The alt-Right New Conservatives who are organising the anti-immigrant February 2nd protests have entered the culture war with gleeful abandon.
The New Conservatives are Alt-Right because they hunger for political violence and use divisive language to bolster that rhetoric. There are common alt-Right speaking points which are aggressively xenophobic, transphobic, white pride and claims that global warming are a hoax.
First there is the naked Transphobia…
…then there is white pride…
…then there is climate change is a socialist hoax propaganda…
…and then there is the hysteria generated over the UN migration pact…
…yes, that’s SpongeBob Square pants burning the UN Global Compact on Migration.
I know. I know.
With many New Conservatives also being fundamental Christians with literal interpretations of the bible, I’m waiting for their school curriculum policy to demand the teaching of Nazis riding dinosaurs…
…peak cray aside, this attempt to inject the spite vortex of culture war directly into our political spectrum seems sadly predictable.
As a class lefty, my fear has always been that the Identity Politics Woke Left would alienate the middle with arguments for social justice that seem smug and trivial to voters who are struggling to pay the bills, feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads. You hold power if you can get to the democratic majority of 51% and yelling, ‘I’m different and you’re wrong’ is no recruitment method.
We do need to discuss immigration without descending into New Conservative hysteria, we do need to discuss trans rights without the hatred and we do need to talk about the righteous economic grievances of those white working classes who have been left behind by globalisation, but that nuance is going to be trampled by the New Conservatives, in part because when the Woke were in ascendancy they utterly trashed nuance as well in favour of pointless woke call outs and Identitarian semantics.
That fear seems to be becoming a reality with the culture war projection of the New Conservatives.
Identity politics encourages splits into smaller factions focused only on the narcissism of tiny differences while practicing ideological rituals of public virtue signalling, it looks like the New Conservatives are about to politically exploit that cultural backlash.
We need far less divisive identity politics virtue signalling and far more universal benefits that progress everyone. While identity politics is an important personal pathway for understanding how one comes to politics, it is ultimately a flawed model to win the democratic majority. In its most extreme mutation Identity Politics is the very embodiment of white supremacy, and that’s what we are going to see from the New Conservatives.
To counter social injustice effectively in 2019 we don’t need more decent people becoming woke activists, we need more woke activists becoming decent people.
We will know on February 2nd if that hope is too late.
The New Conservatives will be grateful for your provision of publicity Martyn.
D J S
TDB suppressed the following on 1080 thread therefore reposted here
Dutifully, I have prepared this short analytical list;
– 1080 campaign: is national, is socialist, is chemical total war
– TB: Vaccinate the Cows ?
– Dehumanizing: opponents refused validity, not entitled to “seriousness”
– Anti Democratic: rights to object on principle? denied
– Unprincipled: humane principles, animal welfare? denied
– Elitist: browbeats with scientists, judges, uses police force
– Religious Bird Iconography: fittingly Reichy all over the money, Forest & Bird imagery, elevated bird significance mind control
– Ulterior motive: commercial greed unlimited
– Paradoxical: crafted loophole in Animal Welfare Act is convenient
– Atlantean: resurrection of great lost birdy land
– Media/Gov axis of evil: near total media domination & Goebbels method
– Corporate/Industrial hijack: Political Parties financially dependent on
– Bullying: uses repetition of taunts, mockery, marginalization
– Suppression of internet commentary
In summary, the aerial poisoning regime is a 100% certified NAZI SCIENCE ABOMINATION and the SPCA should be commended for Gandalfing the Balrog. Remember folks you are entitled to object on pure principle, do not yield your discretion to bullies. The correct solution is always, and was always, and will always be INTEGRATED ECOLOGY.
Filter boy. Spamming is for conartists.
I don’t get it. Unisex changing rooms are lockable from inside. They’re usually for families with kids, where going into men or women’s sole-use changing rooms would not be appropriate.
Such rooms exist at public pools such as Upper Hutt’s H20, and at a small beach adjacent to Freyberg Pool in Oriental Bay. All of which are lockable from inside.
So with lockable doors, what are these people referring to?
Unless they can provide corroborating evidence, this appears to be nothing more than Trumpian-style mis-information.
Anyway, I have serious doubts that such a far-right, nakedly neo-fascist group, could gain any measure of electoral success in 2020. They’d need a charismatic leader for that.
If ACT, a mainstream rightwing party, could win only 13,075 votes in 2017, that says a lot about the electoral chances of the so-called “new conservatives”.
And as someone else pointed out, would Simon Bridges really want to align himself in coalition with a bunch of racist, far-right nutcases?
At least ACT, which economically was far right, extreme individualism over the collective, they were at least libertarian in their views on personal freedoms. Conservatives can be found on any part of the economic scale (there are communist conservatives in China) however they are at the opposite end of the authoritarian/libertarian scale.
A source of much humour for me was realising that the person we think of as Jesus Christ would, today, most likely be a leftie libertarian whereas so many of his aficionados can be found in the polar opposite quarter of the political compass of authoritarian right (conservatives).
Nah, ACT is part of the scene that created the situation where people are desperate for economic sustenance. It’s this desperation that feeds into facisim and the far right.
Those desperate people wouldn’t get so pissed of with woke culture if they had enough to get by. Yes they’d be annoyed at having their pronouns constantly corrected but there’s a different kind of rage that comes from being hungry and having your pronouns corrected.
As I type this I realise the Woke crowd are real leftists anyway – if they were they’d be equally focused on suffering everywhere.
ACT has changed since it first appeared and has moved to be more conservative, for sure. Look at Rodney Hide, no matter how you might want to throw stuff at him, he has stuck with the original ACT philosophy, to the point he calls himself a anarchist, which really pisses off other right wingers, as right wingers can’t be something nasty as an anarchist, perish the thought.
You are so sure the “racist” smear is credible? Indeed – we are controlled by the media.
True racism is extremely rare.
Said from a white man’s perspective.
Notice the the irony?
There’s something disturbingly American about this New Conservative pitch.
Its like its been lifted wholesale from some dumbwit US site
+1 Francesca!
Will the Conservatives support non citizens voting in elections?
The hysteria against transpeople by the bullshit “new conservatives” is made worse by reactionary “radical feminists” who have fuelled andfanned the fires of hatred.
But wouldn’t it be surprising if the constant vociferous hate-speech by NC leader David Moffat hid something terrible in his own psyche? It’s called “projecting”.
Remember the downfall of the former leader of the Christian Heritage party and how he used to rail against gays and lesbians?
And not too far removed from the raving Far Right, is what National laughingly call their, ‘Climate Change Spokesperson’
Todd Muller, who is supposed to be National’s climate change spokesperson, has lashed out publicly in an intemperate attack, on what he calls a Government “….blinded by Green ideology”.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/109826913/new-zealand-needs-a-government-that-isnt-blinded-by-green-ideology-nats
As well as attacking the government for being “blinded by Green Ideology” Muller singled out the youth pressure group Generation Zero as a particular target for his vitriol
(I would be surprised if either of these two claims contained in this sentence are true. As far as I know Gen Zero are not the Green Party’s version of the Young Nats, as Todd Muller seems to be alleging. Nor have they ever made claims to represent the youth of New Zealand)
This paragraph about sums up Todd Muller’s sleazy manipulative strategy; Paper over the differences in the here and now, on how to tackle climate change, And kick the can down the road twenty or thirty years. So we don’t act now.
Todd Muller is a dirty liar. Where is his proof that the ban on issuing new oil and gas drilling permits will lead to an increase in global emissions?
He has just deliberately decided to make this lie up, without any evidence.
This is probably Todd Muller’s biggest lie of all.
Todd Muller and Simon Bridges have both said that they will repeal the government’s ban on issuing new oil and gas exploration permits at the very next change of government. What’s bi-partisan about that?
Nothing.
The big question is will James Shaw publicly stand up to this dirty public attack from Tod Muller, or will Shaw instead decide to stick with his invisible man act?
Shaw’s public silence, not just in the face of this attack, but generally, is condemning his party to zero public visibility and relevance, which inevitably will result in a struggle to get back into parliament.
James Shaw needs to demand his right of reply, stand with Gen Zero and the climate movement, and debunk Mullers lies and condemn his manipulative backsliding on climate change action in the here and now. James Shaw needs to say, ‘no deal’ to repealing the ban on new exploration permits, and that for Muller and Bridges to demand this, shows that National are not interested in bi-partisanship at all.
This is not leadership, this is the abrogation of all leadership, and handing it over to others. We don’t want our climate policies decided in Beijing, Washington, Delhi or Moscow
James Shaw, as head of the Green Party, needs to tell Muller that New Zealanders do not want to be obsequious ‘fast followers’ on the world stage. New Zealanders want to be the leaders on the world stage that we were in the past, not crawlers fawning after the likes of Trump or Xi, or Putin, or Turnbull, which is the role that Todd Muller wants for our nation.
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