Bruce Bisset: Right's rhetoric rings hollow

Prime Ministe John Key told Labour leader Andrew Little to "get some guts and join the right side". Photo / NZME.

Amid all the talk about defending democracy, upholding freedom of speech and doing the right thing, there are some disturbing contradictions suggesting none of these actually hold much water when it comes to the current practice of government.

Or to the underlying attitudes of those who support said government with their very vocal utterances on radio, television, and the internet - if comments made in the blogosphere can be said to be "vocal".

For while it's all very well for Prime Minister John Key, speaking in defence of National's decision to send an armed training force to Iraq, to tell Labour leader Andrew Little to "get some guts and join the right side", guts is what he and his followers seem, for the most part, to lack.

In this case, hurrying off to "join the club" instead of telling the US we don't want a bar of IS and refusing their request - just as we (under Labour) refused to join the war in Iraq in 2003. As Green co-leader Russel Norman observed, it's ridiculous to now be dragged into its aftermath.

Moreover as Little pointed out, what can a small group of Kiwis hope to achieve that the might of the US Army, in more than a decade, hasn't? The Iraqi Army is broken and corrupt; the chances of successfully fixing it are nominally zero.

So it's purely a flag-waving exercise. Best keep the silver-fern-on-black-background ones at home, lads, lest some ally mistakes you for the opposition.

Regardless, it's the unilateral nature of the decision that undermines Key's holier-than-thou stance: if he and his cronies are so right, why not put it to a parliamentary vote?

That they didn't prompted the best quote on the issue, again from Norman: "It seems democracy is a military export, and not for domestic consumption."

Meanwhile debate continues to rage around the implications of what Man-Booker prize-winning author Eleanor Catton recently said about neo-liberalism, including her observation of "the frightening swiftness with which the powerful right move to discredit and silence those who question them".

This has prompted a coming-together of artists of all descriptions (of whom I am one) to support Catton's position by signing a declaration which among other things states we are "determined to ensure that attitudes that belittle and dismiss art's value to cultural growth are forcefully challenged" and "that artistic freedom of expression is always celebrated".

Within a few hours of its release, propaganda site Whale Oil Beef Hooked had belittled it and was cosily flooded with dozens of patronising and vitriolic comments about artists, left-wingers, greenies, and anyone else Cameron Slater and his mob characteristically deride.

Now, I'm well-used to getting derogatory comments (along with many positive ones) and generally pay them no mind. But, having not bothered to visit Slater's shop of horrors before, three things immediately stood out:

First, every comment - except those from a handful of pro-Catton supporters - was filed under a nom de plume; second, most of the pro- comments were taken down as soon as the authors tried to engage the antis in debate, and third, the dominant theme revolved around how much money was "wasted" on artists, as if money was the only part of the argument - when in fact it is no part at all. Frankly, that's game set and match. Proof (if any were needed) supporters of the right are cowards who brook no dissent, completely lack empathy and worship money alone.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.