Let them eat sociology

I've got news for you, and it's all bad.

We are victims of social engineering by an authoritarian government.  Smug bureaucrats spout words like 'fascism' and 'alt right' and 'kindness' until they have no meaning.  And fake progressives have no class analysis.  After all, the anti-vax protesters are only reacting to social inequality.  To criticise them is divisive.  

You've heard it before, and so have I.  This time, sadly, it came from the political left.1  I want to respond.  (I mean, I used to be a smug bureaucrat myself, before taking my lunchbox and my smugness to the private sector.)  

The Facebook post was referring to the anti-vax march on Parliament.  It questioned the backlash against protesters with tino rangatira flags.  And I agree, there is challenging stuff, a deep historical pain, behind this act: things that are not for me to judge.  But after that, the poster and I parted company.    

Because some people turned up to the protest with Trump banners and swastikas.  I type this with dismay.  The words 'fascism' and 'alt right' have meanings alright, and they also have supporters.  

I'm too young, of course, to have seen Nazism firsthand.  But I remember vividly the Trump banners, the confederate flags, the noose on the scaffold outside the Capitol.  I doubt the symbolism was lost on the workers inside the building, especially the people of colour.  I  doubt it was lost on the cleaners who, in the days that followed, bent to pick the excrement of white supremacists from the carpet.  

The people who turned up to Parliament, with their Trump banners and swastikas, weren't rioters - and they made their point without physical violence.  But they sure understood the violence of their symbols.  

Threats had been made online in the days leading up to the event.  People speculated, openly, about overthrowing the government in a coup.  A speaker at the rally, Nelson lawyer Sue Grey, has been reported as associating with Kyle Chapman, former leader of the NZ National Front, a white nationalist group.  On the day itself, people made death threats against leaders.    

These aren’t wolves in sheep's clothing.  They're just wolves.  Out-and-proud wolves, wolfin' around wolfishly.      

Of course, not everybody who turned up to the protest was a Nazi sympathiser.  But they knew these types were planning to come: all of New Zealand did.  And knowing this, they made the choice to stand alongside people brandishing racist imagery.  A reaction to inequality?  Class analysis?  Let's discuss.

Sociologists - historically, old white guys - have argued for yonks that there's a relationship between economic insecurity and shit behaviour.  This isn't really a newsflash.  Nor is it necessarily wrong.  It's just not that straightforward.

These days, not all sociologists are old white guys.  Some commentators highlight that it's not always poor people who are dicks.  Take for example the 45% of US college-educated white women who helped vote in Trump.  Even in a complex world, the truth can sometimes be uncomfortably simple.  Some people are just racist.  Don't know what to tell ya.   

Other commentators ask whose purposes are served when we use social science to soften white people's violence - particularly white men's.  Often, when some guy 'snaps' - hits his partner, joins some alt right group, takes a gun into a public place - economic insecurity cops the blame.  

Yet women and people of colour have lived with economic insecurity forever.  And most white men who experience economic insecurity don't turn to swastikas.  Many find politics, join unions, try to make the world a better place.  It's only some white men who react with anger at losing what others never had.          

At its best, sociology - including class analysis - is pretty cool.  But its job is to help us understand, not to make our excuses for us.  And that's why my heart sinks. 

The day of the protest, Parliament had to bolster its security.  My guess is, those security staff aren't well paid.  They include, of course, Māori and Pasifika workers.  And those workers had to look out, from the building that is meant to enshrine our democracy, on the images of a regime that would have sought to eliminate them.   

The class analysis I want to see cares about these workers more than people who would persecute them.  Because, you know what's divisive?  Spoiler alert: it's NAZISM.  The swastika symbolises the anguish of people of colour, not the plight of angry white people feeling misunderstood.  

I see nothing morally ambivalent about this.  I think white supremacists are dicks.  That's all the sociology I need.  And so I've summarised my position in a helpful multi-choice pop quiz.  

Question: Should you hang out with people who protest with swastikas?

a) No.

b) No.

c) No.

d) All of the above.