Most people have noticed all the Boomers getting mad recently about Maori language. Those of us who don’t watch the news have trouble comprehending the extent to which Boomers feel humiliated by non-English language use in mainstream media. The tendency among the young is to laugh in mockery, but there is a sinister agenda behind the control system’s actions.
It’s true that it’s humiliating being spoken to in a language you don’t understand. It feels very much like being a child again, helpless and not respected. It also feels like when you’re out of your depth intellectually, when you are stupid.
In either case, it’s a deeply disempowering and unsettling experience for most people (those of us who have lived in non-English speaking areas for a while usually don’t care, but few are privileged enough to have such an experience). Especially for those old enough to have already developed a grievance about the degree of future shock that modern life placed them under.
However, humiliating the plebs is precisely why the ruling class push languages that aren’t understood.
Theodore Dalrymple once stated that “In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.”
The Communists today are now part of Globohomo, the authoritarian Communist-Capitalist alliance that rules over Clown World. The logic of authoritarianism, however, is the same. Just as the schoolyard bully and the domestic tyrant induce submission through abuse, so too does the authoritarian government.
They can’t get away with corporal punishment anymore, so they focus on psychological punishment. Humiliation is the major component of that.
It is always authoritarians who bully people into pronouncing words the way those authoritarians want them pronounced. The libertarian is happy to let people pronounce words different ways, just like they’re happy to let people follow different religions. It’s just culture, part of the rich smorgasbord of life. Not so the authoritarian.
For the authoritarian, it’s always a matter of “respect” that you do what you’re told. You have to kneel down and obey your masters otherwise someone, somewhere, will be disrespected.
The authoritarian puts signs up telling the local people how to pronounce their own street names (see image at top, from outside the Nelson Library). As per the Dalrymple quote, it doesn’t correspond to reality to state that the people who live somewhere don’t know how to pronounce their own streets and neighbourhoods, and that they need to be told by the Government. But stating such absurdities increases the humiliation, so they do it.
The message is that you are too stupid to know how to pronounce your own streets and neighbourhoods. Therefore, you have to be taught the same way you were taught basic life lessons in kindergarten.
The implication is that everything about your culture might prove to be wrong. If you didn’t even know how to pronounce your own street, how can you be sure that free speech is really important?
The undertone is simple: you don’t belong here.
Forcing Maori language serves to remind the majority of New Zealand that this is someone else’s country. No matter how long your ancestors have lived here, you don’t really belong. Therefore, there’s no need to struggle for freedom or dignity. There’s no need to fight to rid New Zealand of political corruption. Just give up!
This is also why the control system tirelessly hounds you about pronouncing words incorrectly. If you have to be told, over and over again, how to pronounce Tauranga correctly, maybe you’re stupid? And, if you’re stupid, maybe the Government should just get on with things without needing your input?
Same deal with putting Maori language first on road signs and the names of Government departments. The whole point of this is not to encourage Maori langauge use. The point is to humiliate and, through humiliation, to induce submission to the ruling class.
None of this is an argument against the Maori language. I agree that te reo is a treasure and that learning to speak it will open up new avenues of thought. I agree that there are concepts in Maori that non-Maoris would benefit from learning. I agree that bilingual children tend to be smarter and have a much easier time learning further languages.
The best way to promote it, however, would be to emphasise such rational and logical arguments without force. That way, there wouldn’t be such a powerful counterreaction to it.
The force, however, is the point, because it humiliates. Humiliation engenders submission, which is the end goal of authoritarians everywhere.
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