The Case For Cannabis: Christchurch Massacre
March 20, 2019
By NZB3
Part 60 in our ∞-part series about the arguments for cannabis law reform. This article is an unofficial insert to The Case For Cannabis Law Reform, compiled by Vince McLeod and due for release by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.
I’m trying to think up a way to blame the shooting on cannabis prohibition, so that I can jump on the bandwagon as well.- V.J.M
Cannabis prohibition has been ground zero in the duel between self-responsibility and top-down control over personal habits by the powers that be. Sometimes in the past the battle ground has been alcohol or tobacco or even foods but cannabis has been the main stage and scapegoat and whipping boy for generations now.
The Proxy War for Liberty
It’s a proxy war (do Norml folk know that? They tend to think it’s the be all and end all..) because this is not really about weed, it’s about liberty in this and all expressions. The freedom to choose, for morality to be authentic and embraced rather than imposed upon slaves at the point of a gun.
Into this national debate, this unresolved duel, come all the worries of the world. All complex social problems. Does our society face up to them and listen, do we trust one another to be individuals? Or, do we require grown people to be parented and nannied with even their language and media and private habits policed? As I say, the enduring canary in that coal mine is marijuana use and consequences.
Recent Events
In August 2018 the focus of the freedom vs force duel shifted temporarily out of the cannabis mainstay into something abstract: Free Speech. The duel is always changing ground but, as I say, it always comes back to cannabis. Cannabis is always there. We’re always back to talking about cannabis again.
Lauren Southern Stefan Molyneux were de-platformed. When Free Speech supporters to discuss the impasse in Auckland’s Aotea Square they were met with derision and blasted with loud music. It’s all on film, earnest attempts to talk this through were utterly shut down. The cognitive, rational, negotiated, dignified response was refused and made impossible.
In the state of the art of our culture’s discourse, as indicated by the cannabis debate, we had not right to expect anything else. Unable to reach a peaceful consensus on where liberty stands the Molyneux/Southern domino had to fall too. That same month, New Zealand political aspirant Don Brash was deplatformed from speaking about race relations at Massey University. Another domino¹ (appropriately, there is a sculpture of giant dominoes standing outside at that Massey campus.)
The Bloody Payoff
What was Brenton Tarrant’s Christchurch Massacre but another in this line of dominoes? Brash didn’t punch out, he waited and had his day. The Canadians didn’t lash out either, they turned the other cheek to a new venue and were slapped again and then flew away. The Aotea Square assembly, many of them friends of Tommy Robinson, had every provocation but didn’t resort of violence either. But we should not be relying on provoked, attacked, maligned, goaded, disenfranchised people to suffer incendiary attacks forever. There needs to be a much better system than that than to place our public safety in the hands of people with grievances then dance around them in an incendiary fashion not listening to them until they burst!
Jeremy spoke in class today
Jeremy spoke in class today
Clearly I remember
Pickin’ on the boySeemed a harmless little fuck
But we unleashed the lion– Jeremy, Pearl Jam; 1991– Concerning a school shooting of the same year described by the band as ‘their Columbine massacre’
Brenton Tarrant spoke in class, in the mosque to be specific. In my opinion he may not have done if dominoes as recent as Stef and Lauren had not fallen. Suppose New Zealand had embraced the conversation about race and replacement openly instead of shutting it down as “hate speech.” Not to agree, but just to let them talk to who wanted to listen and perhaps to thrash them intellectually but in a fair fight? Would Tarrant have watched that from his Dunedin prepping nest and had second thoughts? Maybe.
Why Wont You Talk To Me?
Still earlier, if we had a fair and square cannabis debate out in the mainstream why would anyone feel like they had to Jeremy or Brenton their way to self-expression? In my opinion we could have averted this (and coming violence) many years ago if we had, as an Open Society, relied upon freedom and negotiation rather than prohibition. When you prohibit and disown something it doesn’t go away, it sublimates and comes back in an unexpected and ugly hurt form every time; Psychologists know this.
It is in this way that cannabis prohibition is the reason for the Christchurch Massacre.
It doesn’t have to be like this
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking
– Keep Talking, Pink Floyd (1994)
—
1 Worth pointing out that, later, Brash did get to speak in peace. Also Jordan Peterson, last month
UPDATE: Scratch one of those supposed redemptions- Whitcoulls appears to have removed Jordan Peterson’s books from sale; Stuff (today) Will Brash’s reprieve also be reversed in this time of moral panic?
Image ref. Massey U domino sculpture; AHNZ archive, 2018
Image ref Hundreds gather to protest Lauren Southern Stefan Molyneux; Newshub
Image ref. mod of David Cairns/Daily Express/Getty Images
Image ref. Norml News, cover, 2002
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