Reactionary Pakeha Politics

The 100 Days: Claiming Back New Zealand

What Has Gone Wrong And How We Can Control Our Politicians

by Amy Brooke, Howling At The Moon, 2013

A Reflective Review

- Dennis Small

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
Into the Valley of Death
Rode the six hundred”
(verse two of “The Charge of
The Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord
 Tennyson – were suicide
bombers a Western innovation born in the Crimea?!)
“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori*”
(from “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, by Wilfred Owen
in “The Penguin Book of First World
War Poetry”, ed. J. Silkin, 1979, p178)
“In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it. 
I said, 'Is it good, friend?
It is bitter – bitter,' he answered;
'But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.'”
(from “The Black Riders”,
III, 'In the Desert', Stephen Crane,
in “The Penguin Book of American Verse”, revised edition,
G. Moore, 1983/7, p211;   
Crane was also the author of
“The Red Badge of Courage”)

* Which roughly translates from Latin as: "It is sweet and fitting to die for your country." Ed.

As traditionalists in Western society increasingly come to feel under threat, the potential for dangerously radical movements of the Right can only grow. And this particular conservative sector of society is just one on a spectrum of possible sources of Rightwing activism. On the Left, the constant challenge will be to try and constructively counter such movements by democratic political engagement, and by working to help chart alternative paths into the future. Understanding how reactionaries think and reason in their own sphere is vital in achieving these objectives. Of course, ultimately, we can be faced with sheer mindless irrationality as repeatedly expressed by fascist and neo-fascist movements – from German Nazism to today's Golden Dawn in Greece. Among other goals, a major aim of the democratic Left is surely to prevent such extremism and articulate positive, cooperative approaches to problems. For my purposes, “traditionalist” can be defined as: “a person who enthusiastically and uncritically accepts the dominant (or hegemonic) conventional storyline of their culture and society and in the most old-fashioned way”.

The Powers Of Darkness

Human behaviour and motivation is endlessly fascinating. As I have got older the more convinced I have become that it was Sigmund Freud who saw most profoundly and revealingly into the dark recesses of the human psyche. Like Albert Einstein, he made visible what had formerly been invisible (“The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud & The Search For Hidden Universes”, Richard Panek, Harper Perennial, 2005). Not only did he see deep into the individual mind but he also gained revealing insights into human behaviour at the societal level, its stresses and antagonisms, some of the essential stuff of social psychology. Traditional systems of thought and belief have had to address Freud's challenging ideas (e.g. see “Freud And Christianity”, RS Lee, Pelican, 1967 [originally published in 1948]). His insights were elaborated, modified and developed by psychoanalysts and psychotherapists like Anthony Storr in his landmark monograph, “Human Destructiveness” (part of a series of “Studies In The Dynamics of Persecution and Extermination”, Heinemann/Chatto/Sussex, 1972). It was the American author Hunter S Thompson, who later wrote graphically, and most symbolically, about the “fear and loathing on the [political] campaign trail”. Well, traditionalist NZ writer Amy Brooke, in her book “The 100 Days”, certainly has a lot of fear and loathing to share on her own campaign trail. She fears and loathes what she sees as a vast and multi-headed, monstrous plot on the Left to imperil and impound decent, upright, God-fearing patriotic people like herself.  Her key response: Brooke wants a movement to institute a 100 day scrutiny period for any new legislation enabling time for a petition calling a referendum to either confirm or reject such legislation. Brooke is said to be “a long-time columnist, children's writer, and socio-political commentator, runner-up to the Sydney Morning Herald in the Fletcher Challenge Commonwealth Media Awards Best Columnist: Government, Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs” (“The 100 Days”, ibid.). She has been a reviewer for National Radio, the Press, and Australian publications. She was a columnist for the Press under her original name of Agnes Mary Brooke. Ed.

Traditionalist Amy Brooke herself is a sort of far Right fundamentalist Christian but pitches an appeal ostensibly to anyone who shares her concerns about the state of NZ democracy. Much of her book derives from columns originally published in Ian Wishart's Investigate magazine (for which she is also Poetry Editor).  So Brooke belongs to this reactionary Rightwing circle, heavily derivative from the American fundamentalist Right. While then in one sense she only represents a particular type of political reactionary minority within Aotearoa/NZ, namely Rightwing Christians and their associates, this grouping has wielded significant influence in our fairly recent past (see “Revival Of The Right: New Zealand Politics In The 1980s”, Bruce Jesson, Allanah Ryan, & Paul Spoonley, Heinemann Reed, 1988). More generally, with all the increasing stresses and strains to which NZ society will inevitably be exposed in the years to come, Brooke's writings provide certain crucial insights into how fear and insecurity are channelled into various targets of loathing and reactionary activism. Many of the issues covered have substantial resonance and motivation for the wider NZ Right. Her own personal commitment is to a form of legitimate, democratic action but eventually others on the Right with similar concerns could resort to more aggressive means to achieve their ends.  What is of concern here is the strong, almost hysterical emotionality and irrationality attached to a paranoid type of political and social analysis, along with a totally negative set of reactions: either denial of obvious problems that we have to confront and deal with as pre-emptively and positively as we can; or coercive action instead of mediation, peacemaking, or other ways of addressing the root causes of conflict.

There are certainly plenty of issues and problems in the world to elicit our concerns. But what happens so often on the Right of politics in Western society is, as just indicated, either the denial of reality – as for instance in the case of climate change and environmental scepticism – or belligerent kneejerk reactions applying force, whether the threat of violence or its actual application in political policy and practice (viz. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Syria, etc.). Enemies are portrayed as evil while Western agents are always the “good guys”, e.g. the retail terrorists of al Qaeda versus the wholesale State terrorism of the West, especially that of the Anglo-American axis. Furthermore, whatever the self-serving propaganda and specious “democratic” rationalisations of the Western Right, this political philosophy is very dependent on continued material abundance – on a planet open to endless plunder for resources and peoples to exploit. Its increasing extremism and irrationality will reflect the perceived growing threat to vested interests, material living standards, and the presiding hierarchy of power. This will happen in whatever indirect and direct ways the various strata of Western society, or elements thereof, are moved to take action. For example, so much of the success of the Nazis in Germany was due to the movement's appeal across classes, using a range of mobilisational methods to unify the society, including nationalism, racism, the insecurities of unemployment and economic angst, and the deliberate demonisation and scapegoating of both concocted enemies (the Jews) and any real opposition (the Left). After the elimination of the “enemies within”, and their alleged conspiracies, Nazi momentum was then projected outwards onto similarly manufactured external enemies.  In the West today, especially in the Anglo-American axis, the National Security State (NSS) is now projected both externally and inwardly in the so-called “War on Terror”, and whatever geopolitical conflicts may arise (e.g. the 2014 crisis over Ukraine).  Aotearoa/NZ is very much caught up in this syndrome.

A Reactionary Perspective On Stopping The Rot

“The 100 Days” similarly sees problems and crisis too. Disaster scenarios loom on all fronts. According to Amy Brooke: “NZ went down the road of no return in 2009, when the anti-family, anti-smacking legislation was enforced, instigated by a reputedly Marxist/Green MP, Sue Bradford, supported by a heavily socialist and domineering PM Helen Clark (a “childless feminist” and “anti-American apologist” as well!), and scandalously endorsed by National Party Leader John Key telling his members to do as they were told” (ibid, pp17/18; 82 & 210). Apparently, life in Aotearoa/NZ has virtually been hell ever since for this fundamentalist Christian. Brooke's basic position can be defined as “moral authoritarianism” as legitimated by Christian fundamentalism (see ch. 4: “Remoralising Politics” by Allanah Ryan in “Revival Of The Right”, op. cit.). This position is particularly focused on patriarchal family and sexual relations, along with education issues. Traditionalist values in Aotearoa/NZ have been characterised as “paternalistic racism” and “procreative functionalism” (“Antonio Gramsci's Theory Of Hegemony & The New Zealand Religious Right”, Craig Young, MA Thesis, University of Canterbury, 1986). But Brooke goes beyond this stance in taking a far broader perspective on a host of matters that affect her. 

One of her key themes is “individual responsibility” which connects closely with what was known as the “New Right”, and is epitomised in Aotearoa/NZ by the ACT Party and so-called “libertarians” (for background see “Revival Of The Right”, ch. 3: “The Libertarian Right” by Bruce Jesson, op. cit.). “Individual responsibility”, of course, is a central value of neo-liberalism providing a convenient screen for the corporate capture of Government within the process of capitalist globalisation ever since the Reagan/Thatcher era of the 1980s.  In Brooke's version of history: “it is [sic] Christian values, essentially, which underpinned the West with their insistence on the freedom and responsibility of individuals”, and this has been subject to subversion by the “rabid Left” (“The 100 Days”, op. cit, p337). Funnily enough, Brooke is very concerned about the growing politicisation of the churches and the abandonment of the prime relationship between the individual and her/his Creator (ibid, p26).

To be sure, Brooke sees herself as part of a resistance movement fighting a multi-pronged “attack upon the West and what has amounted to an undermining of our essentially Christian civilisation”, which apparently finds its highest expression in this philosophy and practice of individual responsibility (ibid, p45). Ironically, in this respect, what Brooke seems to subscribe to here (although never cited in her tract) is the philosophy of ideal capitalism as expounded by the American atheist Ayn Rand. But she has other Rightwing sources of personal inspiration. For example, she cites most positively a book, “The Death Of The West” (2001), by an extreme Rightwing American Catholic, Pat Buchanan (ibid, p90 & pp362-3).This particular book is a neo-Malthusian diatribe against the threat of “Third World” population growth and consequent immigration, especially by Muslim migrants, to the rich countries. Kirkus Review has called it a collection of “shameless, embarrassing rantings”, a style faithfully emulated by Brooke in “The 100 Days” (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_West). Brooke explicitly and passionately affirms Buchanan's thesis as “essential reading” (“The 100 Days” op. cit, pp362-3). According to Brooke, in her typically antagonistic style: “We already have another very real, Great War on our hands” -another great fight for survival” (ibid, p363 & p343). She says: “. . . there is no well-disposed Islam” (ibid, p156). She elaborates further: Multi-cultural immigration is “the Trojan Horse, inside our walls, allowing the aggressive doctrines of Islam, fundamentally deeply hostile to the West, to flood into Europe” (ibid, p343). Brooke is thus openly prejudiced as an integral dimension of her Christian self-identity. China looms as another awful danger for her, as well as the rest of the world outside the West. It is worth noting that Social Darwinist ideologue Pat Buchanan has been a senior adviser to American Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. He has also defended some people accused of Nazi war crimes, and has himself been accused of anti-Semitism and Holocaust diminution.

Significantly enough, Brooke does not reproduce the full title of “paleo-conservative” Pat Buchanan's book, perhaps too revealing and embarrassing for her in the context of her purportedly Christian adherence. However, it must be said that her primitive politics seem to flow unashamedly. The full title of Buchanan's book is “The Death Of The West: How Dying Populations & Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country & Our Civilisation”. Brooke is supposedly “pro-life” and is certainly anti-abortion. She also considers “one of the West's greatest challenges” to be “under-population”, which she finds “ironic” given that: “Environmental terrorists have since the sixties frightened school children with the looming calamities of over-population” and other such threats (ibid, p251). Christianity certainly takes many and various expressions. In her case, as typifies the reactionary circle connected with Ian Wishart's Investigate magazine, it takes the form of blatant Social Darwinism, with all proclaimed idealistic and religious principles and values (e.g. “The Golden Rule”) being transparently reduced to narrowly perceived material self-interest. Not only that, her own avowed position on population alone is obviously riddled with self-serving contradictions. Compared with the Christianity of love and good works, this is surely all ghastly stuff.

Lavish Self-Satire

From a Leftwing viewpoint, Brooke provides plenty of entertainment and amusement as well as concern. For instance, after her comment cited above on Bradford and Clark, she continues in this vein: “There must be an obligation on any State-owned, i.e. publicly funded, media to present both sides of an issue in debate fairly, and objectively. This did not happen with the media hysteria surrounding the man-made global warming beat-up. It did not happen with the Government's Emissions Trading Scheme. It never happened with PM Helen Clark's determined push to destroy the NZ Air Force's combat capability . . .” (ibid, pp18/19).  So Big Sister would implement a form of State censorship despite supposedly being against Big Government. She also provides us here with a vital insight into so much of far Right ideology: it is not the state of the natural world, or what humans are doing to it, that is part of the problem but entirely the dark, satanic machinations of the Other out there, - or more worryingly, actually under or even in the bed! These alien beings, “the enemy within”, are strenuously trying to undermine our society. Brooke firmly backs the negative opinion of a young female Australian student about “the dreaded '-isms' supposedly inflicted through school curricula: “Racism. Feminism. And that truly boring topic: Environmentalism” (ibid, p333).  What Brooke is trying to do - Heaven help us! - is to enlighten us, to make visible what so many of us are failing to see: how a sinister, all-encompassing Leftwing conspiracy is weaving its web around us, with even some of us as poor benighted participants. We are dealing with a “hydra-headed monster” (her own phrase!) but Brooke & co. are eager to help us slay the evil beast. But if Amy Brooke takes these views to the absurd extreme one has only to listen to National Party rhetoric in Parliament to understand that a lot of her sentiments, attitudes and opinions resonate widely on the Right.

Amazingly, Brooke's overall interpretation of recent societal developments in Aotearoa/NZ and elsewhere is heartily endorsed by of all people, a Professor of Sociology! - namely Professor Greg Newbold of Canterbury University.  Here is his fulsome and enthusiastic endorsement of her extended rant: “As always, the quality of writing is superb, the power of the arguments is compelling, the research behind the debate is impressive . . .  The book draws from a wide and eclectic range of sources and displays deep understanding of a number of pertinent issues. It's a high-quality piece of work and a joy to read . . . I find myself saying: 'Absolutely!  Hear!  Hear!' to the great bulk of your analysis – particularly in relation to education and Maori matters. Agree or disagree, because of the concerns it raises and the information it contains, this book should be compulsory reading for all New Zealanders in public office (my emphasis). I really do congratulate you on a magnificent effort” (from the back cover). 

So an A+ at the top of the class instead of a D- for Amy Brooke in the Prof's opinion! Oh dear. Her book, in fact, is rambling and hugely repetitive. Her skimpy analysis, as we shall continue to demonstrate, is so often just simplistic and incoherent nonsense. The great irony here is that a constant thread throughout “The 100 Days” is the decline in educational standards, the “dumbing down” of students and the public, and the general lack of knowledge evidenced by so many people who should know better. For Brooke, Professor Newbold is a member “of a now rare academic breed” (ibid, p265). Thank God for that! Newbold, she says comically enough, “also realised at an early age . . . that many adults are idiots” (ibid.). While Professor Newbold's expressed concerns about student literacy are cited positively by Brooke more than once, she ironically dismisses sociology itself as an academic subject. Indeed, she explicitly compares what she sees as “academically worthwhile courses”, with what she calls “today's largely self-serving options of (Waitangi) Treaty law, soft-option sociology, and other arts courses” (ibid, p321). English is her pet subject although this has lamentably been dumbed down, in her opinion, to just media studies by the Leftwing educational “politburo”. A special guru, whom she acclaims as “brilliant”, is the Catholic lay theologian, Christian apologist and anti-Semite GK Chesterton (1874-1936; admired even by the Marxist Gramsci!). Throughout her book, Amy Brooke displays a marked predilection for simplistic, old-fashioned, war-mongering Victorian poetry, e.g. Chesterton's “The Battle Of Lepanto” and “The Ballad Of The White Horse”. For her, these are the stirring cultural expressions of Christian Western civilisation defending itself against barbarian hordes – Christians against Muslims and Danish Vikings (or Norsemen) - and all the forces of darkness and evil; again the sort of poetry that she sees as so neglected today as part of the deliberately cultivated ignorance about our true British heritage (especially the militarist tradition) and its classical Western roots.

As a youngster, I once learned to recite by heart “The Battle Of Lepanto”, a stirring and colourful work indeed. The poem celebrates a “clash of civilisations” with a naval engagement on October 7, 1571, between allied Christian forces (Venice, the Pope, and Spain) versus the Muslim Ottoman Turks during an Ottoman campaign to acquire the Venetian-controlled island of Cyprus. This famous engagement resulted in an allied Christian victory under Don John of Austria. As events turned out, “the battle was of  little practical value, since Venice would surrender Cyprus to the Turks in 1573, but it had a great impact on European morale and was the subject of paintings by Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese” (“Britannica Concise Encyclopedia”, 2003, p1072). History is obviously repeating itself for Amy Brooke and like-minded Westerners (“The 100 Days”, op. cit, p343). Brooke quotes very selectively from “The Battle of Lepanto”.  A verse that she omits has this to say:

“Don John of Austria is going to war . . .  

 Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
 Love-light of Spain – hurrah!
 Death-light of Africa!
 Don John of Austria
 Is riding to the sea”.

This verse has certainly proved prophetic in light of the later imperial and continuing pillage of Africa.

Brooke's Key Source Of Inspiration – A Very Dark Knight

The main source of inspiration for Amy Brooke is a far Right ideologue, Geoff McDonald, who achieved some notoriety as well as influence on the NZ scene during the latter phase of the 20th Century. There is a descriptive/analytical section on him in the book “Revival Of The Right” (titled “Geoff McDonald: Ideologue And Activist”, op. cit, pp109-114). This section appears in chapter 6, “Being British”, written by Paul  Spoonley, then a senior Sociology lecturer and now Professor at Massey University (Spoonley is an expert on the Right, racism, multiculturalism, and immigration). Spoonley identifies a number of themes on the Right that McDonald drew together in his writings: the commitment to an avowedly British identity; racism; anti-Communism; pro-contact with the then apartheid South Africa; anti-peace movement; and anti-biculturalism/multiculturalism. Spoonley's earlier book, “The Politics Of Nostalgia: Racism And The Extreme Right In New Zealand” is the essential background study on the far Right in Aotearoa/NZ (The Dunmore Press, 1987). Chapter Two of Amy Brooke's “The 100 Days” is titled “Shadows Over NZ” and thus deliberately echoes the title of Geoff McDonald's first NZ book. It reproduces the themes noted above, appropriately updated (e.g., South Africa is not relevant, being under Western control).

In this chapter, Brooke adopts McDonald's ploy that “the accusation of racism” is a “useful and dishonest tool to intimidate the majority with so-called 'indigenous rights' being an important part of the neo-Marxist agenda for weakening legitimate government”. Brooke follows McDonald's contention of a “neo-Marxist” conspiracy religiously throughout the rest of her book. Paul Spoonley describes McDonald as an “Australian who, after a much publicised career as a Communist and union organiser, became a convert to radical Right politics with a special interest in what he sees as the Communist destabilisation of countries like Australia and NZ . . .  His importance lies in the way [his] books have been used by the whole gamut of Rightwing groups interested in issues such as education, race relations and anti-Communism” (“Revival Of The Right”, op. cit, p109). Sociologist Spoonley goes on to observe that: “McDonald began his career in conservative and extreme Rightwing politics in Australia by exposing what he refers to as the 'Aboriginal land grab'” (ibid.). McDonald had strong connections with the Australian League of Rights of which he was a member and for which he acted as a touring speaker (ibid.). The League of Rights has been a very unsavoury extreme racist and anti-Semitic organisation. So McDonald first developed his political strategy in relation to one of the world's most oppressed peoples, the aborigines of Australia (and only a very small minority within this country) and thus helped continue the ongoing saga of white racist abuse (for background on the European treatment of this indigenous people, see the three volume study by Professor CD Rowley published in Pelican Books, 1972: “The Destruction Of Aboriginal Society”; “Outcasts In White Australia”; & “The Remote Aborigines”). 

McDonald proved to be very nasty in Aotearoa/NZ too, applying the same sort of arguments to race relations here. Concern and activism about Maori “indigenous rights” are all part of the neo-Marxist plot according to McDonald acolytes like Amy Brooke, and presumably Sociology Professor Greg Newbold as well. McDonald and his mates painted a sinister conspiracy “between peace groups, racial stirrers, and the real reason behind the stop-growth [environmental] movement” (“Revival Of The Right”, op. cit, p110). He is so racist and ethnocentric that he explicitly wrote in terms of skin colour, i.e. “whites” and “non-whites”. He warns against “non-white migrants who can never come to like white people”, about a “mass influx of Asians”, and how “multi-racialism is the weapon of the world-wide conspiracy” (ibid, pp111 & 112). This nefarious neo-Marxist conspiracy had even succeeded in turning the National Council of Churches into a “a major spearhead of the revolution in NZ” (ibid, 113). McDonald takes stupidity and madness in political doctrine to the ultimate depths: “The peace movement is part of the 'psychological war' to isolate countries like NZ, and the conservation movement is being used to undermine the economies of free-enterprise countries in what he calls the 'stop-growth movement'” (ibid.). In 2014, we have the National Party hell-bent on destroying our natural environment in pursuit of economic growth with prospective partner party ACT committed to so-called “freedom”, “individual responsibility”, and “property rights”, coupled with repressive penal policy and the elimination of the vital Resource Management Act. And we are back again in a de facto ANZUS military alliance keenly committed to playing our part in blowing up the whole planet.

Brooke reproduces McDonald's opinions and arguments at length and in detail for Chapter Two of her book.  It serves as her basic platform of analysis for many of her key contentions: in particular, the threat of non-white immigration disrupting NZ society; the undermining of our institutions like the family and education; and the growing oppression suffered by white people from Maori and their purported “indigenous rights”. Unfortunately for her, so much of McDonald's writing is very shonky stuff indeed. Spoonley comments on his tracts about the NZ scene: “All three books get fundamental things incorrect” (ibid, p111). Names are often wrong and “some very obscure references” are used “as evidence of Communist influence in NZ” (ibid.).  McDonald's knowledge of NZ society and history is very limited and distorted.  His first NZ book, “Shadows Over New Zealand: Defence, Land Rights And Multiculturalism” (Chaston Publishers, 1985) is brimming with viciously construed crap. For instance, opening his book at random, I found a statement like this: “Propaganda has been so loud and unending that it comes as a surprise to most people that the first time Maoris had any real title to land was a result of the Treaty of Waitangi signed in 1840 (p104). So Lockean property rights a la British law are supposed to define the rights of indigenous peoples. On the basis of such assumptions, McDonald erects a plethora of wild conspiracy allegations. But fundamentalist/traditionalist Brooke faithfully follows McDonald's line. She even peddles that old, self-serving Pakeha myth that Maori were not really the tangata whenua, the first settlers of Aotearoa/NZ (“The 100 Days”, op. cit, p185).

An All-Enveloping Conspiracy Theory

To really give the full flavour of Brooke's fantastic conspiracy theory, I shall list in no particular order (and by no means comprehensively!) the elements of the Leftwing conspiracy at work that she identifies in “The 100 Days” (whether directly or by apparent association): the subversion of our education system with “the blatant propaganda of the Left now pervading the curriculum in our schools”; takeover of “the supposedly green conservation movement”; “the dangers of neutrality”; “the danger posed by the United Nations”, which is an “anti-democratic, anti-the West organisation”; the danger of “a world-controlling government”; “the useful (neo-Marxist) tool of under-informed and lazy media”; liberal intellectuals; “pro-abortionists”; “atheists”; “our very own subversive literary Establishment”; “the extremist Maori Party”; “the Maori rights movement”; “the racist Maori seats in Parliament”; “the highly damaging Waitangi Tribunal”; interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi as a partnership between Maori and Pakeha; the NZ Constitutional Review Panel; the “undemocratic MMP” system; “the infamous Waihopai incident”; “political correctness” - a “corrupt ideology”; “the man-made global warming rort”; “radical youth, feminists, homosexuals, Third World militants”; “racial minorities”; “biculturalism”; “multiculturalism”; “our disastrous Emissions Trading Scheme”; “the Coastal & Marine Area legislation”; scientists who believe in anthropogenic global warming; “Islamic fundamentalism” and “militant Islam”; “militant Communist China with its duplicity and its hunger for land and resources”; the Labour Party; the National Party; “the compromised Vatican” infiltrated “particularly by Freemasonry”; “indigenous rights”; “the political class”; “existentialists”; “the intolerance of the 'liberal minorities' who command the support of our overseas-owned media”; “the control of Government and State bureaucracies promoting their basically subversive doctrines and advocacies”; “Leftwing teacher unions”; “the damaging ideologies of the far Right maintaining that free trade policies contribute to a rising tide which lifts all boats”; “anti-colonialism”; the widespread lack of literacy and knowledge; the “dumbing down” of education; the “pernicious politburo” in charge of the Government's education system; the Nazis; “a political climate of self-interest”; “the multi-million dollar handshakes that chief executives of big corporations award themselves”; “the toxic culture”; “the promotion of infotainment”; “protelarianised” learning;

(wait - there's more!)

“academics in science-related fields” who are poorly informed on other issues; the NZ “political oligarchy”; “the phenomenon of the flight to the West by Third World emigrants”; “the removal of the borders in Europe”; “the threat to Britain's independent sovereignty”; sex education in schools; peace education; environmental education; social studies - “a particularly useful tool of indoctrination in the politicised agenda of the Left”; sex and drugs; “pop music and film”; “lesbian activists”; “part-Maori”; the “counter culture”, starting in that terrible watershed decade of the “subversive '60s”; egalitarianism; “the autocracy”; Lenin's “useful idiots”; “today's ruling class”; “the free market”; “fascism”; the Family Planning Association; “anti-war propaganda”;

(and still more . . .)

“the new maths”; “the nasty name calling of opponents”, e.g., accusing them of being “racists” or “xenophobic”, and guilty of using “hate speech”; the “entity of evil” inhabiting this world; “the deliberate killing of the innocent” unborn children; “Darwinism, the new science religion”; “The Fatal Conceit: The Deeply Flawed Concept of Leadership”; the professional elite in education, politics, universities and media, who are “under-informed, essentially historically and philosophically deeply ignorant” yet regarding themselves with “self-esteem”; “rubbishy third rate music”; “the Toxic Cult of Sentimentality” (i.e. social welfare); “NZ's Leftist State bureaucracy”; “the pacifist Parliamentarians for Global Action”; “anti-American propaganda”; “caring for the underprivileged and promoting social inclusiveness”; “post-modernist rubbish”; “a massive influx of Asians as refugees and migrants”; “a pluralistic, multi-cultural society”; teachers with their “saving the planet nonsense”; “the relentlessly encroaching State”; (etc, etc. ad nauseam).    

A host of individuals are criticised and pilloried. For instance: “In the '80s, neo-Marxist educationists such as Liz Gordon, seeing education primarily in terms of class struggle, argued successfully against teaching all NZ children to speak well, irrespective of backgrounds of disadvantage” (ibid, p197). In Brooke's opinion, this was an “invertedly snobbish doctrine”, lessening opportunities in life (ibid.). Gee whiz, Liz, apparently this policy even resulted in our present “lightweight” PM, John Key, being so “poorly spoken” (ibid, p58 & p301). What a shame! Within Aotearoa/NZ, plenty of other individuals are targeted. Besides those already mentioned, such politicians and public figures include Michael Cullen, Jenny Shipley, Trevor Mallard, Chris Finlayson, Steve Maharey, Tariana Turia, Dr. Clarence Beeby (deceased educationalist), Hone Harawira, Anne Tolley, Brian Edwards, Prof. Lloyd Geering, Prof. John Hattie, Keri Hulme and Maurice Gee. Overseas, well, President Barack Obama is apparently a phoney, really a saboteur of the American Dream. He actually hates Western civilisation (ibid, pp39/40). And so she raves on, drawing on a raft of extreme Rightwing sources. Most of modern thought is dismissed: from the “sex-obsessed Sigmund Freud” to Bertrand Russell and Noam Chomsky, and many other “dangerous” thinkers. Clearly, the “hydra-headed monster” is running amok among suburban Aotearoa/NZ and around the rest of the planet! And all the above again superbly manifests the outpourings of Brooke's Christian love and compassionate concern. But such splenetic irrationalism, often expressed in very aggressive fashion, seems to be growing in the West today.

“We Should Be Bombing The Boat People”!??!

This remark (as expressed in the section title immediately above) by an elderly woman during the course of an informal conversation last year was pretty startling for me, to say the least. During my life-time, I've heard some really nasty comments in Pakeha conversation – e.g. we should have wiped out the Maori, we should “nuke” the Arabs. The above remark about bombing the boat people is consonant with the current Western zeitgeist of insecurity, uncertainty and fear. I regularly hear and learn of expressions of racial and ethnocentric prejudice. My own personal anecdotal experience is testimony backing up wider research and information. The practice of hypocrisy is deeply ingrained and pervasive on international and racial/ethnic relations in Western public culture, as expounded by the mainstream media and official political discourse. But since 9/11, the contradictions are more evident everywhere. In the West, many fundamentalist Christians have been helping drive the bandwagon of aggressive reaction. The syndrome of reactionary politics is epitomised in the US by the rise of the crackpot Tea Party. 

Another personal historical note is relevant here. In the latter half of the 1970s, I was an active committee member of the Wellington branch of the Indo-China Refugee Action Group. Interestingly, our group was subject to criticism from both the extreme Right and extreme Left. Yet I can vouch that the group's focus was simply humanitarian. Members came from various political backgrounds. My own outlook was anti-American imperialism in regard to Indo-China. But the primary motivation for most committee members was their Christian compassion in response to an obvious human crisis. I have worked closely with such people from time to time and have the greatest respect for them. In contradistinction, I have only complete contempt for the Social Darwinist political views of professed Christians of the likes of Amy Brooke and Ian Wishart.  Lately, it has been most amusing to watch the mainstream media's efforts to try and tee up Colin Craig's Conservative Party, which owes so much to fundamentalist Christian inspiration, as that so vitally needed extreme Rightwing partner for the National Party. The media and National have had to give up to some extent on Craig's party as Craig has obviously proved too “flaky” even for them, and, worst of all, become a joke. Hence the desperate ongoing effort to try and resurrect the ACT Party, with Richard Prebble being wheeled out of the coffin, and back into life, like Dracula. What a pity that the broken down old cart keeps hitting road bumps like the embarrassing endorsement of incest by its new leader, Jamie Whyte. Meantime, the media keep the Mana Party sidelined, along with any other Leftwing groups challenging the neo-liberal hegemony (unless there is something negative with which to play).

Back in 1969, Lord CP Snow, the eminent scientist, civil servant and novelist, made an eloquent plea about the state of the planet: “to keep before the world its long-term fate. Peace. Food. No more people than the Earth can take. That is the cause” (“The State Of Siege”, The John Findley Green Foundation Lectures, Westminister College, November 1968, p43). Snow commented in his lectures how, in his travels in Europe and North America, he had found people everywhere turning inwards, withdrawing into enclaves, pulling the curtains against the street outside, as if in a state of siege. Yet humanity was facing imminent disaster from a “food-population collision”. Well, we have so far staved off that particular disaster and others – but only just by the skin of our teeth. Now the problems loom bigger and more insistent than ever.  As world-wide competition and conflict over resources grows and compounds, the very real danger of obscurantist, ignorant and irrational ideologies will only increase in turn (“Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion And The Death of Utopia”, John Gray, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007). In 1979, I warned of the dangers of “millennial religious and political cults . . . against a darkening background of international and/or national political and economic events”; and “the danger of a slide into mindless irrationalism, into scapegoating, into the sort of moral bankruptcy which for some European led to fascism during the Great Depression (“Environmentalism in NZ: The Potential For A Neo-Anarchist Approach”, New Zealand Environment, no. 25, Spring 1979). The violent nature of certain fundamentalist-type creeds will feed off “Man's paranoid potential so far as the foreseeable future is concerned; and this means that we shall also have to live with human cruelty and destructiveness” (“Human Destructiveness”, Anthony Storr, op. cit, p115). But, in order to survive as a species, we are going to have work harder than ever to counter the causes of violence, and mitigate the damage as much as possible (“The Challenge Of Climate Wars”, Peace Researcher: Journal of the Anti-Bases Campaign, no. 46, Dec. 2013, http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr/46/pr46-007.html). Only much greater human cooperation and pre-emptive action can enable this to happen.

The Ideology Of Reactionary Forces

As Craig Young puts it in his excellent 1986 Political Science monograph: “the use of religious terminology as a mask for reactionary social policy” has been a basic strategy of the religious Right, including in Aotearoa/NZ (“Antonio Gramsci's Theory Of Hegemony & The NZ Religious Right”, op. cit, p62). For various reasons, as Young explains, the peak activist period for the religious Right was back in the 1980s and it has been fairly marginal in influence ever since. However, as previously indicated, the political issues involved often have much wider relevance on the Right.  

Gramsci and his theory of hegemony need some clarification at this point. Italian Antonio Gramsci has been called “the greatest Marxist writer of the 20th Century” (“Gramsci”, James Joll, Fontana Modern Masters, 1977/83, p117). The bulk of his writing was done in prison under the fascist regime of Mussolini, a former fellow socialist. Gramsci died in prison but much of his work lives on because of its analytical power as applied to capitalism and society in general. His theory of hegemony has been especially influential. By hegemony, Gramsci did not mean just the dominance of one class by another through socio-economic means but also by the methods of ideological control, the controlling force of the ideas of the ruling class and its definition of the social situation. Those dominated by the ruling class had come to accept its legitimacy and so its prevailing ideology. Its ideas now form so much of their own conventional mindset that they willingly conform to rule and subjugation. Consequently, for real change to happen and power to shift in favour of the oppressed, there first needs to be a duel of ideas and an intellectual struggle. More generally, the theory of hegemony can be used a sociological tool of analysis in relation to any social movement. Hegemony theory is remarkable in its dual nature as a political strategy and as a sociological theory. In his thesis, Craig Young concluded that the NZ religious Right had egregiously failed in its own proclaimed aim to be a hegemonic movement in our society (“Antonio Gramsci's Theory Of Hegemony & The NZ Religious Right, op. cit.).  

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are certainly not academic sociological theories in any capacity but political theories usually proffered by those marginalised or alienated from the real levers of power. While real life conspiracies can of course happen they are either limited in impact, or driven by deeper historical forces as happened with the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and its contrived propaganda. A “conspiracy theory” can be defined as: “The paranoid belief that there exists a gigantic and sinister conspiracy dedicated to, or responsible for, the subversion and ultimate destruction of a way of life” (“The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought”, 3rd edition, ed. A Bullock & S Trombley, HarperCollins, 1999/2000, p162). To conspiracy theory proponents, such dark plotting constitutes “the motive force in historical events” (ibid.). These conspiratorial events are “initiated by evil forces of transcendent power” and are often cast in “apocalyptic terms” (as graphically displayed throughout Amy Brooke's “The 100 Days”). At worst, there may arise “a paranoid circle that can readily degenerate into terrorism against real and perceived enemies” (ibid, p163). In the rest of my article, I shall explore some more of the ramifications of conspiracy theory and political irrationalism in the light of Brooke's book.

Conspiratorial Contortions

In “The 100 Days”, Amy Brooke construes the Leftwing conspiracy in a number of ways: According to Brooke, the essence of the conspiracy can be defined in the following terms: “Its kernel, as always, lies concealed within the Marxist-recycled, Communist attack on the West, dressed up in the drag of Liberalism, and assisted by the aggressive atheism of Richard Dawkins-type clones”. Another version puts it like this: “Our enemy is cultural Marxism with its aim to eventually destroy the free West, using slogans such as 'diversity', 'inclusive', 'relevant', 'progressive' to undermine our stability and fundamentally cohesive values”.

Yet another: “Moreover, in the radical agenda of the Left, it has been particularly important since the '60s to discredit the Christian values that underpinned the settlement of this country – and the very notion of civilisation itself”. And yet again: “We have long neglected the reality that Communism itself, intensely anti-religious, has not abandoned its war against the West. Hydra-headed, it simply changes it shape”. No doubt conscious of being accused of being very Right wing, Brooke resorts to a radical shape-changing ploy: “Moreover, fascism (my emphasis) in its various forms never dies – it simply changes its spots”. She helpfully elaborates on the nature of this horrible “Hydra-headed monster”, which manifests itself variously as: Communism, its twin sister socialism, together with fascism, Nazism and Marxism”, along with doctrines like relativism, nihilism, feminism, atheism – “all fellow travellers sharing the same aim, that of reducing the individual to be the servant of the State” (ibid.).

Analyst Craig Young pertinently noted in 1986 that in NZ/Aotearoa, as contrasted with the US, the religious Right has suffered from a serious lack of what he called (following Gramsci) “organic intellectuals”, i.e. people who specialise in articulating an appropriate ideology and political strategy intimately tailored for the constituency they represent (“Antonio Gramsci's Theory Of Hegemony & The NZ Religious Right”, op. cit.). He also pointed out that the fundamentalist Christian Right had several obvious weaknesses as a social movement, including “an endemic anti-intellectualism” and an ideology and strategy derived from the US' [so-called] moral majority (Press, 14/1/1987). This is all fervently demonstrated by Amy Brooke in “The 100 Days”. Some elements of the NZ religious Right movement have however made efforts to address these obstacles, at least by their own lights, e.g. the institution of the very conservative Maxim Institute in 2001. Central to the Maxim Institute's philosophy is the same pseudo-spiritualised version of capitalism as espoused by Brooke - the central value being individual responsibility. So we truly get Marx's “opium of the people” with the Institute's avowed principles of privatisation, particularly in the areas of education, welfare, and social service provision. In emphasising the lack of organic intellectuals within the religious Right, Young indicated how this sector of the Right needed its own education base to gain greater influence (“Antonio Gramsci's Theory Of Hegemony & The NZ Religious Right”, op. cit.). Hence ACT's educational agenda for charter schools as promoted in recent times by the avowed fundamentalist Christian and highly compromised John Banks. Ironically, in the case of the Maxim Institute, this outfit got caught up at one point in a very embarrassing plagiarism controversy.

It is important to reiterate how so many of Brooke's views connect with the wider Right, and especially the hard Right. But, like so much of the Right today, Brooke's position is riddled with contradictions. Clearly, the claims to freedom and individual responsibility are in conflict with the authoritarian, hierarchical, homogeneous and “politically correct” vision of the ideal fundamentalist society. Brooke, in fact, pushes a line on capitalist “individual responsibility” unfamiliar to the NZ Religious Right in the 1980s as studied by Young, who described the tensions with the New Right over this particular issue. Yet sociologist Allanah Ryan, doing similar research during the same decade, found that: “While there seems to be a contradiction between economic libertarianism and moral authoritarianism, they are not necessarily incompatible” (“Revival Of The Right”, ch. 4: “Remoralising Politics”, op. cit, pp78/9). This has certainly proved so in Brooke's case and her own political psychology. On the level of rationality, however, Brooke's ideology is fundamentally confused and conflicted since she sees the supposed free market and free trade as failures, apparently owing to theoretical excesses even though “the energy of global capitalism” is to be celebrated (“The 100 Days”, op. cit, pp26; 63; 243; 304; & 340). She belongs to a socio-economic stratum alienated from the corporate elite according to her own self portrayal.

Sociological Mystification 

Brooke has no specific explanation of the contradictory situation of the global market other than the view that somehow globalisation has gone wrong, having been taken to excess. It is not clear whether this glaring contradiction is supposedly in turn somehow all an outcome of the grand conspiracy theory (in its various versions) outlined earlier, although it would hardly make any sense if this was so; but then again her book is founded on senseless assumptions. She does actually refer to the “corporate capture of the market” and its destruction of small business, and advocates the need “to follow the money” - pertinent Marxist observations! (ibid, e.g, pp12, 64 & p340). But such comments simply float unanchored within the wider context of the unintelligible conspiracy. To quote from Craig Young's monograph on the religious Right (adapted for my present purposes): “Mystified views of social relations [are] taken as normative for that sector of the social formation which [accepts] traditional [or reinterpreted] religious ideology as relevant to their material conditions” (“Antonio Gramsci's Theory Of Hegemony & The NZ Religious Right”, op. cit, p11). For Rightwing NZ Christian fundamentalists and extremists like Amy Brooke, this kind of mystification takes the kind of mythmaking directly derived from classical mythology with shape-changing monsters rampant. Consequently, her definitions of the grand conspiracy cited above amount to just so much conceptual garbage. 

The terms the “Left”; “far Left”; “Marxist”; “neo-Marxist”; “Communist”; and “socialist” are all equivalent for her. Moreover, the absurd conflation and merging of oppositional political terminology, e.g., Marxism and fascism, clearly reflects the characteristic “endemic anti-intellectualism” identified by Young. Thus the alleged conspiracy loses any purported meaning. Brooke shows no logical discrimination at all in application of a whole range of definitional terms, something absolutely essential for basic reasoning. She even expressly says at one point that: “The damage done to this country is from both Left and Right, essentially two sides of the same coin” (ibid, 304). Somehow, the giant, evil “neo-Marxist”(?!) plot has its tentacles everywhere. 

Rampant Irrationality

Significantly, conspiratorial thinking has gained some appeal in the West with the popularity of magazines like Nexus, New Dawn, and Uncensored. Yet, interestingly again, the content of such publications is not necessarily Rightwing with even the occasional revealing article about American foreign policy and other issues scooped off the Internet. A major factor at work here lies in the considerable distrust and disillusion with the mainstream media operative in various quarters. At a deeper level, as with the rise of fundamentalism in its various forms, socio-economic instability accounts for this trend in so many ways. Two points are pertinent to this trend for the purposes of my article. One relates to the disturbing irrationality of so much of this sort of popular alternative media. The other applies to the Right in general and the increasing trend to either denial of obvious problems, e.g., environmental decline, or aggressive reaction to deal with perceived threats like Muslim rebellion in the Middle East. I have repeatedly stressed both points – irrationality and denial and/or aggressive reaction - and their close relationship, given mounting societal and global pressures. 

As indicated, Brooke's use of terminology is quite bizarre, concocting a malign kind of Alice in Wonderland world of her own vivid imagination. This is quite hilarious in that Brooke so pretentiously and arrogantly dismisses a vast swathe of academic knowledge and its practitioners. Instead, she freely indulges in the sort of thing she criticises about State education, e.g., “mumbo-jumbo” and “spurious mysticism”, while pushing the “sheer tribal primitivism” of the Western imperial tradition, “the bloated self-esteem and deeds of one's ancestors”; the “romanticisation” of war; and the “deification” of Social Darwinist values under the rubric of Christian civilisation (“The 100 Days”, op. cit, e.g. p307). She actually does not even know what political position she represents! On the one hand, she enjoins “valuable, essentially conservative teaching practices”, and “the notion of conservative in the sense of preserving the best values that have been passed down to us” (ibid, p321 & p349). Yet, on the other hand, she bitterly complains about those who dominate our society indulging in “their bully name-calling, such as 'conservative', 'racist', 'xenophobic', or 'Bible-bashing'” (ibid, p323).

Her analysis, such as it is, gets contorted to the extent that she portrays some of the results of capitalist consumer society as the devious outcome of “socialism”: including “inordinate sport-watching rather than participation; celebrity spotting; addiction to soap operas; binge drinking”; drugs; and the “pop-rock scene” (ibid, p81). Society is deplorably pervaded with: “A mentality which evaluates all things in terms of economic or practical advantage”, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing (ibid, p360). She explains once more how all this lamentable stuff has happened: “To make sense of all this, New Zealanders urgently need to face the fact that, in the early 20th Century it was decided that to destroy Western civilisation there was no more important battleground than that of the education arena. This is not a question of any conspiracy theory [my emphasis] – the pejorative name-calling [that] enemies of the truth use to ridicule opponents they fear” (ibid, p362). This may be a place in her book where Sociology Professor Greg Newbold voiced one of his laudatory endorsements: “Absolutely!  Hear!  Hear!”.  

We might well ask with regard to Brooke's conspiracy theory just exactly who decided to destroy Western civilisation, and where and when and how. Of course, the real essence of such ridiculous conspiracy theories has to be an indeterminate vagueness. The nearest that Amy Brooke comes to anything remotely specific is a saying ascribed to Antonio Gramsci, advocating a Leftwing political strategy of “the long march through the institutions”. In ominously dramatic (and highly contrived) fashion, she repeats this maxim throughout the book. So Brooke casts the ongoing political struggle of Left and Right in the West in the most paranoid way possible. Her book thus becomes more a psychological case study (a self-portrait) of a far Right exponent rather than an exercise in political analysis. This sort of psychological profile has long been well established in the academic literature (e.g., see ch.3: “The Benefit Of Perceiving Conspiracies” in “The Social Psychology Of Social Movements”, Hans Toch, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).

A Spiritualised Social Darwinism

Conspiracy theory thus sees dark pervading threats everywhere. The political reaction is essentially negative, consisting of attempts at exposure and control. Further, “those who belong to what might be described as movements of reaction against modernity” see themselves “as fighting back” (from the definition of “Fundamentalism” in “The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions”, ed. John Bowker, Oxford University Press, 1997, p361). There are no positive suggestions in “The 100 Days”, just aggressive reaction - Brooke's version of Christian love and goodwill to most of her fellow humans. Like many other fundamentalists, Brooke identifies her heritage with a mythical image of a colonised NZ as a [British] “Christian nation”. But, in fact: “NZ possesses no historical experience of mass colonisation by religious groups. It was a product of planned settlement by British colonial authorities in response to Malthusian-inspired colonisation strategies calculated to reduce over-population, resource consumption (and threatened redistribution) in 19th Century Britain. Nor did it possess a State church. Some missionary groups even opposed colonisation” (“Antonion Gramsci's Theory Of Hegemony & The Religious Right”, op. cit, p48). 

The reactionary Pakeha bandwagon continues to roll on. For instance, another new book “Twisting The Treaty: A Tribal Grab For Wealth And Power” reaches even greater levels of vitriol and twisted historical and contemporary analysis in the Pakeha backlash against Maori claims for restitution and indigenous rights (John Robinson, et al, Tross Publishing, 2013). Whatever reasoned concerns and matters of fact that this book might raise, the general tone is one of paternalistic racism and grossly selective, self-serving Pakeha interpretations. Greedy landgrabbing colonisation by Europeans is even bizarrely and obscenely portrayed as a rescue mission for a hunter/gatherer (and subsistence-gardening) people in decline. Like Amy Brooke's tome, “Twisting the Treaty” is riddled with typical Rightwing contradictions. Part of the book emphasises our egalitarian society while Peter Cresswell of the far Right Libertarianz Party claims “Property Rights” as a great British “Blessing for Maori NZ” (ibid.). Brooke's “The 100 Days”, Wishart's “The Great Divide”, and Tross (Trash?!) Publishing's “Twisting The Treaty” are part of a new burst of reactionary Pakeha literature a la Geoff McDonald, telling a cynically self-serving story as to how the “primitive” Maori have benefitted from the advance of Western civilisation; and so presumably this civilisation's destruction of the planetary environment, competition for declining resources, anthropogenic climate change, and of course the wonderful gift of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Thanks to Nicky Hager's “The Hollow Men” the National Party got rid of the dangerously divisive Don Brash, another extreme Rightwinger whom some of the media obviously want to try and revive if they can (Craig Potton Pub, 2006. Reviewed by Jeremy Agar in Watchdog 114, May 2007, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/14/03.htm. Ed). We then got a far more slick corporate operator in PM John Key but at least both the main parties have steered an even keel in the potentially perilous waters of race relations. Brooke & co. want to stir these waters up but hopefully enough Pakeha goodwill can be maintained for tolerant and constructive debate and discussion.

On a broader perspective: “In his [1982] analysis of the British Religious Right, Anglican sociologist Fr. Ken Leech warn[ed] that the fundamentalist churches have certain characteristics, which could lead to the development of fascist hegemony. He identifies these as . . . a crude fundamentalist theology, a following of highly vulnerable, very threatened middle class and particularly suburban people – the very group from which Hitler derived his mass support – and a leadership marked by intolerance, irrational polemic and an absolute conviction that they are right …  It is not 'Christian Fascism' so much as a . . . theology which can easily aid the growth of fascism and become part of its ideological apparatus” (“Antonio Gramsci's Theory Of Hegemony And The NZ Religious Right”, op. cit, pp64/5, quoting Leech's “The Social God”, Sheldon Press).  Today, these observations have wider application to the potential sources and generation of Rightwing extremism than just the social constituency of the religious Right.

Embracing the Capitalist Culture of Death

As we have seen, Amy Brooke is dedicated to fighting for the survival of her Christian capitalist Western civilisation against endless enemies. War is not “a terrible thing” for her (“The 100 Days”, op. cit, p257). Internationally, Brooke's stance is expressed by her statement: “If you desire peace, prepare for war”. Mind you, she takes a very “pro-life” stand on abortion. Indeed, she refers to “the barbarism of abortion – sons or daughters deliberately and cruelly killed before birth – the ultimate act of a society in the process of destroying itself” (ibid, p317). However, she is quite prepared to blow up the planet, unborn and living, in a nuclear exchange. She even laments the fact that “Trident submarines will carry fewer warheads” (ibid, p38). Trident missiles are first strike weapons designed for nuclear war-fighting (“First Strike! The Pentagon's Strategy For Nuclear War”, Robert Aldridge, South End Press, 1983). This sort of stuff smacks of the ultimate obscene human insanity. 

However, I am sure that fundamentalist firebrand Amy Brooke, given her sentiments, would be prepared to make up for one of those missing warheads and ride a Trident missile into the nuclear hellfire like a witch on a broom, or one of Dracula's bats, or a Norse Valkyrie at Ragnarok, the battle ending the world of gods and men. The fundamentalist Christian penchant for the “rapture” of Armageddon is something that requires the insight of Freud's “death-instinct” (Thanatos). In Brooke's view: “Psychiatry and psychology can take us only so far in an explanation of the human mind and personality” (“The 100 Days”, op. cit, pp100/01). This reminds me of the psychiatrist's remark in an episode of the TV series Fawlty Towers in which he says there is enough material here (in this case Amy Brooke's book) for a whole conference.


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