Caleb Anderson: Marxism in Disguise

In the 1960s, an ideology was seeded within our universities that would have a profound effect on our nation's direction of travel. Barely discernible to the majority at first, it moved slowly through our public institutions, filtered into our schools, and gradually corrupted the body politic.

The forthcoming election may well be the most important ever held in New Zealand. It will decide whether liberal democracy is displaced by an ideology committed to a selective—and therefore contaminated—view of history, the control of thought and speech, endless social division, and the systematic elimination of nuance.

This ideology is Marxism. It poisons everything it touches, representing scapegoating in its most brutal, systemic form.

This election, New Zealanders need to see the big picture. We must look past the polished political messaging to discern what lies beneath, realising just how much is at stake. We must recognise how quickly the things we take for granted can disappear—including the foundational right to hold an opinion.

• Marxism is a master of disguise. How do we recognise it? We can identify it by its obsession with:Dividing populations into rigid identity groups.
• Viewing specific groups as inherently advantaged and others as permanently oppressed.
• Enforcing equal outcomes rather than fostering equal opportunities.
• Asserting the absolute right of the state to achieve this enforced equality through perpetual redistribution.
• Dealing mercilessly with any opposing orthodoxy or dissenting thought.

In the forthcoming election, we must hope that a critical mass of voters will instead support parties that champion classical liberal principles:

• Need-based policy over group membership or identity politics.
• Personal effort and responsibility, recognising that advancement is primarily a function of individual agency.
• Equality of opportunity over equality of outcomes.
• The free market rather than the state as the true generator of wealth.
• The tolerance of divergent opinions and the absolute protection of free thought.

It is telling that New Zealand, and much of the Western world, now treats these core values as tradable commodities or principles not worth defending. Previous generations felt very differently. Our forebears went to war knowing the immense devastation that Marxism, in its multiple historical iterations, inflicted upon the world. They were a generation that learned the sobering lessons of twentieth-century totalitarianism and the Holocaust early in life.

We should always be deeply suspicious of political parties that seek to control, that defend some citizens to the absolute exclusion of others, and that remain excessively ideological. We must reject those who stay constantly on the attack, mining and capitalising on rich veins of social envy.

The displacement of robust history in our curriculum, the influence of fringe disciplines in our universities, the complacency of our politicians, and our own propensity for self-interest at the ballot box have made us highly vulnerable to manipulation.

Marxism is not an authoritarian anomaly that only happens "over there". It is the ever-present antithesis to liberal democratic principles. It is extraordinarily adept at changing its wardrobe, masking its language, and playing a long, patient game.

I hope that as many New Zealanders as possible will recognise this ideological drift when they cast their vote.

Many will dismiss these warnings as an exaggeration. But history shows there is no middle ground with Marxism; it is inherently totalising. It is an ideology that never voluntarily pulls back—it only pushes harder. If we grow too accustomed to its presence, we will eventually cease to recognise it at all.

Caleb Anderson, a graduate history, economics, psychotherapy and theology, has been an educator for over thirty years, twenty as a school principal.