VJM Publishing

Why the New Zealand Working Class is Destined to Turn to Fascism

With the signing of the UN Compact on Migration, the Sixth Labour Government all but assured that the New Zealand working class will turn to fascism. They won’t do so straight away, and many will claim that they won’t do so at all, but the snowball has been set in motion. This essay will explain why.

From the turn of the century in Europe, a new pattern started to emerge: the resurgence of anti-globalist sentiments. Globalism had dominated the world for the previous half-century. Nationalism was comprehensively defeated in World War II, and the next fifty years were characterised by anti-protectionist trade agreements that liberalised commerce and trade all over the world.

Western workers were promised that this liberalisation would lead to better living conditions, as their wages would be able to buy goods and services more cheaply and efficiently. The reality turned out to be the opposite. Western workers turned out to be the product, and trade liberalisation simply meant that international companies could play workers in different countries off against each other, bidding their wages down to the floor.

Eventually the globalist propaganda stopped being effective, as people started to see through it. They realised that they had been cheated – not only were they not richer, but they now had to live with the effects of the mass importation of cheap labour into their communities. This meant increased violence, increased property crimes and increased sex crimes, all of which the elite were safely inured from by virtue of living in wealthy neighbourhoods.

The European working class were brutalised by globalism. Their wages went down, their neighbourhoods became less safe, and on top of it all, they were regularly humiliated by the same political class who claimed to represent them. Leftists habitually dismissed working-class concerns as “bigoted” or “motivated by racism”, as if it were unreasonable to complain about the destruction of one’s community or of the possibility of raising a family on one wage.

This sentiment has found increasing expression in fascism. At the last Swedish General Election, the Sweden Democrats won 17.6% of the vote. The globalist parties refuse to co-operate with them, and as a consequence the country has been ungovernable for the last 100 days. In Germany, opinion polls are suggesting that the Alternative Fuer Deutschland now has as much support as the major social democratic party, which suggests that the government of Europe’s largest economy risks falling into a similar state of paralysis.

New Zealand is merely a few decades behind on this same miserable path of social decay.

You’d have to be insane to vote National as a working-class person. Not only do they want to cut all of your social assistance, but they also want to import the same hordes of cheap labour that has destroyed Europe over the last 40 years.

But you’d also have to be insane to vote for Labour. The New Zealand Labour Party has long ago replaced all of its working-class sentiments with bourgeois ones. As a result, they’re right behind the UN’s Global Compact on Migration. This follows in the same vein as the recent increase in the refugee quota, and is commensurate with Jacinda Ardern’s ambition to become a highly-ranked UN official.

As a working-class person, an increase in the refugee quota, and an liberalisation of the ability of cheap labour to move here, have a number of terrible consequences.

The first and most obvious is the destruction of the economic position of the working class. The economic position of those who sell their labour for a living is entirely dependent on the supply of that labour. Basic economics tells us that if the supply of cheap labour goes up, the wages go down. So the more people who are let into the country to compete with the working class, the lower the standard of living becomes.

Even worse is the destruction of the social position of the working class. Instead of being seen as economically disadvantaged individuals who might need extra social assistance, the working class (especially the white working class) are now seen as enjoying privilege that refugees don’t have. They now find themselves facing verbal abuse for defending their own class interests by opposing globalisation.

These consequences come on top of the changes brought by the last 30 years of neoliberalism, which has changed the position of the working class from an essential part of the nation to a disposable commodity to be bargained down to the cheapest possible price. The net result of it all is a deep sense of humiliation, rage and betrayal.

If the working class feels like the left has abandoned them (perhaps because the left has become captured by bourgeois interests), they will find an alternative from outside the right-left liberal democratic dichotomy. There is ample historical precedent for this – indeed, it was a deep sense of anger among the working class that led to Mussolini and Hitler taking power in their respective countries.

The Maori working class will be the most receptive to the fascist message. This is apparent from their existing high level of support for the (supposedly) nationalist New Zealand First party. This particular group has already lost their social position from colonisation, and are not at all keen to lose it again to what is effectively more colonisation. They will be among the strongest supporters of fascism in New Zealand.

If the left react to this intensifying sense of abandonment by lecturing the working class about how they are racist, and how they are selfish, and how they need to sacrifice more to do their share of helping out, then a fascist resurgence is all but guaranteed. As Emmanuel Macron recently proved in France, nothing will amplify the fury of the working class more than to inflict moral lecturing on top of their economic and social suffering.

The New Zealand working class will turn to fascism because the two mainstream parties are co-operating – and will continue to co-operate – to take measures that will destroy the economic and social position of that class. The inability of the working class to find expression within the liberal democratic system will lead to them destroying it by supporting a fascist alternative as soon as one arises. The New Zealand Establishment will not heed the lessons of history.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis).

The Case For Cannabis: Cannabis Does Not Cause Paranoia

A common piece of received wisdom about cannabis is that it causes paranoia. This paranoia is part of a wider suite of psychiatric problems that cannabis is erroneously blamed for – problems that justify putting people in cages to protect them from themselves. As this article will examine, the argument that cannabis should be prohibited because it causes paranoia is invalid.

The truth is that it’s prohibition that causes paranoia. Cannabis itself is medicinal, and has never caused paranoia in and of itself.

Proof for this is unnecessary for anyone who has used cannabis in the Netherlands or, more recently, in places like Colorado, Uruguay, Washington or California. Anyone who has done this can tell you that the same kind of paranoia that people sometimes get when using cannabis in New Zealand does not occur.

There are clear reasons why using cannabis creates paranoia in places like New Zealand.

The first group of reasons relate to the Police. The fact is that the Police do not make moral judgments about the laws they are enforcing. To the sort of person who becomes a Police officer, there’s no difference between arresting a murderer, arresting a cannabis user or arresting someone for being a member of a race that the Government has targeted for extermination. The Police just enforce the law.

Therefore, anyone using cannabis in a place where it is illegal has every reason to be paranoid, because there’s a chance that if their activity was discovered by the Police they could end up locked in a cage. It’s possible to get seven years’ imprisonment for growing a medicinal cannabis plant in New Zealand, and even though a custodial sentence is unlikely for simple possession the fear is reasonable.

All of the reasons within this group have been created directly by cannabis prohibition itself. If cannabis was legal, there would be no reason to fear the Police or the “Justice” system whenever one used it or had it in one’s possession.

The second group of reasons relate to society. When a person uses cannabis and realises that it is nothing like what it is said to be like, it’s natural to ask some very deep and dark questions about the nature of society. In particular, one comes to ask how it is that cannabis could have become illegal in the first place, given that it’s clearly a medicine that has beneficial effects.

Eventually this leads to people asking some extremely difficult questions. If it was only possible to make cannabis illegal by virtue of telling an enormous amount of lies about it, what nefarious forces controlled the resources necessary to propagate all these lies? Who is really in control of this system, if they can make lies into a truth that is parrotted by Police, politicians, teachers and doctors?

And if doctors didn’t even know that cannabis is medicinal despite the stacks and stacks of evidence in favour of the idea, what else don’t they know? Or, even worse, if they did know that cannabis was medicinal but lied about it for sake of greater profit or for fear of Government disapproval, what else could they be lying about?

Naturally, all this sort of thinking is capable of creating intense anxiety – but it’s cannabis prohibition that makes this possible. Without cannabis prohibition, none of this reasoning makes any sense, and is unlikely to be entertained. A pleasant cannabis experience will not cause a person to question the structure of society, unless that society has not already told him that cannabis was the boogeyman.

In any case, many drugs can be anxiogenic if a person does not use them correctly. Caffeine can easily cause paranoia and anxiety if a person who isn’t used to it takes too much, and this is considered humourous by most people, not a reason to ban coffee. If cannabis causes a person anxiety, they should either use a different strain (preferably one with more CBD) or abstain from using it altogether. Weed is not necessarily for everyone!

It is possible that cannabis can cause a kind of existential paranoia. Many people are conditioned to never think about deeper philosophical questions, and some of these people discover that the cannabis high induces them to do so. Cannabis can have a massively deconditioning effect, why is why artists use it, but this can lead to the user entertaining lines of thought that have otherwise long been suppressed.

The way to deal with this, however, is either to fix it by philosophy or to avoid using cannabis (or to try a form of cannabis with less THC in it). Life is anxiogenic in a myriad of ways, and therefore it’s unreasonable to expect that the deeply contemplative mindset brought about by cannabis use should leave a person immune to paranoia. It is a similar case with most other cannabis-related anxiety.

The argument that cannabis ought to be illegal because it causes paranoia is false. The majority of paranoia brought on by cannabis use is a function of prohibition. If cannabis prohibition went away, most of the paranoia associated with it would also go away, therefore we’re better off if it were legal.

This article is an excerpt from The Case For Cannabis Law Reform, compiled by Vince McLeod and due for release by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.

The Case For Four Specialist Seamers in the Black Caps

A recent article argued that this is the best ever Black Caps Test side. Even so, there’s scope for the Black Caps to get even better. There is plenty of talent on the sideline as well, and finding a way to find some of it in the run-on XI might make the team stronger – as this article will examine.

The Black Caps have never had a batting foursome as good as Williamson-Taylor-Nicholls-Watling. The first two stand alongside Martin Crowe as the best the country has ever produced. Watling has been world-class as a wicketkeeper-bat and Nicholls has already broken into the top 10 Test batting rankings. Moreover, our two openers in Latham and Raval are as good as any since John Wright and Bruce Edgar.

The Black Caps aren’t lacking the ability to build big innings, and they already have Nicholls and Watling as batsmen capable enough to rebuild after a top order failure. There is therefore no need for an insurance batsman at 7, especially if this means that a good chunk of overs have to be bowled by a non-specialist.

With batting that good, we can afford to lose a bit of extra batting at 7 for the sake of strengthening the bowling. In other words, we could consider not playing an all-rounder in that role, but rather a bowling all-rounder like Mitchell Santner or Matt Henry.

The Black Caps could field a team of:

1. Raval
2. Latham
3. Williamson
4. Taylor
5. Nicholls
6. Watling
7. Santner
8. Henry
9. Southee
10. Wagner
11. Boult

This would allow us to field an outstanding pace battery without having a weak batting unit. Probably we would open with Boult and Henry in such a situation, with Wagner playing his usual role as third seamer. Southee’s bowling would be much more dangerous than the alternatives for fourth seamer.

Such a composition would make for an exceptionally pure Black Caps side. There would be five specialist batsmen, one wicketkeeper, and five specialist bowlers.

A critic might argue that choosing such a side will increase the chances of being bowled out cheaply. The counter argument to that is to say that a pace battery of Boult, Henry, Wagner and Southee would wreck opposition teams so regularly that we would get away with a tiny extra chance of a batting collapse if it meant more overs from a truly dangerous bowler.

In any case, all four of them can bat a bit. Henry (19), Southee (17), Boult (14) and Wagner (12) all average in the double figures. A tail with Mitchell Santner at 7, who averages 25 and has the promise to average 30, would be just as good batting-wise as one with an all-rounder at 7, Santner at 8 and one fewer specialist seamer. Bowling-wise, four seamers would be superpowered.

Dan McGlashan is the man with his finger on the statistical pulse of New Zealand. His magnum opus, Understanding New Zealand, is the complete demographic analysis of the Kiwi people.

VJMP Reads: Ted Kaczynski’s Unabomber Manifesto VI

This reading carries on from here.

The next chapter in Industrial Society and Its Future, beginning from paragraph 171, is ‘The Future’. Here, Kaczynski discusses the likely outcomes of the perpetuation of the techno-industrial system.

One potential outcome is that increasing technology and automation means that the vast majority of human labour becomes performed by machines instead. At this point, one must consider whether this machine workforce is to remain working under direct human supervision or if it is to work autonomously. It could be that our increasing dependence on the decisions made by these machines make us dependent on them, in the same way that we have become dependent on other technology.

The horror scenario, as Kaczynski sees it, is that automation will incentivise the extermination of the masses on the grounds that they are no longer needed for their labour. A more humane scenario is that the elite uses propaganda to reduce the birth rate of the masses so that natural deaths cause the population to decline. This may become necessary because of ecological considerations. The only alternative is to essentially domesticate humans like pets.

Kaczynski flat-out rejects the idea that work for the sake of the work is the solution to the problem. Makework will not lead to any kind of fulfillment. Even more of a worry is the fact that these problems will continue to get worse. The bourgeois sort of person who runs the machine will only become more and more a part of it, and the machine will grow to absorb all, barring the odd pocket of nature kept as reserve.

He concludes, “It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.”

The next section is titled ‘Strategy’. Here Kaczynski talks about what specifically can be done to oppose the techno-industrial system. Most people believe that the forwards march of the system is inevitable; Kaczynski disagrees. It can be meaningfully opposed in two ways: by increasing the stresses within it to hasten its collapse, and by developing an alternative ideology so that people can learn to live without it.

The French and Russian Revolutions provide an example of how this could be achieved. Ideologies must have both a positive and a negative ideal. Kaczynski proposes valuing wild, raw Nature as something that should prosper freely. This includes human nature. If the techno-industrial system collapses, people will come to live close to Nature again, on account of that they will be forced to.

Most people don’t like psychological conflict, and as a consequence they do like black-and-white thinking. Despite that, it’s important to target the ideology at intelligent and thoughtful people, because they will be most capable of influencing others. Even so, it’s necessary to have a simpler version of the ideology that even simple people can understand. Care must be taken so that propagandising towards this simpler version doesn’t put the more thoughtful people off.

The most important thing is building a committed core of good people. For this reason one needs to take care who one attacks and who one befriends. The general public should never be blamed, but focus should be placed on the ruling class. Care must be taken not to encourage conflict in the wrong places, because that will lead to more technology. It’s also a mistake for minorities to put members into high positions in government and business, because that will just hasten the absorption of that culture by the system.

For this reason, it’s better for revolutionaries to not try to win power in the democratic system. There is no way to change the system from within without getting co-opted. The collapse of the techno-industrial system will induce short-term suffering, and the politicians will get blamed for it, so best to stay out of the way until such a time as this suffering gets blamed on the shortcomings of the system.

The revolution will have to happen in all nations at the same time. For this reason, it’s better for the world to become interconnected – the hope is that if, for example, America collapses, it will take the rest of the world down with it.

People will not be aided by becoming more passive in the face of the system. Humans have a will to power; this is a fact. This will to power can be better satisfied in primitive conditions, because people will satisfy it by meeting their survival needs.

Technology can be freely employed by revolutionaries, but only if it is directly employed in the destruction of the techno-industrial system. Humans cannot be trusted with technology any more than any alcoholic can be trusted to babysit a bottle of wine. In any case, revolutionaries should have as many children as they can, because anti-technological attitudes will be in some way inherited.