Chloe Swarbrick and her politics of desecration

By Dane Giraud. First published on PlainSight

French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, whose insights on antisemitism shared in a collection of essays entitled Réflexions sur la question juive (1946) remain chillingly prescient. “If the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him.” Is a formulation that could account for the chic moral contortions of our own time, especially on the far Left, the political home (or inner-city villa) of our most affluent, and batty citizens and their obnoxious offspring. In desperate need of a global super-villain they can batter, as a form of atonement for their own wild privilege we were chosen, and not arbitrarily either. Sartre knew the unique utility of Jew-hatred: “The antisemite does not need the Jew to be real, he needs him to be useful to his ends.”

And so, Chlöe Swarbrick, co-leader of New Zealand’s Green Party, chose to attend, and helped promote through her social media channels, an anti-Zionist Passover Seder, adorned in a keffiyeh and a watermelon-themed kippah. The spectacle was equal measures provocative and grotesque, by design. Ms. Swarbrick wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Let us begin with the obvious. Swarbrick is not Jewish. This doesn’t disqualify one from attending a Seder. Many Jewish households open their doors to friends of other faiths during Passover. Hospitality is built into the liturgy. But Swarbrick did not enter as a guest in the spirit of dialogue or humility. She entered, loudly and ostentatiously, as a walking billboard of ideological allegiance counter to all Jewish interests, both in Israel and the diaspora. She came, quite literally, with one thing in mind: desecration. 

Ms. Swarbrick would know she stands in direct opposition to most members of the Jewish community. After her refusal to call Hamas terrorists in the immediate aftermath of the Oct 7th pogrom she wouldn’t have expected to keep many Jewish friends. And indeed, those in the community she does call friends are – to put this as generously as I can – considered bunions under our feet. 

The Jewish organisers of this “Seder” no doubt imagined themselves bold. In reality, they achieved something both drearily derivative and cruelly presumptuous. Yes, there are Jews who oppose Jewish autonomy, but that doesn’t make the political exploitation of a holy ritual any less sacrilegious. The attempt to cleanse this move by waving the token presence of dissident Jews is as transparent as it is tired. It is the rhetorical equivalent of saying, in the New Zealand context, “I have plenty of Māori mates who support Hobson’s Pledge.” It’s an intellectual cul-de-sac, one that confuses representation with consent and permission with authority. Outsourcing the ethics of participation to the most ideologically convenient interlocutor is quite obviously deceitful.  

And what is most galling, is that Passover is not some pliable cultural artefact. It is the story of our exodus from slavery, of identity forged in trauma and endurance, of covenant and survival. For millennia, Jews have gathered around Seder tables to recount their flight from bondage and to taste, quite literally, the bitterness of oppression. To hijack this story, not to honour it, but to redirect it, to violate its very essence, and stampede over it with calls to end Jewish autonomy – to wish us back into bondage – is the desecration. To quote Sarte again, “They (antisemites) delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.” It is as if Sartre knew Ms. Swarbrick personally. 

Swarbrick is not a private citizen. She is not a wandering activist dabbling in radical chic. She is the co-leader of a political party, one that purports to champion inclusivity, respect, and cultural sensitivity. Her choices are not simply personal, they carry a degree of weight. And here, she used that weight to flatten the complexity of Jewish identity, to stride through a sacred narrative with the swagger of committed, unfeeling Imperialist. 

And of course, Swarbrick didn’t just attend. She publicised. She posed. She promoted. She took a holy tradition, squeezed it through a political sieve, and reassembled the remnants into a tableau that served her purposes, not the purposes of those who have lived, died, prayed, and wept over that tradition for centuries. And who was her audience, exactly? We can assume non-Jews, the overwhelming bulk of her followers, whom she clearly hoped to disinform, and possibly even incite. For a Jewish audience, and by that, I mean the vast majority of Jews outside of her church, the intent was to taunt. No other possible explanation is acceptable that doesn’t challenge her intelligence. Solidarity with Palestinians? Go meet with them, eat with them, enjoy their celebrations. What is in anyway positive or constructive about the desecration of a Jewish festival on an isolated Pacific Island 16,000 kms away from the conflict? But when were the NZ Green Party last constructive? We’d have to take our minds back a few years now. 

In his brilliant demolition of hypocrisy and cant, Sartre tells us that antisemitism is a “passion,” not an opinion. Reading Benjamin Doyle’s biography on the NZ Greens website, they write “Our efforts for climate change and Te Tiriti o Waitangi justice is what we use to achieve a free Palestine.” Here we really do encounter this manufactured villain – it is all connected – all the world’s ills, of which Jewish autonomy is major one.  Possibly even the head of the octopus? Ms. Swarbrick, and her colleagues appear to have fused with the furthest reaches of the nationalist Right on the Jewish question. 

And yet, expect apologetics, or even worse, silence, from a complicit media on this latest thuggish act. The genuine anti-racist can only hope this wicked witch continues to putrefy and is rendered a pool of sludge before too many of her affluent supporters have caught her malady. Yes, sadly, Ms. Swarbrick may need to get worse – much worse – before it can become better.