We can see that the cause of violence, alienation, poor health, and lack of education is poverty. Poverty is the cause of it all yet, somehow, the people directly impacted continue to support an oppressive regime under the name of western ‘democracy’.
The goal of capitalism is in the name: to prioritise capital above all else, especially if it takes away from empowering people to make their own decisions about where that money should go.
“Democracy doesn’t belong on this continent,” proclaimed the Black Peoples Union's Keiran Stewart-Assheton.
Democracy is a process for people who have no law, and must make up their laws as they go. It forces individuals, by way of western liberalism, to fulfil self-serving agendas.
Indigenous cultures didn’t have democracy because they didn’t need it - they had set laws in place that no individual or groups were above. They had to be followed, and that was based around the core of respect, sustainability, and honouring the land with consideration for the future generations. Democracy fosters the opposite of these things.
“Democracy is a Western, liberal practice, that only ever upholds the interests of individuals, conquest, and of capitalism.”
How can we have concrete, un-touchable laws in place while also upholding a system that allows a group of settlers the ‘right’ to undermine and erase those laws in favour of their own interests?
Settler’s ‘democratic rights’ - both socially and politically - can only ever exist in contrast and opposition to the legitimate First Nations laws of this continent. The only reason democracy favours settlers is because they are part of the majority as a direct result of their ancestors wiping out and displacing indigenous people.
It’s clear that with democracy suiting settlers, any instance of settlers pushing democracy as a means of organising or solving issues, are dishonouring the laws of the lands they currently occupy.
To find a sense of community in the face of material hardship and failing hauora on all fronts, people are forced to turn to gangs rather than reconnecting with their roots — or fostering new ones.
The rapid urbanisation of Māori and mandated integration of cultures has seen the degradation of tikanga itself, though due to the socioeconomic grasp capitalism has on indigenous communities, it has united with the materially disadvantaged to form gangs. Anti-state, anti-police, anti-system gangs, setting out to disrupt and show that there is power in the people.
These violent gangs are then lumped together as just ‘violent Māori’, because they’re a ‘war’ culture, by the colonial government and settlers with no regard for why. Why did this happen? Why has the state allowed this to happen?
We are not ‘one people’. We have never been ‘one people’. And until capitalism is dismantled in its entirety, we will never be anywhere close to this abstract idea of ‘one people’.
The communities and families who struggle to put food on the table while unemployment is on the rise are told to budget better and avoid ‘nice to haves’. We’re told this by the ruling class who have a coeval of generational wealth and influence. We’re denied decent education, quality healthcare, and equal justice because we can’t afford it even though we pay taxes to pay for the empty promises. Capitalism is built off the backs of working people and we are paid cents of the dollar that we earn. Supermarkets make record profits during a cost of living crisis and banks make $180 a second during housing shortages.
Then, we’re asked why we turn to socialism. We’re asked why we call for the dismantling of capitalism, of neoliberalism, and the profiting from struggle.
What’s labelled ‘senseless violence’ is derived from neglect and individual blame. People are chucked in prison for involvement in issues they had next to no say in, only to join a gang in prison and reoffend once they’re out.
But the odd person does ‘make it’ in this neoliberal hell, and that seems to be enough encouragement to keep this system in place.
Prison doesn’t work. It doesn’t rehabilitate. It doesn’t heal communities. It doesn’t get justice for the victim.
The mentality is that victims have to get justice by locking up the perpetrator, when in reality this is the ensemble of the cycle of ‘offending’.
Then they ask why we turn to socialism.
The problem with socialism is not that you will eventually run out of people’s money: the problem with socialism is that it eventually denies the material importance of the ruling class and their ‘trickle down’ economic principles. It denies the ruling class the right to continue to rule, and that scares them.
Then they ask why we turn to socialism.