If You Want An Alliance To Work, Leave Out The Christofascists

Suggestions did the rounds again this week that the minority parties unite under one banner. This has been a perennial suggestion since my first time in the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party in 2007. Now, as then, egos prevented the suggestion from getting anywhere. One thing would make forming an alliance to get over the 5% threshold much easier: leave out the Christofascists.

Ironically, the most recent suggestion to unite was made by Brian Tamaki. But few are willing to work alongside Tamaki on account of his toxic reputation. Tamaki is a classic example of a Christofascist, Christofascism being “the political direction of all attempts to place Christ at the center of social life and history.”

Tamaki, like his fellows Elliot Ikilei and Leighton Baker, wants to use the State to smash people he hates: drug users, homosexuals and prostitutes being the usual targets. The Christian fascist logic is that these people shouldn’t be tolerated. Like other fascists, the Christofascist has a massively overflated opinion of their own moral judgment.

Christian fascists don’t work well with others. Combining the ruthlessness of the authoritarian right with the arrogance of the authoritarian centre, these fascists are everything politics shouldn’t be: narcissistic, pompous fanatics who literally believe they’re appointed by God to rule over the rest of us.

Few others are as obnoxious as the Christofascist. Like their Abrahamic counterparts the jihadists, the Christofascist exists in a perpetual state of war against all outsiders. This puts him in a mindset of antagonistic, spiteful aggression, exemplified by their rejection of cannabis law reform.

As was observed at the Wellington protests earlier this year, co-operating with Christian fascists is extremely difficult. Not only do they want to hog the stage and the PA system, but they have no respect for other points of view, are happy to negotiate on behalf of everyone else without getting their consent for it, and are willing to jump in at the last minute to steal the limelight.

This level of arrogance is not as great as the arrogance that launched the Inquisition or murdered Hypatia, but it’s getting up there. It’s an arrogance that can only be submitted to, not co-operated with. So the proposal of this essay is that we don’t co-operate with them, i.e. we leave the Christofascists to form their own party and let the true freedom movement unite under a separate banner.

This arrangement would leave New Conservative, Advance NZ, ONE Party, Vision NZ and any Brian Tamaki, Elliot Ikilei or Leighton Baker-related vehicles to form their own Christofascist party. This party could then have the policy of banning all drugs, homosexuality, prostitution, music, dancing and levity. They can even freely propose to again make it legal to rape your wife.

The non-Christofascist parties outside of Parliament won 138,455 votes in 2020, or some 4.9% of the total (New Zealand First 75,021, or 2.6%; The Opportunities Party 43,449, or 1.5%; Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party 13,329, or 0.5%; NZ Outdoors Party 3,256, or 0.1%; Sustainable NZ Party 1,880, or 0.1%; Social Credit 1,520, or 0.1%). If these parties would combine under one non-Christofascist banner, they could seriously challenge the 5% threshold.

Possibly this would have to be a Winston Peters-led movement in order to get enough votes, and he might reason that he has a better chance by himself with New Zealand First (which is fair, considering that he’s been in Parliament with them before). Some might not think favourably of Peters, but he has one quality that contrasts him with the Establishment – he’s a nationalist.

An anti-Establishment, anti-Christofascist alliance would inevitably be nationalist in character. As such, it’s fitting for Winston Peters and his party to be at the centre of it. This might make it hard to integrate The Opportunities Party, who are led by – of all things – a foreign ex-Goldman Sachs banker. But integration of the others would not be too difficult.

The Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party is already nationalist in the sense that the vast majority of their voters are New Zealand-born, and very few of their voters are immigrants. An alliance that explicitly rejected the War on Drugs could easily win the support of ALCP voters, and this would suit a nationalist vehicle, as the War on Drugs was an imported foreign concept from the beginning.

The Outdoors Party, Sustainable NZ and Social Credit have several quality candidates in (among others) Sue Grey, Vernon Tava, Chris Leitch and Amanda Vickers. If candidates like these could ally with the high-IQ Kiwis in The Opportunities Party (like Dr. Ben Peters), with a token representative from the ALCP, and under the paternal guidance of Winston Peters for one last crusade against the Establishment, they could do well.

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