2002: The Anarchist House
August 26, 2020
By AHNZ
Beirut, Lebanon, made the news this month when their government’s stolen explosives blew the city in half. Some of the wiser Lebanese evacuated to New Zealand long before civil strife and incompetence really set in. Poor Australia have a 1970s vintage of riotous Lebs but New Zealand’s wave came in the 1890s brining decent and hardworking Lebanese citizens.[example: Assid Corban]
The 128 Able Smith St house, est 1898, had been a private hospital when Wellington’s Lebanese Society purchased it as their community centre in 1957. Initial generations of migrants don’t integrate, they tend a little echo of the society from the Home Country as it was when last they knew it. After that echo and those first families died out, their now integrated descendents, Boomers, were left with a community building but no community.
The Boomer Lebanese let 128 deteriorate until it was taken up in c.2002 by the sorts of Left-wing radicals who abound in the Aro Valley. In exchange for upkeep, a bit of repairs and TLC, the house staggered along as a little Victimhood Culture and Slave Culture activist hive: ‘The Anarchist House’. Most famously, it was raided by police in 2007 in relation to the Urewera Paramilitary non-incident.
“…non-hierarchical consensus decision-making and lean to the radical left politically, including anarchist, anarcha-feminist (or ‘intersectional feminist’), autonomist, or communist viewpoints…designated as ‘Safer Spaces’, which means that no oppressive behaviour or discrimination against minority groups is allowed, and the space is made as accessible as possible for marginalised people – low cost, low allergen, mobility access, child friendly, gender neutral bathrooms…reject power-over relationships, and are explicitly free from both capitalist market, and state control. They rely on the communities that support them by the people, for the people.” – 128aotearoa
(Look at that. It was such a ‘Safe Space’ that they didn’t even call it that, they called it a ‘Safer Space’!)
In September 2019 the cookie crumbled for 128 and its Safer Gender Neutral Bathrooms. Like the Lebanese community before it, the Lefties ran their course and petered out. The owners of the building (Lebanese Generation Xers at this point) decided to affiliate with The State in such a way as to outlaw the type of communal organisation The 128 Collective was built upon.
By December 2019, once the Collective was out, 128 quickly caught fire and became uninhabitable and empty. This week the rest went up in flames too, thus serving as an historic marker for the end of New Zealand Victimhood Culture (as will the defeat of Labour 6.0 next month.) Historic buildings are a real problem for developers because the red tape is a nightmare and demolition expensive. The Beirut explosion this month calls for aid from Lebanese patriots and the burning of 128 Able Smith Street will free up some much needed capital at a very convenient time.
—
Image ref. 128 Abel Smith St Wellington; Facebook (2013)
Ref. “More than 70 dead after explosion rips through Beirut port”; RNZ
See also: 2016: The Inflammability of Red Tape
See also: 1926: Henderson Town Hall
See also: 2018: St James Hall burns
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Anarchist History of New Zealand: Long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.- Oswald Spengler
