NZB3 Reboot
March 18, 2019
By NZB3
The NZB3 (New Zealand: Be Free; Get it?) blog and podcast was my voice on the internet back in 2006 when I was a bit younger and a libertarian. Bits of it are still online here on Blogger. It was the Golden Age of blogging before the social media giants like Facebook and Twitter or video streaming like Youtube claimed the public square. The changed medium changed the way people could express themselves just as video had done for radio years before, for example. After NZB3 I blogged for a while to a much larger audience on Silent Running. Unlike others who have deleted their old work I value keeping mine on record, mistakes and all. One good reason to do this is that knowing we mean to keep on record tomorrow what we write today helps us to be more personally responsible at all times.
Why Reboot NZB3?
I’ve tried to confine myself to exploring New Zealand history and to sharpen and move this work along by posting my findings publicly at Anarchist History of New Zealand. If it’s not history, my rule states, I’m not to discuss it. However, under the larger banner of the Anarkiwi site I have made for New Zealand Anarchists there are others freely offering their opinion and analysis. How am I to chip in to agree or disagree or generate new content unless I can bend my rule by shoehorning into something historical? Sometimes I do want to do that just like Vince and Graham are. And, I don’t want to directly post to Anarkiwi like it were my personal opinions but save that for a clearing house for everyone.
Therefore, New Zealand Be Free returns to fulfil that function. There is philosophy and social psychology I have otherwise held back on expounding upon. In particular, there has been the Christchurch Massacre this month and the unsatisfying commentary following. This occurred while I was visiting Australia, the place I wrote all my past NZB3 posts from. As I write it seems to me as if an angry teacher has just returned to the classroom and everyone has hushed for fear of reprimand.
People are afraid to express themselves, afraid of being attacked for not offering up their on-the-clock virtue signalling that they are appalled about the shootings. As Vince put it yesterday, “If you don’t spend at least three hours a day virtue signalling, people call you a white supremacist.” The final resolve came today when Openhost (the domain provider for this site) emailed customers the following along with this over-used picture of a crying Kiwi…
Hate and violence have no part in our society. On Friday our country was rocked by the most cowardly of attacks, and our hearts go out to all those families impacted by the tragedy.
Of concern to us is the use of the internet in these attacks, both to research and to stream the events live. As New Zealand’s largest web hosting company…we have a social responsibility to ensure that our customers are using our services for the public good.
As a proudly New Zealand owned IT company we are sending this timely reminder to our customers that we will have zero tolerance..
Openhost’s ‘public good’ and ‘social responsibility’ rhetoric are a warning of censorship and an assumption of police authority over our free speech. They’re making value judgements about hate and violence and cowardice here and putting them above debate because to disagree is to risk being deplatformed. Are they serious or just trying to cover their tails politically? Whichever, I will assert my right to free speech right now because I recognise this as an early attack with more anticipated to follow.
Here are some free speech expressions. Is this allowed?
“Hate and violence have no part in our society”
Utter rubbish, our society is unfortunately built on violence. Try not paying your taxes. Try withholding your children from State School. Try operating a business or being a professional without the State’s licences or permission or subsidies. Anarchists are opposed to violence but Statists thrive on it.
As for hate, that’s simply one of our basic natural human emotions just like love or anger. All our feelings have a role to play in our lives and our society and it is our culture and self-consciousness that ensures we use them in the right way at the right time toward the right object. To ban hatred is a silly puritanical slave mentality that will only ensure that it misfires. Am I allowed to know that or think that about hate or is this not to be debated?
“the most cowardly of attacks”
If permitted, I would like to question this value judgement. There are more accurate ways to condemn the killer than name-calling. I’m intent on not miss-characterising or miss-framing what really happened in Christchurch. Taking on the New Zealand Police and Armed Offenders Squad and the might of the Defence Force and legal system and Government and 99% of world opinion is not cowardly. Brenton Tarrant had conviction, he was brave, he put his life on the line for what he believed in and we need to deal with that not minimise or miss-characterise it in order to feel better or feel safe among our peers. I feel social pressure to call him evil or mad right now. So, I wont do it. I will even risk saying that I bet Tarrant and I have a lot in common because I think we’ve been influenced by the same concerns. Yet where he took a deadly and controlling and identitarian fork I’ve been looking for another way to go. My first posts here will be to discuss what I’ve figured out because I think we need it now. I need it now and can’t find anyone else with similar solutions.
Hundreds gather to protest Lauren Southern Stefan Molyneux
The best New Zealand has been able to come up with lately is to stop people like Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux even being able to raise the issue. When thinkers tried to discuss the impasse in Auckland they were met with derision and blasted with loud music. Dignity Culture wants to reason but Slave Culture will never allow this and only yield to Honour Culture and its bullets. Tarrant’s murders, from this point of view, were simply the Australian’s sequel to the Canadian’s encounter eight months earlier. As an Anarchist my big ambition is for us to step outside these brutal cycles and to do so through peaceful reason and persuasion.
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Image ref. Newshub
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