Let me pick up on a theme I introduced in January of this year, for it is a theme that hasn’t gone away, in fact becomes more relevant.

In the New Year post I pointed out that In the late 19th century Russia was a ferment of political angst: an authoritarian Emperor influenced by Rasputin the evil advisor, secret police, dungeons, political opponents sent to Siberia, peasant revolts, revolutionary anarchists and a beginning communist insurgency, but one lacking a developed proletariat…  My suspicion that we are in a similar period gathers evidence: the horror of Gaza, the planet on fire, the authoritarianism and venality of Netanyahu, Trump and J.D. Vance (and others), the militarising of the police and calling in of the army in Western ‘democracies’ and the powerlessness of normal political processes add up to a climate of terror.

In Russia, the anarchists threw bombs and assassinated leaders in acts of individual terrorism and became martyrs. Terror is extreme fear caused by violence and bloodshed, a mechanism of intimidation and an instrument of political coercion. The issue with terror is that the state is better at it and has far greater resources. Yet the terrorist act, in the minds of individual proponents, was validated by the way that it brought to the surface the fact that the state is based on terror. It became then a clarification.

Seen in this framework, the Hamas act of terror on Oct 7th two years ago has unleashed and revealed the full blown terror on which the Israeli state is based – no one can ignore this fact. But it has also revealed the continuing underlying terror of the post-colonial North with its ties to Israeli. It’s almost as if their leaders are surprised as they play out this emanation, as they’re forced to take off the mask of respectability, each in their own way. To take one example, it is, if judged from the viewpoint of common sense, inconceivable what Labour is doing in the UK.

Accordingly, the mask of a system of ‘democracy’, which still pretends to carry in the basement of its psyche the belief in liberty, equality, fraternity, is removed, to reveal the real motor of the system: greed and racism.

Here, in Aotearoa, we are just starting, but you can see how it may develop as the need to commit to an independent Palestine arrives. The terror here will be limited, dictated to by the shape of our colonial past. It starts with the prevarication of our Uncle Tom (Winston), then the eviction of Chloe from the parliamentary chamber for telling the truth. David Seymour is the one who would enjoy administering state terror, once again, typically, in boyish fashion; becoming, to use the familial use of the word, ‘a little terror’.

And then what? Some event; in Russia it was the impact of WW1, churns the ferment to the point of either collapse or revolution. Now, in this early part of the 21st century, a younger generation have wakened; the realisation that the strike is an effective and necessary weapon has surfaced; judicial martyrdom is being chosen by elders; there is fear for the planet… as the Palestinians are being subjected to ever more extreme terror, in various walks of life people are increasingly prepared to act in solidarity, past the approval of the system.