Looking forward to the 2020 election there seem to be some trigger points that could cause curveballs for all parties to try and cope with.
DOMESTIC CULTURE WAR:
New Zealand is about to be plunged into a culture war for the 2020 election and unfortunately the Woke left and Alt Right have both been feeding this vein of resentment politics and it threatens to erupt in a range of unforeseeable fronts.
With very little real policy difference between Labour and National, the election will descend into pointless arguments about the different wrapping paper rather than the actual policy.
National Party Social Media Dirty Politics:
National’s social media campaign is the key to their win in a 2020 election. After meeting with the NZ team who helped elect Scott Morrison in Australia using micro targeted social media messages designed to enrage white older men, Simon Bridges now has more social media designers in his Opposition Leaders department than actual researchers.
Electioneering previous to Facebook amounted to identifying voters from a known voting pool and serving that voting pool up messages that made them vote. This was crude targeting, but if you lived in a wealthy neighbourhood, you would hear messages attuned to you, if you lived in a poorer neighbourhood, you would hear messages tailored for that environment.
Facebook however allowed you to hunt not just for known voters, but that vast swathe of people who also don’t bother voting.
On the Left we have told ourselves that vast swathe of people who don’t vote are poor and brown and disenfranchised, and while that is certainly true, it also includes a large number of angry white men who don’t bother voting because they feel culturally alienated by the current paradigms of micro-aggression policing and Millennial sensibilities. This group of males are economically paranoid by their perceived lack of cultural power and whose economic anxiety clashes with being told they are the ones with the privilege.
Rather than engaging, these male white voters simply shield themselves in apathy and cynicism and don’t vote.
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica suddenly had hundreds of data points to know how to precisely push those angry white non voters into rage fuelled voting machines. This manipulation of white male anger become the driving force that saw Trump win, Brexit win and Scott Morrison win.
This is the playbook National are drawing from.
But playing to the worst angels of our nature is just part of the plan, outright deception and manipulations are also part of this plan…
… the difference between the two bars is far, far greater proportionally than the difference in actual numbers, which is an ongoing trend with National’s specifically targeted social media falsehoods…
…as statistician Thomas Lumley points out about the above message…
It’s designed to look like a barchart, but if it were a barchart the dimensions of the colored bits would have a closer quantitative relation to the numbers being displayed. I’m going to assume the numbers are correct, because that’s the sort of thing people are more careful about. The bars aren’t.
To start with, the red bar is wider than the blue bar, which is a well-known graphical exaggeration technique. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is the heights.
On my laptop screen, I measured the red bar as 61% higher than the blue bar. But $2.23/L is only 16% higher than $1.91/L: that’s nearly a four-fold exaggeration of the difference
…so not only will National play to the most fearful, angry and insecure parts of the electorates psyche, it will openly lie about facts and misrepresent them on social media outlets that are not covered by the BSA.
The structural reality of how National intend to make this the most negative election ever by playing directly to that negativity must be consistently pointed out and explained to our whanau so that they don’t get scammed into voting hatefully in 2020.
Bash the dirty filthy beneficiaries, prisoners and gangs:
No one in NZ politics ever lost votes by bashing the dirty filthy bennie, and the party of Cruelty and Spite as social policy, the National Party, are promising a delicious smorgasbord of counterproductive malice masquerading as welfare policy if elected this year…
National is looking into fining the parents of young people who leave school early, and don’t go into education or training, up to $3000 if it returns to Government.
This is just one of the policies understood to be under consideration by the party as part of its social policy review, due to be unveiled later this month.
…as if punishing parents with fines for truant children isn’t bullshit stick over carrot crap, look at the way National want to hurt beneficiaries…
• requiring gang members to prove they don’t have illegal income before they receive the benefit
• a 25 per cent reduction in the number of people on the benefit
…simply throwing 25% of beneficiaries off the benefit doesn’t solve anything! It simply means homelessness explodes, remember? The last time National were in power, that’s what happens. National go all vicious on social policy, people fall over, the social damage compounds.
As for taking welfare off gang members, Jesus wept – all that means is they are going to turn to more bloody crime!
NZ workers have lived for 3 decades in a de-unionised work force and stare at the pittance paid beneficiaries with envy in comparison to the low wage crumbs they manage to gather each week. National exploit this wage envy and beneficiaries are sold as the great enemy, that’s why counterproductive punishment policies are promoted with such zeal and glee by rich National Party MPs. The legacy of those counterproductive welfare policies explodes as the homelessness and deepening inequality we see on our streets each day.
This resentment and rancour pretending to be social policy by National is the lowest political trick in the game and reeks of desperation.
It’s funny that when social policy fails, the immediate response by National is to roll back the civil rights of those it fails as if that’s a solution.
Rolling back the civil rights of beneficiaries, prisoners and gang members by lowering the evidential threshold from beyond reasonable doubt to balance of probabilities creates a legal landscape where some people have less rights than others.
It’s ugly, it’s needless and it’s divisive. But that’s National for you.
Woke activists alienating the middle and another Spinoff hit job accusing Labour of sexual assault:
Alienating woke micro-aggression policing Identity Politics activists to the left of me, climate denying crypto-fascist alt-right incel Trolls to the right of me, and here I am stuck in the middle with you.
In 2020, National intend to tell white men on social media that the Left hate them, woke activists handing National ammunition for that campaign seems deeply counter productive.
The near ubiquitous use of social media means people are well aware of the anger and ferocity the medium can generate. There’s already much that has been said about the way woke activists manage to only alienate with their social media presence, and unfortunately Twitter is an ocean of the bullied now empowered to bully and they will never walk away from that new found sense of power.
The Spinoff needs to be avoided like the plague by Labour in 2020 as they will wish to double down on their false sexual assault fiasco because they can’t help themselves.
National are actively attempting to emotionally manipulate us, resist their manufactured and well crafted lies and help others resist it rather than feed it. Don’t attack those who have been duped into believing the lies because that path leads to entrenching their vote to National, help show them how they’ve been deceived and give them the respect and agency to make their own decision once the scales fall from their eyes.
You combat negative populism with hope, care and love. Piss and vinegar on social media won’t get us anywhere.
If your starting point as a woke activist is all men are rapists, all white people racist and anyone standing for free speech is a Nazi, perhaps you should sit this one out champ.
John Tamihere runs for Māori Party:
The culture war could run the other way against Labour as well. Exploiting the deep sense of resentment by Māori towards the neoliberal welfare agencies the Government haven’t been able to tame, John Tamihere runs for the Māori Party in Tamaki Makaurau and destroys Peeni Henare.
Many have privately suggested that Phil Goff was personally mutilated by the Mayoralty battle with Tamihere, the idea of the ultra polite Peeni being forced to face that kind of ferocity almost seems criminal.
If Tamihere can win Tamaki Makaurau, the Māori Party are back in the political equation.
ACT’s sleeping fault line erupts:
The threat of ACT is that with an electorate seat, they can coat-tail extra MPs in without hitting 5%. They have been politically impotent for the last decade but Woke over reaction to free speech has suddenly given David Seymour political relevance. Labour can not look at the free speech/hate speech legislation before the next election as the idea of the Woke censoring free speech would generate a stampede towards ACT.
Everyone has felt a Woke Identity Politics practitioner screaming on social media, the idea of giving those kind of people power over what we can and can’t say would be a political gift for ACT.
OTHER DOMESTIC EVENTS:
The Culture war will be but one set of triggers for the election, here are possible others.
Kim Dotcom ruling:
The Supreme Court will be returning their verdict on the cluster fuck that has been the Kim Dotcom deformity of a case. If they decide that NZ law is sovereign and not American law, the case against Dotcom gets thrown out and suddenly the entire NZ Government will be on the hook for damages against Mega and that could run into $3billion.
When you consider Māori have been paid less than a billion for the entire theft of NZ, having to pay out $3billion to Kim Dotcom because National were sucking up to America will be a bitter rat to swallow for National Party voters.
Environmental mass arrest protest movements and another Orange Sky climate crisis event:
The orange sky over Auckland popped the pretence that climate change is something else that will bother us in the future. The speed with which the climate crisis biosphere feedback loops are now causing catastrophic events will generate a desperation within the population at the utter meaninglessness of the current policy ideas.
Mass arrest events will become larger and larger until real political change is seen.
Gang tensions erupt and Police shooting an unarmed member of the public::
The looming gang war between the domestic gangs and the imported Australian 501s over who will control the meth trade could erupt on the streets and National will capitalise on that with their bullshit Raptor Strike Force crap.
The flip side will be an event whereby some idiot, ill trained cop gets spooked and shoots an unarmed member of the public creating a tsunami of social media outrage.
Christchurch Atrocity Case:
National have always been let off the hook for how their outrageous promotion of a far right UN conspiracy theory contributed to inspiring the Christchurch atrocity, with the court case coming, the public will be reminded in glaring focus how National’s promotion of that UN conspiracy contributed to that obscenity.
Cannabis Referendum:
Thanks to National over egging their criticism of the referendum by carping on and on about it allowing ’42 joints a day’, the confusion over what the referendum does and doesn’t do has been eclipsed by everyone thinking the can buy 42 joints each day. This will bring every stoner and person under 45 out of their self-imposed exile from the political process and cause a rush to vote that will swamp the conservative cultural forces fighting for the status quo.
GLOBAL:
Chinese encroachment:
China’s economy has suffered from the trade war and the inability for most of its banks to pay back the quarter of a trillion in loans China used to fend off the 2008 global financial recession, encroachment into the South Pacific will increasingly become an economic necessity which makes China far more dangerous and their links with National will become increasingly sensitive.
Trump wins:
I loath Trump with the kind of depth of feeling reserved for discovering a month old corpse in your bed, but I still fear Trump is well on his way to winning the 2020 election and that will bode ill for the planet.
Global Economic recession:
All the financial hegemony did in 2008 to escape the global economic meltdown was kick the day of reckoning down the road.
We are down that road. The day of reckoning is here and will explode in a way we can’t predict.
It will be dirty politics as usual for National. It is the one thing they do best.
bert – and their best isn’t all that great either, when their best is inevitably exposed by Nicky Hager et al.
Sad.
Identity politics sees the left CIA controlled… socialism is universalism. Socialism without universalism is aimed at suppressing socialism.
“You combat negative populism with hope, care and love.”
Yep.
Here are my election trigger points.
AO/NZ has many millionaires, a few multimillionaires and a few at either a billion or are closing in on one. Or two, or more.
Now? One might ask?
If AO/NZ’s primary industry, and it’s only industry worthy of consideration, is agrarian then how is it that there are millionaires and billionaires who own, in graham hearts instance for arguments sake, I think, a $50 million dollar US apartment in NYC. How, is that possible?
Is this an answer to my own question?
Wikipedia.
“Hart gained a big break when he purchased the Government Printing Office for less than its capital value in 1990. The purchase was 1.4x earnings and Hart was provided generous payment terms. Then New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange initially refused to sign off on the transaction.[citation needed] The following year he bought Whitcoulls Group which at that time included a retail chain of bookstores as well as office and stationery concerns. He has since sold off these interests.
Forbes stated that Hart was the 178th richest person in the world as of March 2016.[1] ”
It’s my personal belief that our politics is entirely infected by money fetishist parasites and now that their reign is being dragged into the fearsome light of day they must surely be desperate to keep their ‘activities’ well hidden in the darkest corners.
I don’t mean to single heart out. He’s just one of the many parasites who’ve dragged AO/NZ down to their level.
How, has that been made possible for them? Who are the politicians who enabled that? Who are the politicians in office today who are desperate to avoid searching questions as to their involvement in the creation of our cadre of Kiwi-As billionaire parasites.
If you’re one of the parasites reading this, you’re fatal flaw was your lack of imagination. You’re only talent is lining up the figures. You didn’t understand that by your actions, you’d see the demise of your host country.
If you did? Then, what monsters you are. And who have you paid off then to stand in the way of justice for us?
A panel beater doesn’t get to be the 178th richest person in the world by saving hard and paying their taxes like they rely heavily on you and me to do.
The 2020 election will be a farce. A quaint custom at best. The bridges and adern show will be the most abysmally boring puppet side-show you’ll ever pay your hard earned taxes to be hypnotised by.
I’d a been the first person to say ” Vote! ” but not anymore. Stay at home, get drunk and/or stoned and play computer games. Just as worthwhile and much more fun.
The 2020 General Election will be won by; whoever can take a good photo, have brilliantly shiny teef, and who can turn on the water-works at the drop of the hat.
Gweens arent coming back, which leaves Labour with a weak(er) bargaining position with NZF who’ll romp home! NZF will be the King or Queen maker for sure.
All NZF have to offer in the photo shots is a wrinkly old face a pot belly and a bald head . Cannot see this as a winner.
Yep Trev. People said that at the last election too.
Labour will move from the centre to the centre-right a little more to push NZF further right to contest Act & the Nats. Theres no threat from the left … Gweens will die from self inflicted wounds. That’ll mean that there will probably be only 4 parties in parliament after the election.
After seeing the bush fires in Aus, I think there is a place for the Greens. We only have to look at our environment it is buckling at the seams and becoming toxic. Also we need to keep the status quo we need to keep some continuity. We can’t keep making radical changes to organisations like MSD policies it’s hurting the very people we are suppose to be helping including our state servants.
“MR SPEAKER! PULL MY FINGER!!!”
There is talk of Dr Lance O Sullivan standing for the Maori Party which would be a game changer . Labour have done little to help Maori despite the support they got at the last election. Most of the comments I have heard indicate many Maori leaders see the harm marajuana has done so will not vote for a party in favour of liberalization. Hopefully Bridges rules out working with NZF as Key did and Act get more support and be the friend the right need to win
The only reason ACT are there is because they are a defacto of National. In all our years of political history, this is the most corrupt electorate.
No, the Maori vote will stay with Labour as Labour have done more for Maori than National ever will.
Plus 100 Bert, prisoners have told me they are better off under the coalition some will say who cares about them, well I do cause most of them are our people.
Nats policy for their next term is to increase prison numbers (reduced under this present govt). The discussion of that policy was paywalled on the damned Herald (cursing them for doing that).
And they are big on privatising prisons, running them for profit.
I think Lance should stick to what he does best, being a doctor and the Maori party crapped on our people they will find it hard to be resurrected. Marijuana is not the main cause of our peoples harm its colonisation and some of the poison that comes with it.
Lance should stick to what he does best, being a doctor
Agree!
The number 1 sentiment of the next election will be fear.
A war with Iran is certain, the US has stockpiles of munitions that need to be utilised before they are dumped. The outcome will be 10 times more devastating than Dubya’s invasion of Iraq.
Fonterra will be under the control of foreign banks and the “backbone” of the country under severe threat.
The likelihood of a collapse in global property prices is high, and even though we may escape unscathed as we will be seen as a bolthole, the threat of a collapse here is enough to see increased fear amongst investors.
The housing crisis will become much worse and educated people with former well paying jobs will be forced on to the streets.
Climate change devastation will result in insurance bills doubling and many properties becoming uninsurable.
These are just the certainties, there will be many more events that results in growing mental health issues and a climate of fear in NZ.
This all weighs up very nicely into National’s hands. Increased surveillance by the SIS and GCSB, more arms for the police, more crime, more social disorder.
So the only way the Coalition can retain the benches is to formulate a plan to counter this fear and provide a plan that strengthens the minds of kiwis.
Good luck to them.
Ssssh! Dont talk about the SIS & GCSB! Theyre ‘busy’ looking for the next terrorist and when and where theyre going to attack! So, they look at Gangs and the poor brown folks again!! So they Pat down a 4yr old little kid at the Airport! FFS!
Meanwhile, the white ideological fanatical terrorist walks right past them all.
With the impending War, I wonder if ‘she’ll’ go anywhere near the danger hotspots for a photo-op? Probably not.
This government is so lame, white and woke.
The greatest photo-op of all time..
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/10468960/Aroha-of-McGehan-Close-flees-NZ
Key’s government was so lame, white and corrupt.
Now we have Bridges(still under investigation) attacking Gangs and the poor brown folks again!! Talk about a white ideological fanatical terrorist walking right past them all.
I think our P.M. needs to go on some T.V. baking reality show , get some real exposure, wear a leopard skin suit, or at the very least sleep with someone at the Herald!
go on some T.V. baking reality show, …wear a leopard skin suit
Gotta correct you on that, Bert. That was a snake skin suit. No kidding. The host admired it as such, and certainly, apart from being grey to match her hair, rather than brownish, it reminded me of the wall-to-wall python that once slept in my livingroom (right before the cat disappeared, and a bulge appeared in the carpet snake).
Bahahahahaha!
I was going to say Kheala we should not be making fun of Paula….
then I realised she’s doing it all on her own!
Yeah, you’d think that between her and Simo, no one should be worried about their possible return to govt. It is ONLY with big media pushing and twisting and hiding info, promoting lies, false accusations and misrepresentions etc etc that it is possible. If that lot win, it won’t be due to natural charisma. They don’t have any.
Well Kiwibuild certainly has fixed the housing crisis hasn’t it?
Any promises made by Jacinda are going to sound pretty cheap now. And if I were National I’d be reminding the voter every day that you were promised so much and delivered so little, and even your Year of Delivery, catch phrase you admit was marketing wankery
Where do you live BG cause in the Hutt Valley I can see the coalitions good work houses are popping up and its great. My advice keep going Labour so come election you can remind national who truly is the party that builds homes cause it ain’t them they build bridges, oh! nah! that right they don’t even do that they knock them down like they do to the people.
The big issues of the election will be the ones that are not addressed.
Rising inequality.
Cost of living.
Mass immigration.
1080.
The last two will kick the stuffing out of NZF and Green votes respectively.
1080.
Yes. They don’t seem to get it.
Free Dentistry for All! There’s the ACC Account with $41b sloshing around doing nothing in it. Put trainee Dental Nurses/Tech’s back into schools. That’ll help drive the costs down in the ‘Market’.
Oh no! They’ll butcher that simple idea too!
“When you consider Māori have been paid less than a billion for the entire theft of NZ, having to pay out $3billion to Kim Dotcom because National were sucking up to America will be a bitter rat to swallow for National Party voters.”
If they do payout. You can bet Iwi will be coming back for another 180 years to re-negotiate their terms of reference for a claim on their Treaty Settlements. Paying the Crown a 99% Capital Gains Tax on the Quantum sucks.
The last 3 will kick the stuffing out of national but aren’t they hollow
Democracy for the RMA in action in NZ… want to stop social harm in the community – you will be the ones paying for it under our RMA rules.
Hawke’s Bay community leaders ‘won’t pay a cent’ of court-ordered costs for fighting liquor licence
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/118639203/hawkes-bay-community-leaders-wont-pay-a-cent-of-courtordered-costs-for-fighting-liquor-licence
“It’s not a level playing field. We see the damage alcohol does in our community on a daily basis but we and our community don’t have the sort of funds needed to fight this fight in a fair manner. It’s simply not right. I will fight it to the death,” he said.”
Surprise, surprise, more liquor outlets, more crime
“Off-licence density is significantly positively associated with violent offences, sexual offences, drug and alcohol offences, property abuses, antisocial behaviour, dishonesty offences, traffic offences and motor vehicle accidents, and significantly negatively associated with family violence.
“The density of clubs and bars is significantly positively associated with violent offences, family violence, drug and alcohol offences, property damage, property abuses and antisocial behaviour.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10853010
In addition Liquor stores across the country have emerged as significant offenders of migrant underpaying and/or visa fraud aka pretending to pay people more than they get, to ensure the applicant gets visa points when they actually don’t qualify.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/113567345/liquor-stores-across-new-zealand-running-on-the-labour-of-exploited-migrants
Just another example of NZ rules propping up socially harmful outcomes across the board around NZ, while anybody who questions anything is fined by the legal system that supports the offenders of crime and profiteering rather than protects the community from profiteering, socially harmful, business.
The relentless march of globalism and destruction of local community around the world, in particular poor and small countries are disadvantaged.
Uber will sue Colombia FTA international lawsuit: Uber will sue Colombia for violating the FTA with the United States
https://en24.news/2020/01/uber-will-sue-colombia-fta-international-lawsuit-uber-will-sue-colombia-for-violating-the-fta-with-the-united-states-present.html?fbclid=IwAR39_e57AuhUZ8BAe0cX3zpebSrPjvgdI-mGEVd9rX6KMzZNH0GdilV37xw
Bully boy tactics under the ‘free’ trade agreements…. business entitlement gone berserk, and governments apparently can’t even decide what goes on in their own countries anymore without some new law suit on their tail…
Uubeber is a great idea, but I also think that governments should NOT be intimidated into making their laws and operations to cater to other countries global (low wage, gig economy, tax advantages) businesses either!
“Uber’s main British business paid only £411,000 in tax last year while the commission fees from thousands of drivers in the UK disappeared into a controversial tax structure in the Netherlands.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/10/ubers-main-uk-business-paid-only-411000-in-tax-last-year
Uber booked $20 billion in rides in 2016, but it’s still losing billions
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/uber-2016-financial-numbers-revenue-losses-2017-4?r=US&IR=T
(So I guess Uber that relies on government paid roads to operate, low wage, ‘non employee’ workers and so forth is not contributing much of it’s 20 billion in turnover into taxes to pay for the infrastructure it operates on…)
So surely it should be ok to say, no thanks, uber into expanding into poor countries… but nope….
At least the Labour government seems to be trying to tax turnover rather than profits because there don’t seem to be profits or taxes with more and more multinational companies…
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/382800/national-worried-a-nz-tax-on-facebook-uber-google-could-lead-to-retaliation
Taxpayers and ratepayers are expected to put in billions for roading infrastructure…. while the companies benefiting like Uber/trucks/etc pay a tiny amount (especially with hybrid cars that don’t consume as much petrol which is good but obviously these companies should pay their share for the roads going forward and proper wages and conditions for their drivers not have them all on benefit top ups….) Meanwhile with the rise in Uber more cars on the roads…. less taxes for public transport and ACC…
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