The latest Waitangi Day stunt is for the crowd to turn their backs on the speaker. It reminds me of a story I read once, so long ago that it was before the internet was in use. The internet doesn’t seem to have heard about it now.
Long ago in Sweden, the people of a little town heard that an anti-Semitic ranter was coming on a speaking tour. They didn’t want his message to be influential, and they discussed at length what they could do about it peacefully. To ban or censor him would seem to be descending to his level. In the end, they decided they would all go to his outdoor meeting and simply turn their backs on him after he began his speech. The idea spread to other towns on the man’s itinerary and, finding himself incapable of ranting and raving to an audience of backs, he finally abandoned the tour.
It was a beautiful act of principled and dignified dissent.
How sad that the same thing can be done in such a different spirit and that a Kiwi politician can be shunned for racism because he isn’t racist. Leaders of the anger at Waitangi said that they were tired of not being listened to, but what have they said that was worth a listen? Their ancestors once were warriors and they once were rhetoricians too: people who knew how to reason and debate skillfully and winningly. How refreshing it would be to hear a genuine debate, with salient points instead of slogans and penetrating analysis instead of crude jokes and childish pranks. Is there anyone out there who could make that happen?
Here in small-town New Zealand, it was a quiet Waitangi Day. Māori mowed their lawns, Pākehā mowed their lawns and Tongans and Pakistanis mowed their lawns. The grass was green and the birds sang. We have a lot to be thankful for in this country.
