Judith Collins, and the National Party, just doesn’t seem to get the picture. The removal of the Sir Winston Churchill painting has nothing to do with “Nazis” and the Greens are informed about history. However, they want nothing to do with Western cultural history.
They are cleaning the slate. This is the same as Nazis burning books, Stalin removing imperial icons, Mao prosecuting the abolition of the “Four Olds” (old ideas, culture, habits, traditions and customs), Pol-Pot resetting Kampuchean history to April 1975, North Korea disestablishing all mementos of their past back to the beginning of the reign of their “Glorious Leader” (Kim Il-Sung) and the Taliban blowing up revered statues of Buddha. Whether the political agenda be Fascist, Socialist, Communist, Totalitarian, plain barking mad or Theocratic – in all cases the objective is to disestablish, discredit or (preferably) reframe the past – to establish your version of history (the new education agenda), your icons, your ideology. To constantly demoralise and delegitimise the opposition.
It doesn’t help that Judith (and I lump the whole of the National Party into this ‘collective’) uses the language of the Socialist Left. Fighting the fight on their linguistic battlefield.
National seems stuck in the 90s. Wake up – politics is downstream from culture and you guys are losing the cultural battle. If the best you can do is “…not fight the Greens on the beaches”, then look on the removal of the painting as ‘National’s Normandy’; save what you can, regroup and re-invent yourselves – and please, don’t say ‘re-imagine’.
Dr Mike Schmidt, Sunnyhills
Fighting words
By clicking to accept for Times Online to be translated into Mandarin, you accept and acknowledge that it has been translated for your convenience using 3 rd party translation software. No automated translation is perfect, nor is it intended to replace human translators and are provided "as is." No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, or correctness of any translations made from English into Mandarin. Some content (such as images, videos etc.) may not be accurately translated due to the limitations of the translation software. The official text is the English version of the website. Any discrepancies or differences created in the translation are not binding and have no legal effect and should not be relied on by you for any decision-making purposes. If any questions arise related to the accuracy of the information contained in the translated website, refer to the English version of the website which is the official edited version.
点击同意将《时代在线》翻译成中文，即表示您接受并确认，该翻译是使用第三方软件为您方便起见而 提供的。请注意自动翻译并非完美无缺，也不旨在取代人工翻译，只能作为参考而已。对于英文到中文 的任何翻译的准确性、可靠性或正确性，我们不提供任何明示或暗示的保证。由于翻译软件的限制，某 些内容（如图片、视频等）可能无法准确翻译。 英文版本是本网站的官方正式文本。翻译中产生的任何差异或错误均不具有约束力，不具有法律效力， 您不应依赖由自动翻译软件生成的版本做出任何决策。如果对翻译后的网站中包含的信息的准确性有任 何疑问，请参阅本网站的官方编辑英文版本。
