Until Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori understand that the battle for law and order is waged in every human heart, and that if it is lost there, then it will be lost everywhere, they will never be returned to, or reconciled with, power

By Chris Trotter*

The ram-raids of 2023 supplied the capstone to the edifice of Labour’s electoral destruction. They symbolised not only the collapse of social cohesion, but also the wildness and heedlessness which, more and more, had come to characterise New Zealanders’ interaction with one another. The Labour Government’s response: ad-hoc, haphazard, and ineffectual; only fed the electorate’s desire for a political combination that was willing and able to “sort” the matter out. What’s more, the voters made it clear that they would not scrutinise too closely the measures adopted to do the “sorting” – just so long as they worked.

The same “We don’t care how you sort it, just sort it!”, voter instruction was also broadcast loud-and-clear in relation to the gangs. National, Act, and NZ First, all of them understood that, once elected, they would have, if not a free hand, then an unusually permissive social licence to discipline and punish these outlaw entities.

Indisputably, the gangs and the ram-raiders (between whom Police Intelligence reported a close relationship) made it easy for the more conservative side of New Zealand politics to take a hardline stance.

The ram-raiders, in particular, used their cellphones to record their offending and upload it onto social media. The teenagers involved, largely immune from serious legal consequences, making them the perfect perpetrators, openly competed with one another to produce the most confronting images.

The clear winner of this competition was the video recording a car smashing its way into a city mall, closely followed by a wild band of young criminals, leaping and gesticulating as if they had just won the lottery, which, in a sense, they had.

The impact of this sort of imagery on “Normies” – the conventional, hard-working, law-abiding citizens of New Zealand – was devastating. Not only in terms of what it said about the perpetrators’ all-too-obvious contempt for the laws of the land, but also because those images spoke of a state that was no longer in control of its people.

An even more disturbing message was conveyed to that same, huge, bloc of outraged voters by the gangs. Images of scores of motorcycles, steered by enormous men who appeared to be auditioning for a role in the latest Mad Max movie, roaring down the King’s highway while the Police, apparently powerless to intervene, watched them go by, weren’t easily forgotten.

Remembering always, that these ram-raids and gang convoys came on top of the anarchic scenes which the Normies had watched unfold on Parliament Grounds. The tatterdemalion band of Kiwis of all ages, colours and creeds, who had gathered to protest their deeply-resented, Covid Pandemic-induced, exclusion from Jacinda Ardern’s “team of five million” had won the grudging respect of a surprisingly large number of their fellow citizens.

Not only was this respect given in recognition of their resilience and ingenuity in the face of unrelenting official disapproval (the government working hand-in-hand with the news media), but also in response to just how bloody difficult it was to remove them.

To the discomfiture of many New Zealanders, the state had been exposed as disorganised, ill-equipped, and only just capable of defending itself.

It is a conundrum that would undoubtedly have piqued the interest of the French sociologist Michel Foucault, author of “Discipline and Punish”, his profoundly influential inquiry into the sources and methodologies of state authority, and of where, and upon what, its power is played out – especially in prisons.

Some flavour of Foucault’s thought may be gleaned from the following quote:

“Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”

Modern societies are replete with institutions driven by the overwhelming state imperative to not only keep people’s bodies in line, but also to influence their minds in such a way that they end up doing the state’s disciplinary work for it.

Or, as he puts it: “Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise.”

This, according to Foucault, is the single greatest achievement of the society that emerged from the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. That it has contrived to transform its members into self-activating organic instruments for keeping themselves in line.

In Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, the animated wooden puppet is supplied with a moral guide called Jiminy Cricket, a dapper little Yankee insect who turns out to be a less than perfect protector of his not yet “real” boy’s welfare. Foucault would have presented the interaction very differently. His Jiminy Cricket would have been a ruthless little commissar. A relentless conveyor of society’s expectations throughout Pinocchio’s mind and body; the CCTV camera from whose panoptic eye he can never escape.

Foucault would doubtless present the Normies as properly functioning organic instruments, all of them dutifully internalising the imperatives of our late-capitalist society in ways that keep it ticking along, if not nicely, then sufficiently well to stave off disaster.

But what of the ram-raiders and the bikie gangsters? What is to be done which such obviously malfunctioning organic instruments?

The answer supplied by Foucault in “Discipline and Punish” is grim. The moment any significant portion of modern society proves incapable of any longer policing itself; the moment the individual ceases to internalise its demands and execute them socially and economically, it becomes necessary to press back into service the disciplinary techniques of less enlightened centuries.

What does that mean? Ask Police Minister Mark Mitchell. As Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith. Examine the way in which either the threat, or the reality, of physical force is being rehabilitated. For those individuals who can no longer internalise society’s rules (assuming their backgrounds made such internalisation even remotely possible) they will be externalised. Ban gang patches; put more cops on the beat; install more CCTV cameras; set up boot-camps; make it easier to effect a citizen’s arrest; stiffen penalties for shop-lifting; build more prisons; make sure the judges fill them with more prisoners.

If some citizens are unwilling or unable to police themselves, then we (meaning all of us Normies, utilising the mechanisms of democratic representation and government) will do it for them.

What choice, after all, do Normies have? Images of wild young Pinocchios running wild, having squished their Jiminy Crickets, and set out for the mall in a stolen car, are deeply subversive of public order. So, too, are televised images of hulking great gang members revving their motorcycle engines and giving the cops the finger. Likewise the narrative of angry hippies setting up an encampment in Parliament Grounds and battling the cops to a fiery draw on the streets of Wellington.

If we Normies can’t beat these challengers, or see them beaten on our behalf, then what’s to stop us joining them? Until Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori understand that the battle for law and order is waged in every human heart, and that if it is lost there, then it will be lost everywhere, they will never be returned to, or reconciled with, power.

*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.