1994: The Free Radical

July 31, 2020

By AHNZ

The Free Radical (1994-2009) was a libertarian journal that ran for 81 editions. After Dignity Culture New Zealand was turned out in favour of a new Victimhood Culture (c.1990) the libertarians and conservatives were left high and dry and disenchanted by the march of the new Politically Correct culture.

This magazine, TFR, was part of a forlorn hope that PC NZ could be reversed. Apart from some intellectual content of a high standard the methodology largely involved ad homonym attacks such as name-calling and defaced imagery. Of course, resorting to abuse is an admission of having lost the war even if you don’t own up to it. The ‘war’ was really lost in 1990 but TFR refused to surrender, preferring to die at the Alamo but ended up expiring (aged 25) from acute apathy.

Now it’s 10 years since TFR’s demise (April 2009) it might be a pretty good time to bring it back to life again. If magazines are still important in our online age then TFR could be relevant and of-its-time now instead of the post-dignity resentment rage against the dying of the light that it was.

So, I’ve imagined an April 2019 cover! Issue 82 that never was. For a short while I even considered doing an entire bootleg edition of the magazine for this month but only one friend supported the idea. Besides which, creator Lindsay Perigo and/or editor Peter Cresswell would probably put a jihad on me or something if I did so I’ll go my own way.

Whatever happened to the Libertarianz Party?

What became of New Zealand’s Libertarianz political party? Broadly, the same thing described above happening to TFR happened to Libz and Act.

New Zealand experienced one of its cyclical K-selected phases from the mid-80s to mid-90s. While this culture was mainstream Labour (version 4.0) and National (version 4.0) capatalised for their own gains. Douglas. Richardson.

When the main political parties moved on there was a shrinking market left for the likes of Libz and Act to feed off. Act once had 9 MPs but today couldn’t get one without being on life-support; It’s not really a party now but an annex of National kept around to do dirty jobs.

Political parties don’t create culture and values they just try to reflect what people already feel. The sentiments and values of the people who had come of age in the time of KZ7, Concord, Thatcher, Bill of Rights Act etc are in the past therefore so are such institutions.

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