Green On The Outside and Red On The Inside

by Colin Robertson

……an article on the New Zealand Greens inspired by Lew Rockwell’s look at Terrorism in Green.

New Zealand is a clean and green country. This image of the nation gives an economic comparative advantage which is used by the private sector to promote tourism and food exports. Thus, the word "green " here has taken on a meaning that is quite precious. This preciousness, unfortunately, is ill-directed by many to the Green Party of New Zealand because they believe they are supporting sincere custodians of the environment in the form of organic gardeners, whale-savers, tree lovers, bicycle riders, as well as bird and pollution watchers.

The fact that the Green Party of New Zealand has long-time communists in key positions in their parliamentary line-up appears to give little cause for concern. Gullible people seem to think that because the Soviet Union no longer exists communism is dead, and as a result the leopard has changed its spots. Unwittingly, the gullible have become what Lenin called "useful idiots".

I say to these people, please think again, because there is a natural alliance between the communists and the Greens for the reason that both believe in state planning and control, and view with enmity private property rights and the free market. These factors are at the heart of the "environmentalism " practiced by the Greens.

And these people should take on board the fact that the Marxist revolution still occupies the minds of many activists . For instance, in his book, Communities of Resistance, published in 1990, Ambalvander Sivanandan, a Tamil Marxist prominent in Britain’s race relations industry, stated that with capital not now being so dependent on living labor, a new way had to be found to organize the revolution other than through weakened trade unions without clout.

For Sivanandan the revolution now had to be fought through what he calls "communities of resistance", driven by the politics of race, culture, gender, peace, the environment, food, animal rights and anti-globalisation. And, these are all issues on which the Greens in New Zealand adopt a heavy left-wing stance, coupled with instances of eco-terrorism and violent protest.

Just the other day a faction in the Green Party called for direct action "to stress the ecological damage that the farming of animals creates" and "to raise awareness of the constant evils committed on the lives of commercially raised livestock". Agriculture based on private property ownership creates, annually, huge wealth for New Zealand and yet there are elements in the Green Party who are prepared to sabotage this.

In 1999 the same Party had on its web site a link to the purveyor of a sabotage book for eco-terrorists. It also gave details of a weekly "freesheet" described as the "news resource for activists in the UK." It covered and encouraged the rise of direct action in the UK under the motto, Party and Protest. The "freesheet", it was said, gave Greens the opportunity to "follow the rise of anti-road protests, live animal export demos, hunt saboteurs, anti-mining groups, anti-nuclear, anti-globalisation, Hawk jet saboteurs and anti-GE actions. The contact given for the "freesheet" is now a Green member of the New Zealand parliament.

Readers may be wondering how people with long-term and open communist backgrounds in this country can get in to the New Zealand parliament. Well, we recently adopted a proportional representation system that allows for half the parliament to be appointed by party bosses, and the other half to be elected by the people. Party bosses appointed to parliament the politicians with communist backgrounds. If these people had run for elected positions on a communist ticket they would not have succeeded in the ballot. No one has ever been elected to the New Zealand parliament on a communist ticket.

Our proportional representation electoral system is called Mixed Member Proportional or MMP. Perhaps with a degree of cynicism some political observers said that MMP stood for More Marxists in Parliament. Unfortunately, the Green trojan horse proved them right.

P.S. It has just been brought to my attention that a US historian by the name of Mike Davis is touring New Zealand. He is promoting his "world acclaimed " book, Late Victorian Holocausts to expose the horrors of colonization. His visit has been organized by the Socialist Workers Organisation here in New Zealand. We don’t know anything about this guy. Can anyone give us a lead?

June 2, 2001

Colin Robertson, a former officer of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, is a businessman and writer. He is working on a book on New Zealand's race relations industry.

Copyright 2001 LewRockwell.com