse than 2025. If there is war in the South China Sea, or a drastic escalation in Ukraine, however, all four trends will accelerate sharply.
How To Resist Clown World
Resisting the further decay of Clown World comes down to a combination of knowledge and will.
The first thing to understand is that Clown World is a reality. Things are now worse than they have been at any time since World War Two. Even the atmosphere of the World Wars lacked the total despair of Clown World. Today, a sadistic and soulless globalist ruling class terrorises a world of utterly demoralised slave populations. Our situation is truly bad.
The second thing to understand is that Clown World is limited in time. It is not a historical inevitability, and is not the final result of historical change, but merely a phase that all societies decay into – and then rise out of. We are living in Clown World today because of a century of bad decisions made by weak Western leaders. We will rise out of it when we put strong leaders in power – not authoritarians, but those who have seen beyond in a spiritual sense.
The third, and most important, thing to understand is that we are more powerful than them. We know that we are afraid and that Globohomo is powerful, but the fact remains: they can only rule us with our consent. They can use trickery, but this is only effective thanks to our decision to remain ignorant. All Globohomo’s power is given to them, by us. We can take it back.
With the right understanding in place, taking the right actions is only a matter of willpower.
The easiest way to contribute to the truth movement is to organise into groups based on geographical proximity, and to share information within those groups. Something as simple as a Telegram group called ‘Truth Seekers X’ (where X is the name of your town) or ‘Save Us From Y’ (where Y is the name of a politician) is a good start towards waking a large number of people up.
Anyone can start their own media organ and build followers by sharing quality information. Josef Goebbels once wrote that totalitarian propaganda needs complete control of all narratives in order to be effective. It follows, therefore, that one great way to counter totalitarianism is to promote alternative narratives.
It doesn’t matter exactly what those alternative narratives are. The main thing is to question Globohomo when it demands that we live in fear and submission.
Willpower also comes into play when making the right spiritual decisions. On one level, Clown World is the final result of all the times we chose to do harm to others because of selfish reasons. It is therefore a manifestation of our own karmic debt.
Wholesale resistance to Clown World will only be possible with a revival of true spirituality. Such a revival must happen, given the cyclical nature of history, and given that we are currently at a low point in that cycle. It’s only a matter of putting our hearts and minds behind it.
Clown World was foretold a long time ago. Such bad times always occur at the end of great ages, such as our current transition from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. It is possible that Clown World will become even worse in coming years but, after it, a great Golden Age will begin.
*
Vince McLeod is an occult philosopher, psychedelic enthusiast, satirist and social critic. He has a master’s degree in Psychology from the University of Canterbury, and is the author of Clown World Chronicles, the complete guide to the collapse of the Western World, as it happens.
I have no criminal record, and have only had limited interactions with the Police. In fact, I have only had five meaningful interactions with the New Zealand Police in my entire life (i.e. not including traffic stops, breathtests etc.). This article summarises all five and gives them a rating out of 10.
Interaction One, 1986
My mother is a diagnosed schizophrenic and has been since before I was born. She was institutionalised in 1986, when I was five. In the weeks leading up to this she had become more and more erratic and unhinged. One day, the Police came up and dragged her away screaming. Two officers held her under one arm each, her legs trailing in the gravel, and chucked her into the back of a wagon. Then they drove away to Ngawhatu mental hospital.
I understand that things were rougher in those days. It was still a tough thing to see as a kid, and did not endear me to the Police. It taught me that the Police are there to enforce the will of the ruling class upon the plebs, and not to negotiate with them. Negotiation is something you do with equals – poor, mentally ill people are just to be smashed.
Rating: 0/10
Interaction Two, 1990
One of my relatives, who lived nearby, was a cannabis grower. For whatever reason, the Police figured this out and came to bust him one day. This wasn’t a close interaction, as I was mostly watching from next door while my relative’s place got turned over and he got led away in handcuffs. But it still coloured my attitude towards the Police.
I didn’t know anything about cannabis then. But I knew that actual crimes were murder, robbery, assault etc., not growing plants. My grandmother expressed a deep sense of injustice at the arrest and subsequent imprisonment, and at the effect that imprisonment had on my relative’s mental health, and these feelings influenced me heavily. That the Police would enforce oppressive laws like cannabis prohibition made me see them as evil.
Rating: 0/10
Interaction Three, Summer 2004/05
At this time I lived in a central Christchurch apartment. At about 2:30a.m. one Saturday morning I heard a smashing noise on the road outside. I looked out the window to see a bunch of youths, maybe 15-16, breaking windows on parked cars with golf clubs.
I called 111, explained the situation and a patrol car turned up in about five minutes. They arrested the youths, but not before pointing them towards my apartment so I could confirm on the phone it was them. I never heard from the Police about it, so I presume the youths confessed and got diversion or similar. In all, justice was delivered swiftly and efficiently.
Rating: 9/10
Interaction Four, Summer 2008/09
When I was a barman in Nelson, I got attacked by a drunken thug who I had cut off for being a drunken thug. Upon reporting the assault to the Police, I found that they weren’t particularly interested. Although there was supposedly a crackdown against alcohol violence underway at the time, they only grudgingly took my complaint, trying to convince me along the way that it probably wasn’t worth bothering with.
This surprised me, as the Police routinely arrest and lock up people for victimless drug crimes. On what planet is a violent crime no big deal, in comparison to that? I am grateful that the Police ended up prosecuting the offender and obtaining a conviction. But the way they handled my complaint made me realise that they’re not there to help working-class people, rather just manage us at the lowest possible cost. If that means fobbing an assault victim off then so be it.
Rating: 5/10
Interaction Five, July 2019
About 10.30a.m. one rainy Winter morning I got a knock on my front door. I stubbed out my joint and went outside to find two Police officers. They said they had come as part of Operation Whakahumanu to ask me some questions about my online activity. This was in the wake of me getting attacked in the mainstream media by the Human Rights Commission for selling ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ t-shirts on TradeMe.
Apparently the ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ saga had got me on a list of suspected white supremacists, so after the Christchurch mosque shooting I was suspected to be another mass killer in waiting. As someone with no criminal record and who doesn’t own firearms, I would have thought all violent criminals, at least, would be higher priority. It turns out that wrongthinkers are at the top of the hate list.
I refused to answer any questions and asked for a warrant, which they didn’t have, so I asked them to please leave the property. I had to repeat this a few times before they did.
Getting targeted by the Police in an intimidation and harassment campaign on Government orders is a deeply unpleasant experience. It emphasised to me the extent to which people like me – anyone who tells the truth – are the enemy of the ruling class.
Rating: 0/10
Total rating: 14/50 (2.8/10 average)
Generally my interactions with the New Zealand Police have been poor, despite not being a criminal. Although they sometimes do the right thing, they have clearly demonstrated to me that they are primarily the thugs of the ruling classes, and are happy to destroy lower-class people on spurious grounds if given an order to do so.
Bonus: this isn’t an interaction as such, but the Police appear to monitor everything I post online with the apparent intent to comb through it for wrongthink. Another 0/10.
