Scott Hamilton RTM Profile picture
Feb 21, 2022 11 tweets 5 min read Read on X
1/12 Bryce Edwards & Liam Hehir argue many of the protesters at Wellington are 'old-school greenie activists', & therefore by definition can't be fascists. But there's a long history, in NZ, Australia, & Europe, of a convergence between fascism & certain types of environmentalism
2/12 Altho the vast majority of greenies past & present have obviously not been fascists, a minority played a role in the formation of the fascist movements of the '30s. & one of NZ's most famous & distinguished intellectuals was a green fascist.
3/12 With its rhetoric of blood & soil & its presentation of cities as places of corruption & disease, fascism appealed to men like Jorian Jenks, who was a leading member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. At one point, Mosley named Jenks his deputy fuhrer.
4/12 Jenks believed in making the UK an agricultural autarky, where organically produced farms produced enough to feed the populace & reduce dependence on 'alien' nations. In Germany, many environmentalists joined Hitler's movement.
5/12 Scholar Paul Staudenmeier has written about the convergence between the Steiner movement & the Nazi regime. As well as creating his famous schools, Rudolf Steiner invented a style of 'occult' organic agriculture called biodynamics. Steinerites fused with the Nazi state.
6/12 If the UK had Jenks & Germany had Steiner, NZ had ARD Fairburn. Fairburn is remembered as a fine poet & as a critic of NZ society's reckless treatment of the environment. But he adhered to Clifford Douglas' Social Credit movement, & blamed NZ crises on Jewish usurers.
7/12 In recent years Fairburn has become something of a hero to a new generation of self-styled eco-fascists. The US neo-Nazi website Counter Currents has run long tributes to him, written by the well-known NZ neo-Nazi Kerry Bolton. counter-currents.com/2012/02/rex-fa…
8/12 In Australia, too, the extreme right & environmentalism have overlapped. Bartholomew Santamaria was an Italian migrant to Oz who dominated hard right-wing politics there for decades. He revered Franco & dreamed of turning Australian into a rural autarkic state.
9/12 Santamaria campaigned for much of his life for mass European migration to Australia's interior. He believed the Outback could be made to bloom by peasant farmers. He founded the National Catholic Rural Movement, which established several 'model' villages.
10/12 My father-in-law helped establish the Steiner movement in NZ, but long ago rebelled against Steiner's racist occultism. In recent years the mainstream media has run a number of articles exposing racism in our Steiner schools & Steiner opposition to 1080 spraying.
11/11 Many Steiner teachers oppose vaccines & mandates. Teachers & biodynamic 'environmentalists' have made pilgrimages to 'Camp Freedom'. These people may look to Hehir or Edwards like harmless old greenies. But they hold to an ideology that is far from harmless.

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More from @SikotiHamiltonR

Jul 2
1/11 When I saw a photo of Farage posing with Union Jacks I thought about an interview James Belich gave about a decade ago. Belich observed that Britishness was one of the most effective ideas in history, but that it was withering in the 21st C. Farage symbolises that decline. Image
2/11 Britishness is a modern idea. Linda Colley has traced its emergence to the early 19thC Napoleonic Wars, when Britain faced off against a revolutionary France. British identity spread through the world during that century. It was capacious. Image
3/11 Like many Scots & Welsh before them, most Pakeha in NZ identified as British. As Belich shows in his book Replenishing the Earth, the colonial project was in part an effort to spread & share Britishness. The identity had room for non-white peoples. Image
Read 11 tweets
Mar 17
1/4 Altho the problem seems to have gotten worse lately, the misuse of Nazi history by politicians & media began even before the end of WW2. Winston Peters was named after the man who fought the UK's '45 election by comparing Labour's proposed welfare state to Nazism. Image
2/4 Nor is the problem confined to the right, as this appalling cartoon from the Key era shows. The tragedy is that NZ appeased & collaborated with Nazi Germany & fascist Italy in the '30s, & that we may be on the way to making a similar mistake today. Image
3/4 The topic deserves a book, & I was only able to scratch the surface, but I detailed some of the collaboration, by both the NZ state & many non-governmental organisations, in this article: We put a trade deal with the Nazis ahead of helping Jews.thespinoff.co.nz/society/27-01-…
Read 5 tweets
Mar 6
1/5 I find the eliminationist rhetoric that's entering NZ politics from Trumpian America disturbing. We're hearing the rhetoric from the right at the moment, but I've also heard it from the odd person on the left in the past. I've got a graphic to show to NZ's eliminationists.
2/5 This is a graphic of NZ's 1902 election, when Seddon's Liberals triumphed over Massey's Conservatives. In the 122 years since, NZ has been divided into left & right blocs. They aren't going away, because they're rooted in sociology & history. Image
3/7 Eliminationists see people on the other side of the political divide as either evil or deranged. They see the ideas of the other side as irrational, & consequently have the illusion they can be eradicated. I've been disappointed to see some on the left adopt eliminationism.
Read 13 tweets
Feb 17
1/7 Imagine that settler govts had not denied Maori the vote, that there had been no wars & confiscations, that Maori & Pakeha had come together in a hybrid culture. This might sound like a plot for an alt history novel, but in a remote part of NZ it was reality.
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2/7 These precise & exquisite maps are part of Kaye Dragicevich's book about the gumlands of early 20thC Northland, which I acquired yesterday. Amidst the swamps & hut villages on these maps a new, Slavic Polynesian people was born.
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3/7 Tarara is the Maori name for a person of Croatian & Maori ancestry. Croats fled repressive Habsburg rule to dig for kauri gum in Northland. There they met another oppressed people. This photo remembers the first Croat-Maori marriage, in 1892. Image
Read 9 tweets
Jan 19
1/7 The debate about the meaning of the Treaty shouldn't be settled by partisan politics or polls. It should be settled by historical evidence. Here are 5 reasons why I believe David Seymour's wrong when he claims the Maori who signed the Treaty 1840 gave away all sovereignty. Image
2/7 The reason is the speeches the chiefs made at Waitangi. If they wanted Britain to take away their authority, why did not one of them say that? The chiefs talked obsessively about the negative impact of British settlers in the north, & the need to control those settlers. Image
3/7 The 2nd reason is the way Britain colonised. In place after place, from Africa to India, the Brits liked to exercise 'indirect rule', by cutting deals with local leaders that left those leaders with some sovereignty but Britain with overall control. Why would NZ be different? Image
Read 8 tweets
Jan 1
1/10 A number of people who don't read poetry have pronounced Tusiata Avia a bad poet. How can we judge for ourselves? Back in the days when I used to edit literary publications, & often had loads of poems to accept or reject, I had two tests. I think Avia passes both. Image
2/10 The first test involves imagery; the second involves sound. One of the jobs of the poet is to renew the worn out, cliched imagery that we tend to use in everyday life. Bad poets will use cliches. Their seas will sigh or shine; their mountains will be mighty. Image
3/10 A poet's imagery should be original, but also needs to be meaningful. Silly novelty is no good, as my youthful poems show. I find vivid & meaningful images in many of the poems in Avia's 2016 book Spirit House/Fale Aitu. Here's one of my favourites. Image
Read 12 tweets

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