ACT Party vice-president declares himself to be a near-anarchist on the political right of “left-wing” Hitler and Mussolini

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If the ACT Party was still relevant, the parliamentary press gallery – which foamed at the mouth over the Exclusive Brethren supporting National – would be in apoplexy over  ACT’s vice-president declaring himself to the right of Hitler and Mussolini, who he describes, seriously, as left-wing. Alas, this interesting piece of news has gone unreported in the mainstream media.

Trevor Loudon is a long-time, prominent Christchurch anti-communist who was elected vice-president of ACT in March 2006. He edits the blog New Zeal which reflects his fervour, posting regular articles about any Kiwi political activist who is even faintly left of centre, linking them to communist, leftist and anarchist people and organisations both local and international. He must have more files on some people than the police or the SIS. Some of his articles are interesting, others are just plain batty. Some on the Urewera 17 seem dangerously close to contempt of court as they appear to give suppressed details from the police affidavit used to get the search warrants used for last October’s “terrorist” raids, that affidavit having been briefly posted on a US web site last month.

The Left does not remain mute in the face of Loudon’s unrelenting attacks on it. In the comments section of an article on the leftist Indymedia website attacking him last week, anonymous posters claimed among other things that he was on a database of suspected child molesters. Another offered to supply his alleged Northwood, Christchurch, home address and phone number, which looked more than a little thuggish. Loudon responded on New Zeal, saying “as the parent of young children you can see how this sort of carry on might be intimidating on several fronts. I’m stating here that I no longer live in Northwood, because I don’t want someone else to suffer harassment or property damage on my account.” Fair enough.

But what jumped off the screen at me was this remark by Loudon in the comments section of that response: “I regard National Front types as left wingers – as were the Nazis and the Italian fascists.” It struck me as amusing that Loudon, an avowed right-winger and proud of it, was putting himself on the right of Hitler and Mussolini by claiming they were left wingers. I posted a response to an article about Loudon and Indymedia on the Not PC blog saying: “Trevor certainly knows how to wind them up though. In the comments section of one of his posts he says he regards the National Front, the Italian fascists and the German Nazis as left wing. I kid you not.” Loudon took that as a call to arms and has since posted a lengthy article on New Zeal called Why fascists are leftists. In it, he describes the political continuum as he sees it.

“On the far left you have extreme collectivism – Stalinism, North Korean socialism, Spartanism, Pharoahism, the Incan state, Plato’s beehive, left wing anarchy,” he says. “A little closer to the centre – but not much – you have East German Socialism, Nazism, Italian Fascism, modern Chinese communism, Cuban socialism, Iranian theocracy, Putin’s Russia, most of Africa. Further towards the centre you have the European Union, Sweden, modern South Africa, most of Asia and Latin America. In the centre you have the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, the UK. To the right, you once had Thomas Jefferson’s USA, Disraeli’s Britain and 1980’s Hong Kong. On the far left is the total state or total collectivism. The individual is nothing. The collective is all. On the far right you have no state. The individual is all. By this definition it is easy to see why I class the National Front and other fascists as leftists. Hitler was a National Socialist who recruited thousands of ex-communists to the Nazi Party. ‘Beefsteak Nazis’ they called them – brown on the outside, red in the middle. Mussolini was a Marxist who edited the newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party. I believe in the bare minimum of government. I believe the tiny state should be controlled in the strictest possible manner by a written constitution. I believe in free markets and individual liberty. I am not a right anarchist, but I am as close as you can get without crossing the line.”

This is an extraordinary declaration by a man who confirmed to me today that he is still the vice president of a political party represented in our Parliament, at least until March when his term expires (surprisingly, the ACT website has has no listing for its vice-president or any of its board members, just a December 4 entry that says “coming soon”). One can imagine the headlines if the Labour Party president proclaimed he was to the left of Stalin, or if members of a fringe religious cult were revealed as secret, wealthy campaigners for National. Oops, the latter actually happened, and the media still bang on about it. All I can assume is that ACT has been so written off by the parliamentary press gallery that these and other statements on New Zeal are viewed as not worth mentioning.

Trevor Loudon has a long, interesting involvement in what the media used to describe as the “right-wing fringe” of New Zealand politics. Like fellow Cantabrian David Henderson, whose fight with Inland Revenue was championed by ACT leader Rodney Hide and  dramatised in the recent film We’re Here To Help, Loudon first came to media attention in the 1980s as a follower of the curious, only-in-Christchurch Zenith Applied Philosophy movement. ZAP was created by an expelled Scientologist, John Dalhoff, who called himself John Ultimate and claimed his home in Clyde Rd, Fendalton, was the “centre of the universe.” ZAP was (and presumably still is because it still exists and Loudon says he is still a member) staunchly anti-communist and anti-union. It had a bookshop in the Warners Hotel building in Cathedral Square that sold literature from the likes of America’s far-right John Birch Society. Some of its members, including Dalhoff, were on the mailing list of the New Zealand League of Rights, whose demise I wrote about last month. ZAP followers owned various small businesses around Christchurch that sometimes got into trouble with unions for not paying award wages. Loudon went on to be involved in the Campaign for a Soviet-Free New Zealand, which waged a crusade against Lada cars, which were made in communist Russia.

Trevor Loudon has never hidden his anti-communist and ZAP activities and seems proud of them. He describes them in some detail in a February 2006 New Zeal article responding to questions directed at him by Greens co-leader Russel Norman. “I have studied at ZAP from 1976 to 1982, 1986-7 and 1999 to current,” he says. “I am enjoying my studies immensely at the moment and plan to continue indefinitely.” In the article, Loudon admits being embarrassed for painting the Business Round Table as a communist front during the Cold War, but says certain Round Table members deserved strong condemnation for trading with the Soviet Union, adding: “I hold similar views about those who advocate trade with China today and believe we should cut trade ties to that country until it becomes a civilised nation.” There is much more in the same vein and I recommend you read it. If you weren’t alive during the Cold War, much of it might be hard to comprehend, but Trevor is still waging that war and New Zeal very much captures the flavour.

Postscript: The Hive, which with Quest for Security was so irked at Trevor Loudon this week for an attack on the innocuous New Zealand-China Friendship Society that it had a go at him, has posted an article asking, perhaps rhetorically, whether in Trevor’s world, is there anyone who is not part of a communist front organisation?

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