Notes South from Nowhere

I have a reading group on revolutionary history, which covers 600ish years from the mid-14th to mid-20th centuries. It makes me wonder how many socialist(+ adjacent) reading and study groups are floating around #nzpol at the moment. I'm aware of one in Auckland and one in Wellington.

I'm looking at getting off of Instagram, the last Meta platform I still have accounts for. It feels good, and will be less of a headache than when I tackle getting off Spotify soon. Getting off Facebook & Twitter were great for my brain and time. Feels like closing the book on my teens and twenties.

Data piracy at this point is almost certainly not only a social net benefit but quite possibly an economic one. I'd wager people who care enough to pirate old films are the same ones keeping in-person cinemas alive.

01-08-1914 FRANCE3: The call for mobilization empties the union structures, their mail is now monitored and all their leaflets, posters and announcements are subject to censorship which remains in force until October 13, 1919.

01-08-1917 USA: Frank H. Little, anti-war activist & IWW organiser is lynched in Butte, Montana. He was on IWW's Exec Board when he was killed.

The NSPNZ will finally have elected someone, 50 years after dissolving

Median voter brain in NZ is being a patriot who's not only opposed to history you disagree with, but also opposed to historical interpretations written entirely to conform with your own worldview. It's astonishing how such an incurious country doesn't manage to wander into the ocean out of apathy.

V. I. Lenin and Bruce Jesson alike were correct in assessing New Zealand as a paradise for anti-intellectual morons of the lowest order.

For the coalition, cutting funding as thin as possible to MCH is really a win-win. Red meat for the base - restricting funding to a ministry they think is fundamentally a globalist plot to make their kids gay anyway, fulfilling both the fiction of savings and a broadside on history as a discipline.

#OtD 23 Jul 1918 the Japanese rice riots began against high prices, a revolt up to then unparalleled in the country's history in terms of scope, size and violence, which eventually led to the fall of Prime Minister Terauchi's government stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9569...

Kīngitanga engagement with Haiti in the 19th century is one of those corners of Aotearoa's political history that I wish I had the research time to read into. I'm glad it's getting some spotlight! Many revolutionaries from that era ended up in the Pacific, very much a story barely told.

Curious to know your perspective on the "influence existing party/form new party" debate on the socialist left?

#OtD 22 Jul 2005 civil servants in Tonga went on strike for pay rises. The strike incapacitated the government and grew to include many other public sector employees, resulting in the most significant challenge to the island's monarchy in its history stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9488...

Idk how he'll be our next anything when he's 20 years older than Farage

If you're ever in the north end and need a quick easy vegan fast food option, highly recommend Burger Plant

Trot Guide July 2025 Update For those of you coming in late, ‘Trot Guide’ is a brief survey of the various organised socialist (often Marxist) formations in Australia. As such, no, not all groups listed are in fac…

I finally got around to updating 'Trot Guide', a brief survey of the various organised socialist (often Marxist) formations in Australia.

slackbastard.anarchobase.com?p=52946

Hah, my flatmates were watching that just a few hours ago

You might guess I've been thinking a lot about programs lately, I blame a renewed interest in revolutionary history. My reading group will be picking up our CLR James, Christopher Hill, Georges Lefebvre, etc soon.

Still worth, imo, a tip of the hat for pointing in what I think was the right direction. I don't think the core idea was necessarily a bad one (though it landed at a nadir of social movement politics and was just a few years too early to shape GFC era socialist politics).

Yeah, I'm sure it does hit hard if you're a moron.

(paging @daphnelawless.com and @grantbrookesnz.bsky.social on that one)

The last time anything close was *really* attempted by the socialist movement was probably Workers Charter, which I *still* have to write that article about!

I specifically had the '07 raids and the fights over disrespecting patriotic symbols (the ol' flag burning debate) in mind, there's an extremely fine line to walk post-March 15th and the debates over it in the 3-4 years after were really not up to scratch imo.

Were the socialist movement in Aotearoa to actually start seriously thinking about drafting a fighting program, whatever version it may be, on top of wading neck deep into the social question there's a lot of political questions left languishing at our peril (a Republic looms large among them).

It is going to be interesting to see how a lot of people on the left in Aotearoa interact with a growing need to fight for old school capital-R Radical demands like maximal freedom of expression and assembly. The last time that ball was truly in our court was probably GWOT stuff in the 2000s.

Still a treasure trove to learn and inspire from the great French Revolution and revolutionary history generally in Aotearoa today. To riff a bit, we must in short order inscribe upon our banners:
Educate! Educate! Educate!

You should join me and a couple of the polsci PhD students for a cuppa sometime!

Which brings me to two points:

One is that professionalisation hasn't just hollowed out the electoral left in NZ - but formal politics itself. The end of the mass party is an enormously retrograde phenomenon.

Two is that even a modest horizon could mean setting sights far higher than we do today.

The old CPNZ may have stuck around as a minor post-Soviet social democratic party like so many European counterparts had the SUP faction wrestled control of the party during the Sino-Soviet split.

Tbf the exodus of members stemming from their support for the Invasion of Hungary and the split of key members in the late-'50s was steadily hollowing the party out by the time the '66 election (and the SUP split in the same year?) rolled around.