NORMALISING A MONSTER

Last week the New Zealand Parliament passed a motion congratulating Donald Trump on his election victory. Only the Green Party refused to recognise the victory of a man who has been endorsed by both the US Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.

“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before … And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country.” Donald Trump, 2016.

"When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.” Donald Trump, 1990.

LAST WEEK THE GREEN PARTY REFUSED to support a Government motion congratulating Donald Trump on becoming President of the United States.

The Green Party was the only parliamentary party to oppose the motion. It was passed 106-14.

That's right. The New Zealand Parliament, which claims to represent us, congratulated a man who has also been congratulated by the US Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan. Its beyond their wildest dreams that they now have a political leader in the White House who they can really identify with. How do you feel about all of New Zealand's parliamentary parties, other than the Green's, joining the Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan congratulating Donald Trump on his election victory?

We're all familiar by now with Trump's many political outrages - he's been parading them for months - but let us just recall that this is the man who called Mexicans 'rapists' and 'murderers' and intends to use the machinery of the state to engage in what can only be described as a purge against some two and three million immigrants to remove them from the country. This is the man who has pledged to ban Muslims from the United States. This is the man who twelve women have claimed sexually assaulted them.

And this is the man,who has just appointed Steve Bannon, a white supremacist and anti-semite, as his Chief Strategist. Bannon was formerly the CEO of Brietbart, an extreme right wing website. It recently described a conservative commentator it doesn't like as , ‘a renegade Jew,’ and advised female victims of online harassment to 'just log off and stop screwing up the internet for men."

Tell me again - why is the New Zealand Parliament congratulating such an odious man as Donald Trump?

At least Green co-leader Metiria Turei had the integrity to make a stand for political decency: "We vow to fight the climate change denial, the misogyny, the racism represented by Trump," she told Parliament. Good on you, Metiria.

But Turei's failure to surrender her party's principles earned her a tongue lashing from cabinet minister Paula Bennett. Bennett told TV3's Paul Henry that if the Green's couldn't find anything nice to say about Trump, they should just keep their mouths shut. Bennett thinks we should all bow our heads in respect to the grubby little man who will be America's 45th President.

As the Minister for Climate Change issues, is Bennett not alarmed that Trump thinks climate change is a hoax, that it's Chinese disinformation designed to undermine the American economy? What has she got to say about Trump's intention  to immediately withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change?

The Government wants to play nice with Trump - and so does the Labour Party. Deputy leader Annette King says that Trump '...must be given a chance to be a President and people need to get behind him."

What abysmal nonsense. Is King suggesting that the Donald Trump in the Oval office will be somehow different from the Donald Trump that we have seen outside it? There's absolutely no evidence for this fatuous claim. Indeed the fact that he's appointed a white supremacist to his cabinet suggests otherwise. But King thinks we should just hope for the best. In 1938 she would have been cheering British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he announced that he had come to an agreement with Hitler and it was "peace in our time". Her argument then too would have been that we just had to give Adolf Hitler 'a chance'.

What both Paula Bennett and Annette King share is an all too obvious desire to normalise a political extremism that can never be accepted as normal - not in any kind of world that claims to be civilised. We won't just 'shut up' about Trump's abhorrent politics and nor will we just give him 'a chance'.

This is never a time to be conciliatory toward someone like Donald Trump. This is the time to fight and defeat him and all the ugliness and darkness he represents.