Congrats on going from “who cares about them” to “top of my shit list”. If it were up to me I’d have your organisation banned on campus. It’s not though, so I’ll settle for taking down any of your posters that I see and I encouraging others to do the same. I doubt I’m the only enemy you made with your little stunt. You don’t belong here receiving subsidised education and student allowances from a country you hate.

Obviously this kind of reaction was what you were going for, I mean you’d have to be thick to believe that burning a flag has any effect other than antagonising people, but I don’t think you understand just how much sympathy you have lost here. I didn’t vote in the last VUWSA elections, I didn’t give a shit. Next time I will vote, for anybody but a Worker’s Party candidate. I’d vote for the Nazi party over highly offensive degenerates like yourselves.

“Far from clarifying the complex political questions surrounding the eruption of US militarism and the invasion of Iraq, the protest has simply muddied the waters. It has focused public discussion on the pros and cons of flag burning rather than the criminal actions of the Bush administration and its allies in Iraq. The resort to such means underscores the dead end of protest politics. Rather than futile stunts what is needed is a careful review of the reasons why the unprecedented global protests in 2003 failed to stop the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

“The underlying causes of imperialist war lie in the profit system itself. Its overturn requires a conscious political movement of the working class, armed with a scientific socialist perspective and firmly rooted in an assimilation of the strategic experiences of the twentieth century. The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site are convening a public meeting in Wellington on August 29 to discuss this socialist and internationalist perspective and to lay the foundations of such an independent movement. We invite all those who are seriously concerned about these issues to attend.”
http://wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/newz-a26.shtml

The WSWS.org also wrote that “The charging and victimisation of Paul Hopkinson constitutes a fundamental and dangerous attack on basic democratic rights, carried out under the auspices of a Labour government. It will be used in the coming period as a precedent for repressive operations against ordinary working people and youth who are engaged in struggles against the criminal US-led war against Iraq, as well as the government’s escalating attacks on jobs and living standards at home.”
http://wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/newz-m20.shtml

These are the real political issues which the University has sought to dispose of under the rug, with the aid of VUWSA and it’s split from the WP, and also from the very protest actions of the WP whom have not clarified nor learned from their past actions. Such organizations attract only the attention of the police, media, press and reactionaries.
As to the principles of Permanent Revolution embodied in Trotskyism and to Imperialism the highest stage of capitalism by Lenin, I am confident, the WP knows absolutely nothing.
Regards

ATS.

Don’t hold the Ashhurst thing against me. I had no say in the matter.

“This’ll be my last contribution the debate, not in a “take my toys and go home” way but because it’s turning into a procrastination tool.”

Thank God – you saved me from having to use the dreaded “let’s agree to disagree” line . It’s been good debating with you though – whilst I may disagree with your arguments I respect your use of debate and reason rather than vitriol.

“We’re arguing the form ANZAC Day takes is a celebration of imperialism. So one of the more common arguments is about the men who ‘defended our freedoms,’ and this is used to facilitate measures such as those taken by Rudd. If it were simply a day of mourning for the people killed, if the War Memorial were showered with white poppies and speeches made about the slaughter of a generation of men to serve imperialist Northern powers, we’d partake. As is, you get stuff about the spirit of freedom and compassion which Gallipoli apparently represents.”

This, sadly, is the nature of social memory – the cooption of history in the interests of group cohesiveness. John Tosh makes a great case for this in his work, ‘The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History’. In it, he contrasts historicity with social memory, the latter of which is more socially accepted – hence the contention that arises when alternate viewpoints threaten it. Burning a flag or partaking in an anti-war protest, for example, whilst intended as alternate forms of ANZAC Day commemoration to that posited by the mainstream, are overwhelmingly (and usually unfairly) disapproved of by society. It is the nature of all social groupings – whether national, political, ideological, or any other kind – to co-opt history to reinforce their current motivations and viewpoints; hence why, for example, I always seem to incite such rigorous debate on the Workers Party message board when I argue against the articles posted there.

In saying this, I am not implying that I agree with all of your positions; far from it. I do agree that the stereotype of “the men who ‘defended our freedoms’” is far too liberally applied. The men and women who enlisted in the armed services during World War One did so for various reasons (adventure, a chance to see the world, a steady paycheck – see Nicholas Boyack’s MA Thesis in the Vic library, or any of the number of articles by Richard White or Bart Ziino who stress the tourism component of soldierly motivation), and the opponents they fought were not necessarily directly threatening to our own national security (the Gallipoli campaign against the Ottoman Empire is a fine example). This should not, however, detract from the very real sacrifices that they experienced. You maintain that “the form ANZAC Day takes is a celebration of imperialism” – something that I vehemently disagree with. ANZAC Day is overwhelmingly a commemoration of sacrifice irrespective of national agenda, and whilst some individuals and politicians may co-opt its message into one that serves a military justification, the majority of New Zealanders simply wish to remember the losses suffered by those who have fought in this nation’s wars. Exemplifying this is the fact that the outrage expressed over Cosgrove’s flag-burning revolves mostly around the perceived disrespect to war veterans that this act entails. I do not consider New Zealand an imperialist nation in any sense of the word, nor do I believe the ANZAC Day celebrations to be a reflection of this supposed ‘imperialism’.

“Fiji has never been a full democracy. This is partly our responsibility as we helped with the constitution, which created a tribal elite with special voting rights. We did not cut Fiji off after the previous coups, which were carried out in service of elite interests. The difference here is that Bainamarama says he intends to dismantle the rights of the tribal elite. As you said, stability is the main thing; it is, after all, a key word in the Washington Consensus.”

Whilst I agree with Bainimarama’s end goals (that being the equality of the Indo-Fijian minority with what you have termed the ‘tribal elite’), I do not agree with his methods. Democracy cannot be sacrificed, even on a temporary basis, simply because the long-term end is seen as justifying the means. Whilst I agree that the stance taken by the Asia Pacific leaders (and, more importantly, the media) is too simplistic, I do feel that some steps needed to be taken to express political solidarity and consistency behind the idea of supporting democracy. There is a fantastic article in this week’s issue of Salient by Nina Fowler that better describes the whole situation than I ever could.

“This was a major debate in working-class circles towards the end of WWI; after the Russian revolution, how would geopolitics have to change? Again I refer you to Luxemburg and the Spartacists. Although they made grave tactical errors, they rightly identified that the German proletariat should fight to overthrow the German ruling class, thereby ending WWI in solidarity with the international proletariat … [u]nfortunately Stalin took a line of “socialism in one country.” Although the Workers Party does not subscribe to a particular Marxist sect (Maoist, Trotskyist etc) you’d be hard-pressed to find a WP member who supports socialism in one country, rather than proletarian internationalism. Don Franks burnt a Soviet flag when they invaded Afghanistan. I would argue true socialism requires the dismantlement of the state and proletarian internationalism. In the meantime, opposing nationalism in our own countries is necessary.”

I think your point here is a little contradictory; on the one hand, you are opposing the Stalinist idea of “socialism in one country”, yet on the other you maintain that the socialist tenet of permanent revolution and internationalism is not, in any way, imperialist. You justify the latter position by arguing that “true socialism requires the dismantlement of the state and proletarian internationalism”, yet in doing so you have unwillingly stated a paradox. “Proletarian internationalism” is dependent upon the dissolution of the nation-state system (the “dismantlement of the state”); yet the “dismantlement of the state” is dependent upon the existence of “proletarian internationalism”. Pragmatically speaking, both are dependent upon the collusion and cooperation of workers movements within EXISTING NATIONS; hence, in order for a true international socialism to be achieved, the vehicle of socialist imperialism is a necessary precondition to break down the existing nation-state system. You cannot deny that the internationalist methods of support undertaken by the socialist movements I mentioned in my previous post are, by your definition, examples of imperialism.

So, to summarise for those too lazy to read my gargantuan posts:
* I respect Joel’s right to hold an alternate viewpoint on what ANZAC Day represents, but I disagree wholeheartedly with his choice of timing, venue, and his arguably personal, rather than ideological, motives.
* I believe that involvement in the international community is unavoidable in a globalised world, and that what the Workers Party terms ‘imperialism’ is merely the practice of preserving international stability in order to serve national and moral interests, provided it does not contradict the principle of national self-determination. Whilst actions under the veil of ‘preserving international stability’ are undoubtedly of questionable morality at times, condemning all of them under the veil of ‘imperialism’ is misleading and impractical.
* I believe that the socialist claim to oppose all forms of ‘imperialism’ is contradicted by their own core principles of permanent revolution as well as the pragmatic realities espoused in the above point.

Cheers, Matt.

Or my sister Sarah recgonised your name.