The Daily Blog, which supports New Zealand’s opposition
Labour and Green Parties, published an article on May 5
enthusiastically endorsing right-wing New Zealand Herald
columnist Matthew Hooton’s proposal for compulsory
military training.
Writing that
“universal military service isn’t such a stupid idea,”
the blog’s editor Martyn Bradbury suggested that it be for
a period of 10 months and apply to all people aged 16 to 18
not in education or training. Participants could choose to
do charity or environmental work, such as planting trees, in
addition to military training.
Such a
scheme, Bradbury declared, is “incredibly important for
the fabric of our society:” it would instill “strong
civic values” and a “sense of self identity and
nationhood.” This echoes Hooton’s statement that
military service would “help with nation-building and
social cohesion.”
Bradbury concluded his article
with the patriotic slogan: “Don’t ask what Aotearoa New
Zealand can do for you, ask what can you do for Aotearoa New
Zealand!”
The Daily Blog is silent about the real
purpose of military service: funnelling young people into
the armed forces so they can be used as cannon fodder in the
service of imperialism. The armed forces have experienced
significant levels of attrition in recent years, which the
right-wing National Party-led government is determined to
turn around.
The government, supported by the Labour
Party, has committed to doubling military spending. The
ruling class aims to integrate New Zealand more fully into
the US imperialist build-up to war against China, as well as
the NATO war against Russia and efforts to carve up the
Middle East.
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Across the world, the ruling class is
responding to the breakdown of capitalism by militarising
society and preparing young people to fight. Conscription is
now being openly discussed in Germany, Britain and other
European countries, as the imperialist powers seek to
violently redivide the world and reduce large parts of it to
colonial slavery.
While advertising itself as
“liberal” and “left wing,” the Daily Blog promotes
the same nationalist and militarist agenda as the entire
parliamentary establishment, the union bureaucracy and the
corporate media.
This is not the first
time that the blog has called for military training for
unemployed youth. In 2016, it backed a similar proposal by
the right-wing nationalist New Zealand First Party, which is
part of the present coalition
government.
Bradbury has friendly
relations with Hooton, who was a regular guest last year on
The Working Group, a political podcast co-hosted by
Bradbury. Hooton is a former advisor to both the National
Party and its far-right coalition partner, the ACT
Party.
Both Hooton and Bradbury said military service
should be funded as part of the plan to double military
spending from 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product, with
an additional $12 billion over the next four years. This
will be funded with deep cuts to healthcare, education and
other public services.
The Daily Blog has attacked the
government from the right, demanding an even bigger increase
in military spending to 3 percent of GDP.
“We
can’t pretend we are in a benign environment any
longer,” Bradbury wrote on March 3, echoing the
government’s mantra. He supported moves to create a New
Zealand-based drone manufacturing industry and to improve
surveillance and combat capabilities, to push back against
what he called “our Chinese Economic Overlords” and to
act independently of the United States.
This vast
military build-up is not about defending New Zealand or
establishing its “independence.” The country has not
come under foreign attack since British colonisation in the
19th century. Rather, the aim is to maintain New Zealand’s
status as a minor imperialist power in the Pacific region,
in an alliance with the US. This is why New Zealand has sent
troops to successive criminal US-led wars—including
against Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq—and is contributing
personnel to the bombing of Yemen and training Ukrainian
troops to fight against Russia.
Bradbury says New
Zealand’s navy and air force must be capable of patrolling
the “Realm of New Zealand,” which includes far-flung
Pacific island colonies—the Cook Islands, Niue and
Tokelau—and parts of Antarctica. In February, Bradbury
published an article supporting Hooton’s inflammatory call
for New Zealand to invade the Cook Islands in order to
overturn its economic agreements with China.
In an
article on May 4, Bradbury ranted that “China has managed
to gain enormous power in NZ by economically owning us,
having a huge diaspora living here and gaining access to
bottling our water.” He demanded that “proven
collaborators” of the Chinese Communist Party “be
expelled from the country immediately.” This closely
resembles the anti-Chinese demagogy of the NZ First
Party.
The Daily Blog has repeatedly echoed the war
propaganda of the CIA and the Trump administration,
including the fascist lie that COVID-19 originated in a
laboratory in Wuhan. Bradbury has hysterically attacked the
Socialist Equality Group as “Chinese enablers” and
demanded that it be investigated by the New Zealand
intelligence agencies for “possible treason,” because of
the SEG’s opposition to its warmongering.
None of
Bradbury’s middle class “left” collaborators has
opposed his pro-war positions. These include the
Labour-aligned BHN podcast (where Bradbury is a regular
guest) and John Minto, the leading spokesperson for the
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa.
Minto’s
futile appeals to the government to sanction Israel for its
genocide in Gaza are published on the Daily Blog alongside
Bradbury’s demands for greater military spending and
conscription, and his unhinged attacks on the SEG and on
Chinese people.
The Daily Blog was founded in 2013
with financial support from three trade unions: Unite, the
Rail and Maritime Transport Union and the New Zealand Dairy
Workers Union.
The union bureaucracy is supporting New
Zealand’s military build-up, while suppressing opposition
to the government’s austerity measures. The Public Service
Association, the largest union, which has helped to impose
thousands of redundancies across multiple government
agencies, has demanded more funding for the Defence Force to
ensure that “our military is combat ready.”
There
is widespread opposition to war, as seen in the
anti-genocide protests. But a real movement against
imperialist war can only be built in opposition to the
entire middle class nationalist milieu represented by the
Daily Blog, which seeks to chain workers to the capitalist
parties, including Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori,
and the trade union apparatus.
What is required is the
mobilisation of the working class against capitalism, the
root cause of war and the attacks on living standards and
public services. To unite workers of all nationalities and
backgrounds, workers must defend the rights of immigrants
and reject the Daily Blog’s anti-Chinese xenophobia and
its threats against Pacific island countries.
By Tom Peters, Socialist Equality Group
9
May 2025
Original url:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/05/08/uows-m08.html
