The empty chapel

EP Thompson once met the last member of the Muggletonian religion, a Kentish fruit farmer named Noakes. As he expounded on Muggletonian doctrine, Noakes repeatedly said ‘We believe’, then looked uneasy. Auckland’s Swedenborgians have sold their church. Its pews had emptied. The church was built by volunteer labour in Ellerslie, close to the Anthroposophists’ headquarters. Now it has been stripped. Only an empty literature stand remains. The few remaining members are holding an SGM to debate a plan to invest in Auckland’s real estate market.

Bassett's bad history

I've written for the Spinoff about Don Bassett's decline into white supremacism.

Yanks

I have a column about New Zealand's strange and sometimes nightmarish history of contacts with America in the new issue of North & South.

In Patagonia

In percentage terms, the most devastating genocide of the 20th century didn't occur in Hitler's Europe or Rwanda - it happened at the bottom of South America, and NZers were partly responsible. I'm grateful to Charlie Mitchell for taking up this long-hidden story.

Chaffing

I've got a piece about nude trampers and poetic mountaineers in the new North and South. Read it with your kit off.

Words

 Sam Russell from Lindin thinks that it is wrong for the Maori Party's co-leader to use the word 'Holocaust' in the context of New Zealand history. I've disagreed in this twitter thread. 

Tomorrow

It was a pleasure to speak at the launch of MK Joseph's long-lost anti-fascist novel Tomorrow the World last weekend. Jack Ross has written about the launch on his blog. Ross has for years been trying to bring Joseph's science fiction to the attention of his fellow academics.