ANZAC Day at Auckland Museum, 2013. Photo Hannah Johnston/Getty

OPINIONSocietyApril 8, 2016

The trouble with Auckland Museum’s macho terrorism statement

Guest writer

ANZAC Day at Auckland Museum, 2013. Photo Hannah Johnston/Getty

The day after the Brussels bombings, Auckland’s War Memorial Museum released a bizarre statement on history, terror and good vs evil. What on earth were they thinking, asks Janet McAllister.

Who said it: George W Bush or Auckland Museum?

1. “Terror only wins if we flinch.”

2. “Terrorists commit atrocities because they want the civilized world to flinch and retreat so they can impose their totalitarian vision. There will be no flinching in this war on terror, and there will be no retreat.”

3. “All nations of the world face a challenge and a choice. In continued acts of murder and destruction, terrorists are testing our will, hoping we will weaken and withdraw.”

4. “As people who believe in the sanctity of human life and whose values encompass free speech, decency, fairness and democracy, we believe that history tells us that good will prevail…”

5. “We will continue this war on terror … And we will prevail.”

Answers:

1 and 4 are Auckland Museum, March 2016

2, 3 and 5 are Dubya, Aug 2003

“As people who believe in the sanctity of human life and whose values encompass free speech, decency, fairness and democracy, we believe that history tells us that good will prevail and terror only wins if we flinch.”

– Auckland Museum, March 2016

Reading the statement above is like seeing your trusted doctor prescribe homeopathy or hearing an astrophysicist ask for your star sign. And because it’s the Auckland Museum, it’s not like just any star gazer has turned into a dippy Titirangi astrologist, it’s Stephen Hawking. In 37 words, the museum has done a Christopher Hitchens, a Ross Meurant, a Donna Awatere-Huata, and reversed everything it stands for. “So many, many questions are raised for me in that statement…” says renowned historian Dr Aroha Harris, co-author of the 2015 Royal Society of NZ Science Book of the Year, Tangata Whenua. “Does anyone besides me now feel a headache coming on?”

The Great AM has got its historiographical ABCs muddled up so badly that it should give back all its public funding and go sit in a corner reading Tamsin Hanly’s new self-funded New Zealand history books, and not come back until it’s passed NCEA level 1.

So what’s the problem exactly? Let’s break it down:

The Museum expresses faith that history offers two options in any situation: (1) good prevails or (2) good doesn’t prevail because we flinched and let terror win instead (“we” being “people who believe in the sanctity of human life” etc).

So you’re either on the side of good or terror, He-Man or Skeletor, Jem or the Misfits, with no middle ground. That’s not even true in superhero movies, so let’s be generous and interpret “good” as “being kind to animals and not stuffing up too much”.

Now let’s test this belief in prevailing good weather against actual history:

World War II

Goodies: Winston Churchill (although he’s a goodie only as far as white people go. Let’s not talk about his arrogant stuff-ups re Gallipoli or India or Kenya or Pakistan or Sudan or…)

Baddies: Nazis

Result: Winston won, and therefore good prevailed.

A clearcut case; the theory works. Except what about those people killed in World War II, around 3% of the world’s entire population? Good didn’t prevail for those people, did it?

Tricky – but the museum’s theory is up to the challenge of explaining how this happened:

World War II take 2

Goodies: Anne Frank

Baddies: Nazis

Result: Nazis won, and therefore Anne Frank must have flinched.

The museum’s theory is definite on this point: Anne should have just stood staunch. Ditto every other victim in history (see also: Syrian refugees, Rwandan genocide victims, Chrystal in Crotchgate). It’s not like these people had to do anything, they just shouldn’t have flinched. That’s all it would have taken to beat terror.

Via a false dichotomy of good vs terror, the museum encourages victim blaming and smug self-satisfied armchair inaction. What do we have to do for good to prevail? Not flinch. So it’s best to just keep calm and carry on doing nothing. Don’t rebel, don’t shout, don’t rock the boat, just sit tight like good little petrified lambs and we’ll all live happily ever after.

“History tells us that good will prevail”. The underlying supposition here is that, for the most part, good has already been installed and is currently king. And, as good can’t be built on unjust wars and stolen land, Godzone was clearly not founded on Parihaka but pavlovas.

Excitingly for nerds, history battles are heating up all over the Anglophone world. Statues of colonial plunderer Cecil Rhodes are under threat at Oxford University but 60% of Britons are proud of the British Empire, while closer to home there’s bitter debate about whether 26 January should be celebrated as “Australia Day” or mourned as “Invasion Day”. Interesting things are happening in New Zealand too: Manu Samoa rugby player Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu has described the history teaching he received in Auckland as “white supremacist”, while a 13,000-signature petition recently asked for the New Zealand Land Wars to be taught in all schools.

Meanwhile, Auckland Museum is trying to fob us off with Fox News mumbo-jumbo. If you disagree, the museum’s “with us or against us” framing paints you as a murdering bastard whose values encompass censorship, communism, darkness and bad words.

But history teaches me that absolute goodness doesn’t exist; that sometimes we’re given a choice between two evils, like voting for the National Epsom candidate or letting Act win. History teaches me that regimes I agree with don’t always prevail; and that when they do, it’s because people have worked hard, and are peddling furiously to keep them on top. History teaches me that the vulnerable get bashed up. You already know this. It’s ridiculous that the establishment built on Pukekawa, the Hill of Bitter Tears, is still in the dark.

Keep going!

Dispensaries that are common in overseas jurisdictions could be dotted all over our towns. (Photo: Getty)

PoliticsApril 6, 2016

People thought I was high when I said it was time to legalise pot. Now, the mood is changing fast

Don Brash

Guest writer

Dispensaries that are common in overseas jurisdictions could be dotted all over our towns. (Photo: Getty)

Opinion: Five years ago, many mocked a speech calling for liberalised drug laws. Today, such a position is becoming mainstream, writes former ACT leader Don Brash.

It is astonishing how rapidly attitudes towards marijuana are changing. Less than five years ago, most politicians thought I had lost my mind (indeed, perhaps had been smoking pot myself) when, in a speech as Leader of the ACT Party, I suggested that decriminalising, and even legalising, marijuana should be seriously considered.

The day after I gave that speech I was interviewed on Campbell Live. John Campbell invited viewers to text or email their opinions on the matter, and 72% of those who responded indicated they agreed with my view. Most politicians dismissed the “vote”, arguing rightly that it was in no sense a scientific poll.

A customer (not Don Brash) inspects the wares s shop for marijuana at Top Shelf Cannabis, a retail marijuana store, on July 8, 2014 in Bellingham, Washington. Top Shelf Cannabis was the first retail marijuana store to open today in Washington state, nearly a year and a half after the state's voters chose to legalize marijuana. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images) — A customer (not Don Brash) inspects the wares at Top Shelf Cannabis in Washington state. Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images

Today, a UMR poll suggests that more than 70% of New Zealanders favour legalising medical marijuana, with people divided equally between those who favour legalising marijuana for personal use and those who remain opposed.

We’ve seen a similar shift in public opinion overseas. In 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy issued a report which began with the words “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.” Instead of a policy of harsh law enforcement, the report advocated “decriminalising drug use by those who do no harm to others”.

And who were the people on this Commission? Twenty-two of the great and the good, including the former presidents of Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland, Kofi Annan, George Shultz (the former US Secretary of State), Paul Volcker (former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board), and Richard Branson.

A month or two later, the Liberal Democrats in the UK – at the time in coalition with the Conservative Party – called for the decriminalisation of all drugs.

In October 2011, the California Medical Association called for the legalisation of marijuana (using cannabis for medical purposes had been legal in California since 1996). In the same month, Time magazine reported the results of a Gallup poll which showed that 50% of Americans favoured the legalisation of cannabis.

And so it’s gone on in the years since. In many US states, it is possible to acquire cannabis for medical purposes, and in several states marijuana is now fully legalised.

It appears that New Zealand may be catching up. Peter Dunne, in his capacity as Associate Health Minister, has recently approved the use of medical cannabis in a limited number of specific cases, and last week – following yet another international study which found that the punitive approach to drug offending hasn’t worked –“reiterated the Government’s commitment to review drug policy and make sure drug offending is primarily seen as a health matter”.

What do we know about marijuana?

We know first that, despite the current law making it a criminal offence to sell, possess or use marijuana, many hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders flout the law. The Law Commission undertook a major study on the issue in 2011 and noted that “nearly half this country’s adult population has used [cannabis] at some point in their lives and about one in seven, or the equivalent of 385,000 people, were classified as current users in 2006”. Indeed, although statistics are not entirely reliable, it appears that New Zealanders are amongst the heaviest users of marijuana in the world.

Second, we know from many studies that frequent use of marijuana by teenagers does quite serious damage to their developing brains. Perhaps the most comprehensive study was based on the internationally acclaimed study of 1037 babies born in Dunedin in 1972 and 1973, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US. This found that “adolescent-onset users experienced marked neuropsychological decline” amounting to some eight IQ points for persistent users. Other studies have found similarly adverse effects on teenagers. On the other hand, occasional use by adults appears to have minimally adverse effects, arguably less adverse effects than those caused by alcohol.

Third, we know that making the possession and use of marijuana a criminal offence does exactly what prohibition of alcohol did in the US – it substantially increases the power of the criminal gangs which supply the stuff. Because using it puts the user beyond the law, it probably also makes it easier for suppliers to entice users to try other more serious and more addictive drugs.

And of course because using it is a criminal offence, users risk incurring a criminal conviction for a crime which overwhelmingly does damage to the user himself, not to others, although getting the money to buy cannabis may well lead to much more serious crime.

So where does that leave me? It leaves me strongly in favour of legalisation but with one important caveat: every effort should be made to reduce – better still eliminate –the use of marijuana by teenagers, as is done with tobacco and alcohol. (And by the way – unlike many others, I have never used the stuff, and have no plans to do so.)