Month: October 2025

The New Zealand government, like many others across the imperialist West, has refused to recognise a Palestinian state. At first glance, this appears to be a diplomatic slight or a moral failure. In truth, it is far deeper, it is the calculated refusal of a settler-colonial state to recognise the legitimacy of another colonised people’s struggle, precisely because doing so would expose the contradictions at the heart of its own existence. But while the refusal is damning, we must also reckon with a more sobering truth that even when states do offer recognition, it is little more than a symbolic gesture – a hollow act that does nothing to halt the bombs, lift the siege, or stop the machinery of genocide grinding on. Recognition without action is a cruel theatre of humanitarian concern, designed to pacify outrage while ensuring business as usual for empire.

Since 1988, over 140 UN member states have recognised the State of Palestine in some form. In 2012, Palestine was granted “non-member observer state” status at the United Nations, a symbolic victory after decades of lobbying. Yet in 2025, Palestinians remain stateless, occupied, and subject to one of the most violent genocides of the modern era. Recognition has not stopped the killing. Recognition has not ended the blockade of Gaza. Recognition has not secured the right of return for refugees. Recognition has not dismantled Israel’s apartheid laws or halted its expansion of illegal settlements.

Instead, recognition has been reduced to a diplomatic fig leaf. Countries such as Ireland, Spain, and Norway have made headlines by announcing recognition of Palestine, but their governments continue to trade with Israel and the corporations profiting from occupation. The European Union as a whole continues to treat Israel as a key trading partner, granting it access to markets and research funds. Even those states who present themselves as “friends of Palestine” refuse to enact the kinds of measures that could meaningfully challenge Israeli power: arms embargoes, sanctions, cutting of diplomatic and economic ties, or the expulsion of ambassadors.

The futility of recognition is that it leaves intact the very structures of global capitalism and imperialism that uphold Israeli apartheid. By recognising Palestine, Western states can signal virtue without challenging their military alliances, their corporations’ profits, or their own complicity in settler-colonial violence. It is not solidarity, it is performance.

New Zealand has consistently followed the lead of larger imperial powers in matters of international recognition. It has recognised Kosovo, South Sudan, and even Ukraine’s sovereignty claims, yet it refuses to recognise Palestine. The reason is not a mystery, recognition of Palestine is not just about international diplomacy, it is about admitting that colonised people have a right to resist and reclaim stolen land.

New Zealand, itself a settler-colonial project built on the dispossession of Māori, has no interest in affirming this principle. To do so would invite uncomfortable parallels with its own history of land theft, broken treaties, and ongoing colonial violence. A government that relies on the fiction of legitimacy over stolen land cannot afford to legitimise Palestinian claims to sovereignty. Recognition would shine too bright a light on the contradictions of Aotearoa’s own foundations.

Successive governments, Labour and National alike, have hidden behind the rhetoric of “supporting a two-state solution,” while refusing to take the step of recognising Palestine as a state. This duplicity serves two purposes. First, it allows New Zealand to maintain its loyalty to the United States, its primary imperial ally. Second, it avoids alienating the business and military interests tied to Israel and its Western backers. New Zealand’s military companies profit from involvement in weapons development; its intelligence networks are linked into the Five Eyes alliance that shields Israeli crimes. Recognition would be a symbolic rebuke to these interests, and so it is avoided.

The refusal of recognition is obscene, but there is a further obscenity – the idea that recognition, even if granted, could matter in the midst of genocide. Since October 2023, Israel has unleashed unrelenting mass killing in Gaza, bombing homes, schools, hospitals, and refugee camps. The death toll has risen into the hundreds of thousands. Famine, displacement, and disease are the daily reality for survivors. International law has been shredded, and yet no state has intervened to stop the massacre.

What would recognition mean in this context? Would a proclamation from New Zealand or any other government bring back the dead, rebuild the rubble, or open the borders for aid? Clearly not. Recognition during genocide is not liberation, rather it is a sickly moral gesture that allows governments to pretend they have done “something” while the killing continues unchecked.

If recognition had any weight, the dozens of states that have recognised Palestine since 1988 would have already transformed the material conditions of occupation. Instead, recognition has been powerless precisely because it was never intended to be power. It is designed to look like solidarity while ensuring nothing fundamental changes.

Recognition without action is worse than nothing, because it obscures the machinery of complicity. States that recognise Palestine while continuing to fund, arm, and trade with Israel are enablers of genocide. The United States sends billions in military aid every year. Germany exports weapons that are used to bomb Palestinian civilians. Britain provides diplomatic cover at the UN. Australia trains alongside Israeli forces. New Zealand, though smaller, is tied into this web through its alliances and intelligence networks.

Every state that claims to support a “peace process” while maintaining ties to Israel is complicit. Every state that recognises Palestine without imposing sanctions or embargoes is complicit. Recognition is not solidarity; solidarity would mean dismantling the political and economic systems that enable occupation. Recognition is not resistance; resistance would mean arming boycott movements, cutting trade, and isolating Israel as a pariah state. Recognition is not liberation; liberation can only come from below, from the struggles of Palestinians themselves, supported by international movements of workers, students, and communities.

The question of recognition cannot be separated from the realities of Aotearoa. This country was built on the dispossession of Māori land, the imposition of foreign law, and the suppression of Indigenous resistance. To this day, Māori face structural violence in housing, health, education, and the justice system. The state that refuses to recognise Palestine is the same state that refuses to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi in substance.

Solidarity with Palestine in Aotearoa cannot be limited to calls for governmental recognition. It must mean confronting the settler-colonial structures here at home. It must mean standing with Māori struggles for tino rangatiratanga, land back, and sovereignty. The refusal to recognise Palestine is not an aberration, it is consistent with a settler state that denies Indigenous rights everywhere.

If recognition is futile, what then is the path forward? For anarcho-communists, the answer is clear: liberation will not come from the recognition of states but from the destruction of states, empires, and the capitalist system they defend. Palestine will not be free because Ireland or Spain or New Zealand declares it so. Palestine will be free when the people of Palestine, supported by global solidarity movements, dismantle the systems of occupation and apartheid that oppress them.

This requires building movements of boycott, divestment, and sanctions from below. It requires disrupting the flow of weapons, money, and political legitimacy to Israel. It requires solidarity strikes by dock workers refusing to load arms, by students occupying campuses to demand divestment, by communities blockading military shipments. It requires connecting the struggle in Palestine to all struggles against colonialism, racism, and exploitation.

Recognition is empty; direct action is power. Recognition is symbolic; material solidarity is transformative. Recognition keeps faith in governments; liberation requires their overthrow.

The New Zealand government’s refusal to recognise Palestine is a mark of cowardice and complicity. Yet even if it were to grant recognition tomorrow, the futility of such a gesture would remain. Recognition does not stop bombs, lift sieges, or return land. It is a hollow act, designed to placate outrage while preserving empire.

The path to Palestinian liberation does not run through parliaments or ministries. It runs through the streets, the workplaces, the universities, and the fields where ordinary people confront the machinery of imperialism. It runs through the linking of struggles – Māori sovereignty in Aotearoa, Black liberation in the United States, Indigenous resistance in Latin America, and anti-imperialist movements worldwide.

Palestine will not be free when governments say it is a state. Palestine will be free when the people overthrow apartheid, and when the global system that sustains it is brought down. Recognition is not liberation. Liberation is struggle. And it is only through that struggle, everywhere, that the chains of empire can be broken.

RNZ recently published an article Digital IDs Are Coming, the discussion centres on the increasing adoption of digital identification systems worldwide, including in New Zealand. The piece highlights the so-called efficiency and convenience digital IDs offer, such as seamless airport check-ins and streamlined access to services. However, it does acknowledge the privacy and security concerns associated with storing personal data electronically, especially regarding potential cyberattacks and identity theft. Experts like Paul Spain and Joe Edwards emphasize the importance of voluntary participation and the need for individuals to have control over their information.

While the article atttempts to present a balanced view, it inadvertently contributes to the normalisation of digital identification by focusing more on its benefits and downplaying the potential risks. By framing digital IDs as an inevitable progression towards efficiency and convenience, it subtly encourages acceptance without critically examining the broader implications. The emphasis on voluntary adoption and individual control, though important, may not fully address concerns about systemic surveillance, data privacy, and the potential for exclusion of those without access to digital technologies.

In essence, the article serves more as an introduction to digital IDs rather than a critical analysis, potentially paving the way for their widespread acceptance without sufficient public scrutiny about digital IDs being part of a global push to make everyday life more legible to bureaucracies, corporations, and security agencies. The government, banks, and technology firms promise that digital identity systems will make life easier with fewer passwords, less paperwork, faster services, and smoother travel. Yet behind this glossy language of “convenience” lies the oldest trick of capitalist modernity – reducing human beings to data points, codifying them into categories that can be monitored, traded, and controlled.

The RNZ feature lays out the official framing that this is the next step in the inevitable march of technological progress. The message that Aotearoa must modernise or be left behind is clear. Yet what is dressed up as progress is in fact enclosure through a new round of fencing off human freedom, carving it into databases and algorithms that benefit the ruling class. To understand why digital ID matters, and why anarcho-communists in Aotearoa must resist it, we need to place it in its wider political and historical context.

Identification has always been political. From the Domesday Book in Norman England, cataloguing land and subjects for taxation, to the colonial pass laws that restricted the movement of Indigenous peoples, the state has always sought to “see” its subjects. Identification systems allow power to flow one way – authorities gather information about us, but we rarely have any say in how it is used.

In Aotearoa, this began with the imposition of written land titles, replacing Māori collective custodianship with a Pākehā system of property deeds that could be bought and sold. Identification was not just about recognising who someone was, but about displacing entire ways of life in favour of capitalist legality. The Treaty rolls, the Native Land Court, the census were all mechanisms of identification tied to dispossession.

Fast-forward to the 20th century: and we have driver licences, passports, IRD numbers, and WINZ client IDs. Each new identifier promised efficiency but also deepened surveillance. Digital ID is not new, rather it is simply the next step in this centuries-long process of codification, but now accelerated by algorithms, biometrics, and global databases.

The RNZ piece notes that banks, government services, and private companies are keen on digital ID because it cuts costs. Yet what is cost-cutting for them is dependency for us. If every transaction, from paying rent to getting a doctor’s appointment, requires a digital ID, then not having one becomes a form of exclusion.

The rhetoric of “choice” is hollow. Just as with My Vaccine Pass during the pandemic, the infrastructure of compulsion hides behind the mask of voluntarism. Once institutions align around a digital ID, participation becomes mandatory in practice, if not by law. To “opt out” will mean opting out of society.

Here we see the neoliberal logic at work: outsource identification to private tech firms, integrate it into banking and e-commerce, and frame it as a service rather than a state mandate. In reality, it binds us more tightly to both state bureaucracy and capitalist platforms.

Aotearoa’s rollout is not happening in isolation. From the UK to Samoa, all across the world, digital identity projects are being pursued. The World Bank promotes digital IDs through its ID4D initiative, and corporations like Microsoft and Mastercard are eager to integrate them into financial systems.

This is not a coincidence. Capitalism thrives on universality – to extract value, it must make everything comparable, exchangeable, measurable. Just as the enclosure of common lands allowed for capitalist farming, the enclosure of identity into digital form allows for new markets in data, new efficiencies in labour control, new frontiers for surveillance.

The danger is not simply “Big Brother watching you.” It is a deeper restructuring of social life so that every interaction, economic, social, or political, flows through systems owned and operated by ruling elites.

Let us strip away the PR and call digital ID what it is – infrastructure for capitalist surveillance. Imagine a society where every payment, every movement, every healthcare visit, every online interaction is tied to a single ID. The state will say it fights fraud and crime; banks will say it prevents money laundering. Yet the real outcome is that ordinary people become transparent while the powerful remain opaque.

Consider the possibilities:

• Employers use digital IDs to track workers’ compliance.
• Landlords demand them for tenancy, excluding those deemed “high-risk.”
• WINZ links benefits directly to ID, tightening conditionality.
  Police access ID databases in the name of “safety”.
  Corporations mine ID-linked data for targeted advertising and behavioural manipulation.

In short, digital ID is less about proving who we are, and more about disciplining us into who they want us to be.

Proponents often frame digital ID as a tool for inclusion and giving access to services for those who lack traditional forms of identification. Yet history shows that identification schemes rarely empower the marginalised; they entrench their marginalisation.

For Māori, digital ID risks becoming another layer of colonial imposition. Whose definitions of identity are encoded? Whose whakapapa is legible to the system? How will iwi or hapū sovereignty be respected when the state assumes the authority to digitally define who is who? For migrants, refugees, and the poor, digital ID becomes a gatekeeping tool: “Show us your papers, or your app, or your biometric scan.” The promise of access often hides the reality of exclusion.

What, then, is to be done? For anarcho-communists, digital ID cannot be treated as a neutral technology to be tweaked or regulated. It is part of the machinery of capitalist control, and resisting it requires a broader struggle against the system that produces it.

That means rejecting the narrative of inevitability. Technology is not destiny. Just as workers once smashed the machines of the factory system, not out of technophobia but out of class struggle, we too must see digital ID as a terrain of conflict.

Direct action, mutual aid, and solidarity are our tools. We can build alternative forms of verification based on trust, community, and reciprocity, not state databases. We can refuse to normalise ID checks in everyday life. We can support those most likely to be excluded by these systems, ensuring that solidarity, not surveillance, defines our communities.

The fight against digital ID is not about defending some romanticised “old way” of identification. It is about resisting the creeping normalisation of control. The state tells us that security requires surveillance; corporations tell us that convenience requires surrender. Both are lies.

True security comes from community, not databases. True convenience comes from freedom, not dependency on apps. Our liberation will never be found in QR codes or biometric scans. It lies in dismantling the systems that make identification a tool of domination in the first place.

Anarcho-communism insists on a different horizon: a world where people are not reduced to numbers in a system but recognised as full human beings in their collective relations. That is the opposite of what digital ID offers.

Digital IDs are coming, the state tells us. But inevitability is a political weapon, not a fact. Capitalism has always tried to convince us that its enclosures are “progress.” The enclosure of identity into digital form is no different. It will not bring freedom or empowerment. It will bring tighter oppression, disguised as convenience.

As anarchists in Aotearoa, our task is clear: refuse to be numbered, refuse to be reduced, refuse to let our lives be coded into systems of domination. The struggle against digital ID is the struggle against capitalist surveillance, against colonial imposition, against the machinery of control. It is part of the broader struggle for a world beyond state and capital.

When they tell us “Digital IDs are coming,” we must answer “so is resistance.”