The modern rule of politics post Corbyn that easily intimidated Journalists frightened of invoking social media lynch mobs & desperate politicians trying to win need to appreciate: If it’s popular on woke Twitter, it’s electoral death.
It’s not the intentions of social justice warriors that are the issue, it’s the screaming maw of subjective rage and personal space triggering intellectual bullshit that alienates rather than bonds that is the problem.
We are only now appreciating the counter productive damage social media mixed with militant identity politics has done to the political landscape.
For me as a class leftist, the delineation of power in society is not woke intersectionaism, or skin colour, or gender, or sexual identity, it is the 1% wealthiest with their 9% enablers vs the 90% of the rest of us. Identity Politics, while an important personal journey on how the individual comes to politics, can’t be a recruitment tool to get to 51% democratic majority because if your starting point as a woke activist is that every male is a rapist, every white person a racist, anyone arguing for free speech a Nazi and anyone questioning 1% Trans mantra a homophobe, you aren’t about Broad Church politics, you are about a Pure Temple politics where exclusion is the new inclusion.
The Right looks for recruits to join them, the Left look for traitors to de-platform, call out and cancel. Woke Left has all the nuance of the Cultural Revolution.
The real danger of identity politics over class politics, as we have seen in the UK election and with Trump, is that when white poor men start seeing themselves not as a class but as an identity, the Right win.
In the NZ context that means 500 retweets by Wellington Twitteratti = alienation not winning. If it’s popular on The Spinoff, it’s poison at the ballot box and if Action Station have a petition on it, avoid it like the fucking plague.
The woke won’t change their rage politics of alienation, they can’t. Social media has given them a sense of power they’ve never held before, an ocean of the bullied who can now bully will never hand over their weapons, so the Left need to ignore the Woke, stop alienating white working class men and actually try to win them over.
Take white male privilege. Why would men want to be told they have it (when their suicide rates, mental health issues, low life expectancy, violence and murder rate is so high) and why would they willingly hand it over if they did have it?
Isn’t white male privilege being treated with respect? Not getting hassled by the cops? Getting paid properly?
The Woke scream for white men to hand over that privilege, but why would any white male look at the list and agree to be paid less, be treated poorly by the cops or accept sub-standard service?
Wouldn’t it be better to say that we want to expand white male privilege to everyone? Instead of attacking those Men, hold up their agency as the right every citizen should enjoy.
Expanding the franchise of agency is something everyone can get behind, removing my agency so people who despise me can have more isn’t an easy cultural sale.
Fellow citizens shouldn’t fear the Left, the 1% should.
The silver lining for the Left is ultimately the looming climate crisis. All current structures need to be destroyed to rebuild a sustainable adaptable society and the speed of the collapse will focus the electorate not on their petty bigotries and social media inspired grudges but on their simple survival.
If your activism as a progressive doesn’t have the climate apocalypse as its central focus, you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Once the Left have real solutions to that problem, we will start winning again, but for now the class left is in a coma, globalised free market immigration is a political curse and horrifically Identity Politics with all it’s history from the 1930s is now in ascendancy.
We’ve been here before.
Well said Martyn! I agree with all of what you said….all apart from one aspect:
Any ideology that seeks to divide society is ultimately toxic. Woke intersectional ideology is just a new way of arbitrarily slicing up the socialist pie.
I thoroughly recommend all should listen to Kim Hill’s interview of Douglas Murray this morning on RNZ.
The woke will say something like they’ve discovered this secret wrong that only they know about. Which funny if it wasn’t so so sad.
The hedonistic adjustments are well known – hidden inflation has been going on ever since GDP figures stopped measuring debt, car loans, mortgages, student debt, benefit debt.
Slowly, one by one as the establishment is dismantled the Great Depression that was sealed by it is revealed.
Hidden inflation – That’s the phrase I’ve been looking for Sam!
When you look at the high real estate prices and then realise that the cost to build a new house ($3500 per square metre) matches the cost of a house on the market you know something has gone wrong.
Do you know anyone who is actually calculation real costs of living?
@Aaron, Cost of living defiantly doesn’t correspond the the living wage in Auckland.
If you need benefit top ups on the living wage or to go to the doctor to afford to rent or buy a house and to survive, then surely it can’t be considered a living wage?
Even worse 40% of all wages in NZ are for the minimum wages… and many of those wages are below the minimum wage when audited, aka Chorus workers.
One reason the cost of living vs wages is so extreme in NZ, is the money laundering and visa scams. AKA if someone like convicted moneylender William Yan has laundered $500 million alone through gambling at Sky city… then that has a big impact on prices going forward for property etc… and there are plenty more like him getting rich doing visa scams which drop out local businesses and their employees, who can’t compete with below cost labour. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12005146
All subsidies are subsidies to business who ought to pay real living wages so people can live in dignity, feed their family properly and have a decent house over their heads.
Subsidies to business but we are not allowed to have tariff taxes that support local business and stop endless crap coming into the country that is subsidised in effect by low low wages in many Asian and South American countries.
A real change would be free public transport.
We need capital gains tax, we need wealth tax and we need death duties over $2m or something like that.
Laundered cigarettes, you name it. Come to NZ, get residency get on a sickness benefit and hawk cigarettes to help make other’s sick on the NZ health system….
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/118143075/the-tipping-point-why-new-zealand-is-being-flooded-with-smuggled-cigarettes
So tired of all the scams and the left do nothing about it, in fact don’t even like to talk about scams from new residents coming here… and attracting more overseas crim gangs to pile in with all the money to be made here illegally…
Mitch Feierstein Planet Ponzi: https://planetponzi.com/
Adrian Orr, Sam Stubbs.
Financial research isn’t a job anymore because they all got the purge in the meltdown of 2008. There’s still a handful floating around but not much.
Now a days anyone with the help of professor Google can do there own research and come up with a descent enough read on the markets.
This is a spread sheet: https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/-/media/ReserveBank/Files/Statistics/tables/c5/hc5.xlsx?revision=ce38e4f4-5ca1-4c14-9455-e8f2259875c1
You don’t have to click on it. Basically I’m looking for the delinquency rate so people who fail to payback personal loans/credit card debt with in 30 days. If you go through each Bank survey and all publicly traded banks have to release this information. You’ll find that about 2.5% of all personal loans are delinquent which means about half (probably closer to 40%) of all personal loans are dog shit.
Makes me believe in Adrian Orr because he does the mahi so normal people don’t have to worry. Reading markets is like learning Mandarin; Bloody hard even for PH.D people.
As for the cost of living I use gold terms but each to there own really. As I’ve said on similar blogs before, people focus too much on a magic numbers, and not focusing on what it really should be based on.
$22 per hour is just a rallying number. But as has been pointed out many times, it is way too high for the costs of living in many areas, and in some areas, it is too low.
Living Wage, IMO should be nailed to the energy sector and public transport and permanently stuck there. If it costs on average X,000$/year to live in a town and not require welfare or similar boosts, then the living wage should be set to X,000$/(40*52) (40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year). If that cost goes up as the years go by, Living Wage should automatically increase to reflect that.
The $22 an hour claim is just a rallying number, but it’s becoming an albatross IMO. It gives politicians an escape clause, claiming we will have a Living Wage by 20/20 something (by increasing it $1-$2 a year for 10 years). Critics can (and do) point out that it is too high for many areas and will be detrimental to the economy. And in a few years when inflation passes $22 an hour cost of living, the fight has to start up all over again for a 23$ an hour wage.
With out democratising energy and public transport the cost of living around the nation varies so much, this isn’t something you can just throw at the whole nation at once and hope for it to be effective for everyone.
“Woke intersectional ideology is just a new way of arbitrarily slicing up the socialist pie.”.. What have the woke left have to do with socialism? By it’s very definition, socialism is collective.. That is the polar opposite to what “wokeness” is… What’s really needed here, and now, is a real socialist leader to emerge within the labour party, who doesn’t give a shit about peoples petty bullshit problems, and just “gets on with it”… So the lesson, boys and girls, is that if you want to succeed electorally, then you need to ignore nearly half the country, and do what you know needs to be done… An all out attack on the tory punditry that pretends to be a “fourth estate” would be one of the first items on my list…One puff piece written to help the national party to cover up some corruption, or touting for behaviour that has done long term harm to NZ society would be my threshold to have someone removed from their position.. Editorial staff who authorise, and edit articles in order to assist national party agendas, personal and economic in ways that distort, or obliterate the truth, or contain deliberate misdirection, amounting to falsehood, would be indicted as criminals… You people want to survive for more than the next thirty years?, then start getting it through your thick heads that it will take a hell of a lot more than self centred whining to achieve that…
Martyn. You Sir, just won the Internet for the day.
Great piece.
“Fellow citizens shouldn’t fear the Left, the 1% should.”
QFT.
If politicians openly calling men, male, pale and stale, and left inclusive politics is calling everyone who doesn’t agree with massive immigration a racist, putting pro Beijing human rights style on a pedestal and sexual and drugs crimes culturally acceptable for certain nations. (The left and MSM don’t mind mentioning OZ crims because they are often white, but not other criminal’s nationalities as that’s racist). It is getting obvious why the right who do exactly the same as the left on lazy immigration, but for money and pretend not to, are winning the propaganda war.
Boris and are conservatives are going to keep immigration going for billionaires while pretending they won’t, just like NZ Labour has kept immigration going while pretending they cut it down.
The reason is, that that neoliberalism and the state funding private offshore enterprises has reduced manufacturing and value added real goods on shore and owned by nationals of that country, to the point that our economies now run on growing consumerism from lazy immigration while fake jobs replace real jobs for statistical purposes.
it’s now at the point where the ‘low cost nations’ have so much money knocking about that they can come back and buy up the former ‘rich’ nations businesses and export the profit back to their country or nearest tax haven. Most of NZ tourism businesses like hotel chains, agriculture, banks and increasingly land, commercial property and assets are now owned by other nations and the profits exported. It now has spread to small businesses where restaurants and import/export businesses are doing a roaring trade with fake labour and paid for visas here!
Meanwhile funny money from billionaires and money launderers is secretly encouraged as the politicians are too scared what will happen if they stop that and it becomes clear that that the emperor has no clothes.
Already the billionaires are on their way back to Britain now Corbyn has been defeated https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/13/super-rich-family-buy-65m-house-to-celebrate-johnsons-victory!
Laundering drug money in NZ is not even a crime.
Woman discharged without conviction for laundering money for international drug ring
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/115157974/woman-discharged-without-conviction-for-laundering-money-for-international-drug-ring
William Yan AKA Bill Liu to keep NZ citizenship despite money laundering conviction
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11905478
Just hide behind a company and the ‘company’ gets the fine…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/97408647/auckland-money-transfer-company-ordered-to-pay-more-than-5m-in-penalties
More money launderers and billionaires in Britain under the Conservatives, and more refugees and low waged migrant workers under UK Labour!
Voters spoilt for choice. Sarcasm.
This is where we need Perry Mason, Dick Tracy and even Ralph Nader to call a halt to globalism and rescue Gotham City before the Beagle Boys take over .
Seriously though , good post as are most of your posts.
And Im dead serious about the Globalism bit , boys and girls.
Because that’s what and who is causing all this crap.
Globalists, aka neo liberals.
It is perfectly ok for Genter to tell “old white men” they need to step down, but white men have privilege? What total shit.
In this new world of woke identity politics it is the brown and trans people who are the protected species.
I find it amazing how blinded by the obvious you can be.
Imagine of Bridges had said it was time for brown trans people to step aside. The apoplectic rage would still be burning strong.
You are absolutely correct, Bomber. Ask me how I know.
What you said in the earlier post “they voted for the Wall”, was so true. Working blokes from Wrexham who voted Leave were confused by Labour and its half arsed attitude to Brexit. This election was another Leave referendum in a desperate attempt by the English people to retain their own culture and civilization.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50717536
The neo-liberal global market which advantaged capital has resulted in downward pressure on the wages of the working class in the first world – now the same capitalist class is exploiting their white race identity nationalism to retain political power to thwart a left wing reaction to the growing inequality in wealth (huge property/asset value inflation – because the wealth is barely taxed and is being stored in asset ownership)
This is the repeat of the 1930’s when the junker class used the fascist mobs to see off the leftist threat in Germany. Then there was Mussolini, Hitler and Franco – now its Putin, Netanyahu, Xi, Erdogan, Trump, ScoMo Oz and Brexit England.
The global market multi-lateralism is being abandoned for old style strongman authoritarianism to preserve privilege. They will call global warming action a left wing threat, obstruct global tax regimes on their corporates and the associated money laundering and call resistance to their regime sedition. The panopticon society they are building is beyond your comprehension – they are building an Area 51 AI God. It makes Hollywood’ Skynet look like a cartoon.
They win by divide and conquer and they cultivate grievance to divide the many to retain power. Only if those on the left do not succumb to their efforts can it remain united.
PS Did John Tamihere calling women higher ranked on the Labour list than himself front bums increase the Labour vote, or not? If not …
No, well. The woke reaction to Trump2016 was you are all racist, bigoted liars with no rhythm, which is a rejection of radical left wing politics. The woke do not find comfort in a radical left wing manifesto. Who does the woke speak for? Is it even possible to deny that men and woman exist?
A look at what the woke promotes and a lot of what woke UK Labour people was promoting was social programmes and spending and kind of protecting people. Woke like to promote pictures of little children in distress and the question is that’s really good because we do need a social safety net but also in an election campaign it’s not about trying to get people to bloody well give to bloody charity as if your one vote can stop this child’s misery.
So it’s about treating people with dignity. The left globally does not need to pawn their intellectual integrity so we can appeal to the heart. Working people don’t have trust in left-wing-political parties because left-wing-political don’t treat working people as if they are regular people.
There are people with in the left who really look down on others and think those people are naughty, and they really need reforming to change the way people think and change the way people talk and working-people no longer see left wing parties that speak for working-people and represent working-people. But instead hard woke lefties expect politics to speak down to working people.
Living in a middle class suburb in Wellington for years, all social attitudes were deeply liberal. All ideas followed woke, nobody was responsible for their stated “oppression”, it was all the fault of old white men. Its easy to have these views if you are wealthy, cosseted and tucked away from the hoi piloi. Those other people, the deplorables.
Moving to small town NZ and its more visceral. The deplorales are on full display, and they have a lived reality so different. And you find out that they are clever, they have opinions, and that these reflect lived reality. Nothing deplorable, just plain honesty. Immigration? Where are the houses and jobs and hospital beds coming from? And they speak Congolese….
Reality interpreted as racism by the liberal urban types. That type of thinking lost Clinton an election, Corbyn Labour just did the same.
Not so much Corbyn Labour, as UK Labour.
The problem was the many Labour voters in the Midlands and the North voted for Brexit, and while Corbyn was a Eurosceptic of longstanding he lead a pro Remain caucus.
Once again you conveniently pardon the woke.
So I will not parrot some cult line that blames the woke for everything
It’s the woke, its the fellow travellers, its the unAmerican, its the Jews.
Why not, coz its sad and pathetic.
Everything that exists inside of the woke Twitter bubble, does not exist in the real world.
Are all the right wingers on Twitter, woke? How is Twitter woke?
“Fellow citizens shouldn’t fear the Left, the 1% should.”
While the left fight themselves to defeat, the billionaires can pour money into their agenda and conduct smear campaigns on anyone brave enough to publicly state they are going to make them pay taxes!
Do the left support people like Corby, nope they join in the 1% to destroy and blame him!
Corbyn’s sons condemn ‘despicable attacks’ on him after defeat
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/14/jeremy-corbyns-sons-condemn-despicable-attack-on-him-after-defeat
Yet another reason why, decent people are not attracted to, or destroyed by the new political system and politics increasingly attracts trivial people who are not heavy hitters for the people.
The people you call “left” attacking Corbyn are the centrists of the Labour Party who oppose the left being in leadership of the party.
From what I can see, Corbyn has been attacked from his own party from all sides whoever you call them, lefties, woke, blarites, centrists… it’s an organised campaign from the inside out and probably led by money paid for by billionaires just like Brexit.
All sides. Hardly. The internal critics want to end left wing leadership of the party. Nor is it a liberal social conservative divide. It is the neo-liberal centrists acceptable to the “establishment” seeing off a left wing threat (Labour’s election success in 2017 under a left wing leader) to their mutual interests.
You don’t have to pay rats inside of a burning party.
Obama? what are you saying? I mean, sure, he’s not an old white guy..but you know, not exactly the face of progress. Tho..it hilarious watching him preaching to the converted about the ‘threat’ of Bernie..and to be fair, Bernie is a threat to Obamas friends.
I reckon most of these wokes are weirdo’s …
Mind you , … I felt pretty weird having to be ‘woke’n up too early this morning to attend an important family meeting after 5 hours sleep. Had to see a doctor about me Dads condition in a rest home. Dad was smiling and laughing when we visited. He looked way better than I felt. The receptionist made me a coffee and that stopped much of the weird feeling.
Now Im back home supping a Guinness or three… so goodnight. Shortly . In the afternoon.
So I guess we are all a little weird in our own idiosyncratically weird way…
Anyways, happy Weirdmas and a Weird New Year.
“He looked way better than I felt.”
Mate, be there for him. Let him know. Now’s all the time that we have. Blink of an eye…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJQp6xbr4N8
Comments are closed.