Oh Please Explain

Chris Trotter
Politics from left, right and centre.

The alarmed expression on Marama Davidson’s face when Chloe Swarbrick referenced Benjamin Doyle’s “subset” of the Rainbow Community was priceless. “That’s it!” she cried, abruptly shutting down the media conference and ushering her co-leader as far away from the cameras and microphones as possible.

But why? Surely, what New Zealanders are most keen to hear from the Greens, Doyle in particular, is an explanation. If the images and text uplifted from his BibleBeltBussy Instagram site (now in “hiatus” mode) were unfairly ripped from their context, then, for God’s sake, give us the context!

If only because, by not giving us the context the suspicion is immediately raised that any explanation offered by Doyle and/or his Green Party colleagues would only have the effect of making matters worse. Which, of course, only makes matters worse.

Indeed, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Davidson shut down the media stand up because she was pretty sure what the next question was going to be: “What subset of the Rainbow Community might that be, Chloe?” Davidson was terrified that her bright-eyed idealist of a co-leader, in the spirit of transparency and full disclosure, would feel obliged to provide the assembled journalists with a detailed answer.

But what would that answer have been?

Any journalist willing to spend a few moments on Google would be confronted with at least one possible answer. Not that anyone who has taken an abiding interest in the history of the international Green movement needs Google’s help. For left-leaning politicos, active in the 1980s, the weird and wonderful story of Germany’s Die Grünen and their “Urban Indians” was most unlikely to slip from their memory.

Certainly, the German Greens have had to reconcile themselves to the fact that they will never be allowed to forget their disastrous early association with the political movement pressing for the “legalization of all affectionate sexual relations between adults and children.”

That association, a feature of Die Grünen politics from 1980 until 1987, was recalled in a 2013 article published in Spiegel International. Under the headline “Paedophile Links Haunt Green Party”, a trio of journalists, Jan Fleischhauer, Ann-Katrin Müller, and Renee Pfister detailed the electoral perils of excessive tolerance – which were, apparently, obvious from the get go:

When the Green Party was founded in 1980, paedophiles were part of the movement from the start – not at the centre of its activities, but always hovering along the periphery. At the first party convention in the southwestern German city of Karlsruhe, pacifists, feminists and opponents of nuclear energy were joined by the so-called ‘Urban Indians’, who advocated the ‘legalization of all affectionate sexual relations between adults and children.’ From then on, paedophiles, noisy and wearing colourful body paint, were often a visible part of Green Party gatherings.

Hoo-boy! You see the problem here? There is absolutely no evidence that Benjamin Doyle subscribes in the slightest way to the ideas of these 1980s German Greens, and I am certainly not suggesting that he does. The difficulty he faces, however, is that, in the absence of a clear and fulsome personal explanation of the images and text lifted from BibleBeltBussy and posted on social media, Doyle’s critics will take it upon themselves to scour the internet for answers – and the Spiegel International story, or one very like it, is what they’ll find.

No matter how hard Marama Davidson might wish she and her co-leader could simply walk away from this controversy, the Greens will not be allowed to. The party and its beleaguered MP absolutely must provide the electorate with an explanation – or an electorally devastating explanation will be plastered all over social media by its socially conservative opponents.

Certainly, the tactics employed to date – deflection and misdirection – are likely to have a very short shelf life. Yes, the torrent of death threats pouring forth against Doyle is deplorable and must be condemned by all parties in the strongest terms. But it’s worth remembering that the Green List MP is not the only person under attack. The individuals responsible for publicising his life-world have also been assailed by pseudonymous keyboard cowards. It is, surely, the rankest hypocrisy to condemn the emotional violence unleashed upon Doyle, while dismissing the furious backlash against his critics with the callous observation that they ‘had it coming’.

And, while we’re discussing political ethics, a word or two should be devoted here to the performance of the mainstream media. If ever there was a subject that could benefit from being investigated and rendered intelligible by fearless and impartial journalism, it is the seemingly limitless permutations of human sexuality with which our society is expected to contend. Defending everybody’s right to ‘do their own thing’ may fill journalists with a golden glow, but it is an inadequate response to the fear and loathing so often inspired by unconventional sexual expression.

How many “subsets” are there in the Rainbow Community? More or less than in the Cis Community? And what distinguishes a dangerous subset from one that is merely avant-garde?

These are the sort of questions David Lynch attempted to answer in his deeply disturbing movie Blue Velvet. He begins his story with the discovery of a severed human ear, and then guides his agitated audience towards a fuller appreciation of the world’s frightening complexity.

The Greens have never shied away from complex, or frightening, realities. It would be a shame if they were to begin now. New Zealand has questions, the Greens best, and probably their only option, is to answer them.

This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.