Interlopers don't define Groundswell

Friday, 19 November 2021

EDITORIAL: Poet Walt Whitman sometimes contradicted himself. “I am large,’’ he explained. “I contain multitudes.’’

The Groundswell farmer protest movement is also large and also contains – or at least attracts – multitudes.

It’s about resistance to what its supporters see as unworkable regulations around freshwater, climate change, significant natural areas, and more.

The anti-vaxx theme is not on its agenda.

Trumped-up alt-right QAnon conspiracy nonsense certainly isn’t.

* Groundswell: is the difficult second protest suffering from poor timing and bad friends?

* Wairarapa organisers pull pin on Groundswell protest as fringe elements undermine farmers' messages

* Groundswell NZ denies being anti-vax after founder shuns vaccination promo video

But a movement isn’t always in perfect control of whomsoever might sidle up alongside it. In some respects it’s the old “with friends like these…’’ dynamic.

So some stupid-to-repellant sign waving and messaging has made it hard for the Groundswell organisers to maintain coherent messaging. More than that, even, there have been concerns that some protest events may be not just unhelpfully joined by these protesters, but hijacked by them.

We’ve seen the pin being pulled on a Masterton protest because of concerns that other groups could be present in sufficient numbers, or with sufficient intent, to take over.

None of this gets Economic and Regional Development Minister Stuart Nash off the hook for being at best careless, at worst deceptive, when he said, on the brink of Sunday’s nationwide “Mother of All Protests’’ that he from what he’d read on its website, Groundswell was “a mixture of racism, anti-vax et cetera et cetera’’.

A silly rebuff for which he has rightly drawn fire.

He dismisses the essence of the protest to “et cetera’’ status and highlights the problematic elements, as if the protests should be defined by them.

Whereas, even though Groundswell arose at least in part from dissatisfaction with the representation provided by Federated Farmers, that body’s president Andrew Hoggard has acknowledged that many people he viewed as middle-of-the-road would be attending the protests.

Things may still go wrong on Sunday, at least in some of the 70-odd protest venues. But Groundswell organisers have done what they reasonably can to distinguish their agenda from that of the unrelated anti-vaxx movement and the unconscionable alt-right.

Groundswell’s website sets out expectations, which we guess means they fall between rules and pleas.

These include obeying road rules and Covid rules, resisting provocations, and not indulging in offensive placards or signs.

There’s even a list of 15 approved signs – “Get your property rights out of our sights”, and the likes.

The final expectation is this: “We want to be in the media so the Government takes notice for the right reasons.’’

Now, about that ….

To date, the Government has been haughtily dismissive of Groundswell, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the Minister for most things relevant to the protest - Agriculture, Trade and Export Growth, Rural Communities – Damien O’Connor, declining meetings.

Okay, but the Government must stand accountable for that, rather than misrepresenting the group they’re rebuffing.

Admittedly, there are limits to how much bad behaviour can be excused as the unwanted actions of an invasive minority.

That was the fatuous defence mounted by the Republican Party for the salivating seditionist mob steered by defeated President Donald Trump to storm the US Capitol to subvert democratic process. In truth they were trying to get the world to swallow the line that the trouble with such protests is that there’s always that 98 percent who spoil it for the rest.

Hopefully, on Sunday we’ll see a stroppy but not undisciplined farming protest, justified or not, but focused on those issues. If there are troublemaking or just attention interlopers, they should be recognised as such.