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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 25. No. 12. 1962

[introduction]

Brigadier Gilbert's article in Salient, like his speech to the R.S.A. Conference, is in the best traditions of McCarthyism The same technique, the same phrases, the same arrogant assumptions.

"As a New Zealander I regard Communism as evil and subversive," says the Brigadier in Salient. Ipso facto, if you don't regard Communism as evil and subversive, you are not a New Zealander

In the U.S.A. there is a Senate Committee for investigating "Un-American Activities". Under this body a witch hunt is pursued not only against Communists but against any who do not satisfactorily conform to the Committee's ideas.

Statement by the Wellington District Committee, Communist party of New Zealand, in reply to Brigadier Gilbert (Salient, Issue XI).

Here we have (as yet) no "un-New Zealand Committee" but its place is being filled by a department of State, the Security Police, responsible to the Prime Minister and headed by Brigadier Gilbert. From his statements it seems that the Brigadier's aim is to combine his post as head of Security with that of official ideologist of anti-Communism.

How does he regard Communists? He writes in Salient:—

"A New Zealand Communist by conscious act when he joins the Party abandons his loyalty to God and country and gives allegiance to an atheistic and materialistic movement operated in the interests of and directed by a foreign power."