Diary of Defeat, October 2025

EINE KULTUR OHNE SCHATTEN.  It seems to me that the polarisation coming from the Left is a result of the peace dividend.  Eighty years of peace for the West is pretty much unique in history.  Since the collapse of the Soviet Empire the West has lost an enemy on which it can focus its ‘shadow projection’, the attribution of our culture’s worst features onto an identifiable opponent.  Given the influence of the extreme Left’s desire for the “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions” and its opportunity to dominate discourse, it has created a shadow from within the culture it inhabits.  What are perceived to be the West’s worst features, slavery, colonialism, capitalism, individualism, materialism, misogyny, patriarchy and so on, are targeted to condemn the West in order to dispirit it.  And it’s working.  We now have the CRINK bloc – the autocratic states of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – which along with Islam and its supremacist theocratic nature, are natural enemies of Western culture, unified in their attempts to weaken it.  If the West had not lost its self-respect, this ‘axis of upheaval’ would have a minor impact, and it could focus on expanding its extraordinary achievements without wasting resources on factors that do nothing to improve – indeed detract – from the civilisational goal of incremental improvement.

Diary of Defeat, August 2025

BELATEDLY, I WATCHED TOMMY ROBINSON’S SILENCED, about how a minor schoolyard scrap ended up front page news based on an accumulation of the most outrageous deceit.  Robinson’s collection of evidence seems highly credible, but the narrative portrayed by media, celebrities and the judiciary was an outrageous exercise in extreme dawah.  Robinson’s epilogue was an articulate defence of civilisation currently under attack.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e1ZAHj1xAo.

 

THE WORLD’S LONGEST-RUNNING FLOWER SHOW was cancelled.  The Shropshire Horticultural Society was faced with a new legal requirement, Martyn’s Law, that events with more than 200 people had to engage in state-monitored protocols to protect visitors from terror attacks.  Martyn’s Law is named after Martyn Hett, one of the 22 victims of the Manchester Arena bombing by Salman Abedi. Figen Murray, Hett’s mother, fought for the legislation with admirable tenacity.  Yet it does not tackle the key state failures that enabled the Manchester horrors. It does not strengthen borders, which were porous enough for Abedi to return to the UK after a year with militants in Libya. It does not enhance the powers of the police or the security services to apprehend a killer before he acts. It does not drain the extremist swamp in which jihadism flourishes. The Home Affairs Committee has warned that there is little evidence the law will ‘reduce the threat of terrorism for smaller organisations’, though it will certainly make the work of civil society groups more onerous and expensive.  https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-law-that-is-choking-civil-society/

 

STEPHEN RAINBOW appears to me to be overcoming his Green Party handicap and showing fragments of common sense.  His pro-Israel stance got barbs from the usual suspects, and he criticised the "genocide hotline" established by Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa national chairman John Minto, stating "the promotion may not be unlawful, however, the chief commissioner sees it as potentially harmful to Israeli and Jewish people in Aotearoa New Zealand."

Diary of Defeat, March 2025

THE CENTRIST has an article on how Auckland University slipped out of the world’s top 150 universities’ rankings last year, and this year began a course on the Treaty and indigenous “knowledge systems” for all first-year students in every faculty.  The compulsory course, with its name ‘gifted’ as “Waipapa Taumata Rau” which also applies to the university, plays a key part in indigenising — or decolonising — it.  And you will have to pay for the privilege of being railroaded onto the course — with international students paying up to $5730 for the paper. Perhaps most alarmingly, students must pass to be entitled to move on to second-year studies. 

Education professor Elizabeth Rata considered that the effect of the decolonisation programme would be to turn the university into a faith-based institution, like a wananga, seminary or a madrassa.  It will mean a university would no longer be a place for the discovery of new knowledge, and for the testing and refutation of the knowledge that we currently have.

The course is an example of the erosion of the universality of science and of objective truth.  "Situated knowledge" is the idea that knowledge is always shaped by and embedded in the specific social, cultural, historical, and political contexts in which it is produced.  It lies in the dubious company of ‘anecdotal evidence’, ‘standpoint epistemology’ and ‘lived experience’, as being knowledge that must be accepted on trust.  This tends to be antithetical to the expert authority which is embodied in strong governance.  Woke culture enables it by taking strong account of feelings and perceptions and has led to ‘identity politics’, establishing a kind of “moral aristocracy” in public debate on the basis of a particular racial category, and to close ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.

THE DAILY BLOG carries a story on Luxon and police minister Mitchell using X to wish NZ’s Muslims a happy Ramadan and reading a script from FIANZ’s Dawah Division.  The Blog is Left-wing, so its criticism is of Luxon and Mitchell, not Islam.  Of course.  The X post is frankly creepy, and Luxon reads out the well-worn line about Ramadan being a time of ‘spiritual rejuvenation’.  I found this hard to resist so posted the following on the Blog's site:

Ramadan’s spiritual rejuvenation carries statistical value.  The average daily slaughter in the name Islam for the last ten years is 37.9 dead people.  But Ramadan carries a 13.6% premium – 43.1 dead people.  For those who think this is a bad thing, take comfort.  Rates are declining.  Islam’s daily dead peaked at 90.4 in 2014 while last year’s was only 23.8.  Thanks to TheReligionOfPeace.com for keeping pace with ‘peace’.

But as I say, The Daily Blog is Left-wing, so did not publish my post.  It's hard to say whether this is support for, or fear of, Islam.

Meanwhile, Pakistan experienced 84 militant attacks during this year's Ramadan, the highest number in ten years.