Those Darn Extremists!

The Sunday Star-Times continues its delicate balance of being 95% useless and 5% exceptional, this time with a followup to the Thompson & Clark (TCIL) spying-on-protesters revelations of a few months back. (You may recall the glee with which I greeted the news that Gavin Clark had been outplayed at his own game by a complete novice.)
This article discusses one of the outputs of TCIL, a monthly report on activist comings and going named “National Extremism”. Of course, it’s just a compilation of public domain knowledge about environmental activists and the like. The example given in the article is hilariously indicative:

One item, for example, says “bio-diesel bus carrying the Be the Change Climate Rescue Tour arrives in Palmerston North fronted by environmental activist and Auckland Save Happy Valley member Jo McVeagh”. The tour, sponsored by Greenpeace, Oxfam and Forest and Bird, “aims to encourage individual New Zealanders throughout the country to make a personal contribution to combating climate change”. This “intelligence”, for which Maf had been paying $1000 per monthly report, was taken straight from a “Be the Change” press release. Thompson and Clark’s contribution was a comment about the bus’s bio-diesel a by-product of meat production “not [being] the smartest of choices for someone like McVeagh who wants to take the moral high ground” (presumably a reference to her assumed vegetarian beliefs).

As ridiculous as this all is, it would be a mistake to dismiss it. The spin the article takes is “look at your tax dollars being wasted”, and it is indeed an example of this, but that’s a sideshow to the real concerns here. What this report shows is the exercise of (capitalist) power to demonise those who are campaigning for a system that values something other than money.
Look at the title of the report for an example: environmental activists are, by definition, “extremists”, and the word “National” suggests how the interests of the coal industry (for example) are conflated with the good of the nation.
It would be unwise to assume that all the customers of this report endorse its aggressive framing of activist elements; I’m sure many, if not most, take it with a generous helping of salt. Nevertheless, they find enough value in it to purchase it, and that framing of ‘national extremism’ pervades the surrounding discourse. (For example, AgResearch and Genesis Energy, as mentioned in the article, put enough stock in TCIL to parrot their prepared lines to the media when questioned over the report.) In a wider context, the TCIL ‘national extremist’ frame is reflected in whole Urewera 8 ‘terrorist cell debacle.
In short, the problem is this: Those in power see those who question their actions as dangerous, not just to the powerful institutions themselves, but to the nation as a whole.
Luckily, New Zealand is small and heavily interconnected. It is hard to effectively demonise an Other when everyone is only a couple degrees of separation apart. The TCIL report reveals part of the hidden discourse of power but also shows how vulnerable it is to ridicule. Heck, our Powerful aren’t even that Powerful. While this problematic tendency has real and horrible consequences (again, look at the Urewera arrestees for an example), I suspect it is not strong enough to truly become widespread in the assumptions of those in positions of power. Other, larger, countries cannot be so confident.
In any case, TCIL are to be condemned, and their reports and the ludicrous framing they perpetuate must be held up for the nonsense they are. These frames don’t just misrepresent their subjects, they pervert the discussion of vital public issues and thereby the functioning of democracy itself. Thompson and Clark are buffoons, but they are buffoons who must be held publicly accountable for the consequences of their foolishness.
(see also No Right Turn on this)
(and also Mundens)