I like Verity Johnson, her columns are always worth reading, as is her latest…
Woke-bashing might be fun, but it won’t win elections
Sure, that’s a popular gripe and always will be. But it isn’t the Molotov cocktail that sets elections alight. It may be fun, but they need more than woke-bashing to stop the Jacinda juggernaut.
…until this weeks disastrous Hate Speech fiasco, I would have agreed with Verity. Woke bashing will excite the Right but not really do enough to move the middle.
The Hate Speech proposed law changed that.
I think one of the darker cultural values that we have as a people is negative egalitarianism, the ‘so you think you are smarter than me’ mentality that is deeply rooted in our collective psyche.
New Zealanders despise being told how to live their lives by people who think they are smarter than them.
It was this loathing of social engineering that saw the anti-smacking legislation ignite for the right in 2007 and saw Key elected in 2008.
The idea that Aunty Helen was invading the sacred space between parent and child felt like an enormous over reach and was manipulated by the Right into being Nanny State gone mad.
Now let’s be clear, I supported the repeal of section 59, it was insane that parents who had beaten the bejesus out of their own kids could use this loophole discipline defense and get off assault charges.
The Court is there to protect the kid who has been assaulted, not the parents who are doing the assaulting.
Sadly Helen couldn’t articulate this response and poor Sue Bradford was dumped to the wolves so the Left got outplayed and the triggered negative egalitarianism saw a change of Government.
I think this Hate Speech legislation will trigger the exact same cultural knee jerk.
The idea that the State will judge your words in a cultural landscape dominated by easily triggered millennial micro aggressions is as socially anxious as Jacinda personally breaking into your kitchen to police healthy lunch boxes live on TV with an outraged John Campbell calling for your immediate arrest for the inclusion of gluten.
Because social media is ubiquitous, people are watching the woke lynch mobs gleefully cancel movies they haven’t even seen with pre-censorship, they are watching the inconsistency of woke culture by banning the Charlie Chaplin musical but then putting on one produced by Harvey Weinstein, they are watching unleashed woke desire to punish all those who disagree with them.
They are seeing utes taxed, transgender weight lifters and $800 million bike bridges while they are stuck in traffic.
And now they see the Police handed the power to arrest you for words construed as racist, sexist or transphobic by woke activists whose starting point is all white peoples are racist, all men rapists and anyone defending free speech is a Nazi.
Watching the Prime Minister and Justice Minister struggle to explain their own law didn’t help.
I think the solidarity created by the universal experience of Covid and Jacinda’s remarkable leadership is fading because of the lack of delivery on crucial issues like housing, infrastructure, poverty and mental health, add the criminalizing of free speech and you have an enormous backlash building.
The woke of course are not helping and watching the bullshit feral defenses of this madness is only giving the right more ammunition.
Jacinda was deeply hurt by the Christchurch atrocity, wading through all that pain and grief touched her and she doesn’t care what political capital she burns ramming this hate speech law through.
That’s why this is all so politically dangerous, it’s not like banning guns! That only impacted a couple of hundred thousand, banning speech however impacts EVERYONE!
Golriz described the Producer of They Are Us as a white supremacist for wanting to make a film that focused on Jacinda. The Woke’s threshold for white supremacy is so low they would consider milk a hate crime!
The wokes growing fanaticism will only serve to convince the middle that the woke will come after them once they have the power to call the Police.
There is a smarter way for Labour to play this entire fiasco which is why watching them hand ACT, National and NZ First so much ammunition is heart breaking.
I hope Verity is right and that woke bashing won’t trigger negative egalitarianism, but I fear that this Hate Speech becomes Jacinda’s anti-smacking curse.
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Martyn, you’re sounding more like Tova every day.
I agree with Verity , Jacinda is very popular.
if you go with her around the country you’d see this.
Mystery Creek was a good example of this.( & amongst the right wing farmers.)
you need to get out more.
don’t be like the MSM who spend their time interviewing their keyboards.
john.
Plus 100 John the new free speech legislation seems to have upset Martyn and brought out all nasties of which there are many.
Agree, libertarian bullshit
This is terrible woke legalisation that is the opposite of what the left should stand for which is freedom of speech.
NZ is fast turning into a hybrid of state controlled terror China and Peter Thiels wet dream of removing democracy and having the business elite control the politicians every decision (because clearly in the future, the police will be under contract, like the US military paying private practise to fight their wars while being protected by the state who gave them the contract).
It starts with making what someone says, as being a crime.
Labour and Greens cultural Revolution in 2021 NZ. We already have the kids denouncing their boomer parents. Won’t be long before the woke with a bit of help from the state have the boomer public humiliations and send their parents off to the gulags like China did!
Save NZ sorry you missed the bus mate: Socialism is responsible for the death of an estimated 100 million people in the 20th century. Confiscating firearms, censoring free speech, political prisoners, and mass graves are what Socialism stands for.
It always starts with the good intentions of creating a brave fresh new world; if only we can get rid of those pesky landlords, farmers and capitalists.
I find many of your comment to be highly exaggerated you seem to be feeding into a culture of c..tism and unnecessary fear and its far worse than wokeism what ever that is suppose to be.
Agree with you CIP. Got greatest respect for Bomber but don’t see this in the world I live in. Maybe it’s because I don’t use social media?
Cip and GP I agree. Its just grandstanding.
e.g.”The Woke’s threshold for white supremacy is so low they would consider milk a hate crime!” That’s just carrying the typical mediajocks ‘narrative of conflict and drama to silliness. But I guess it sells newspapers and keeps the ratings up.
Shit even Oravida Collins is using the word “woke” in her speeches, such is her desperation. Tony Ryall is right, National and it’s leadership deserve everything they are getting.
Bert: “Tony Ryall is right, National and it’s leadership deserve everything they are getting.”
Chris Finlayson, I believe. At least, that’s what Stuff asserts today.
Yes correct D Esterre, apologies.
I find many of your comments Martyn to be highly exaggerated you seem to be feeding into a culture of c..tism and unnecessary fear and its far worse than wokeism what ever that is suppose to be.
That would your pleas to Martyn would only make sense if Martyns fears was to be consistently unfounded and wrong.
Unfortunately many of Maryn’s fears come to reality with poor consequences for everyone! While I don’t agree with everything that Martyn writes, the hate speech laws are crazy and could be the “Tony Blair moment” when Jacinda falls from grace.
How are the proposed hate speech laws crazy? Have you actually seen what they are designed to replace? They are not lowering the bar, as the media is trting to make out. The language currently in the BIll of Rights is effectively the same. ‘Insult’ is illegal in both cases.
Free speech means freedom to offend.
“I like Verity Johnson”
pffft! So do I. Ali Pally Mau ain’t such a bad broad either. Even Chippie and Little and Faa aaa a a f fff foi are likeable chaps and regular blokes. Entreprenoooers! Influenceers! even though the dog seems to keep eating the homework of the latter.
They’ve achieved so much so we should expect they’ve far better minds and opinions than the rest of the plebians, and they really do know best.
I’m even taking a shine to Polly Gillespie. I had no idea her left leg was slightly shorter than the right.
And that old campaigner Rosemary McCleod. She seems to be coming back to the fold as well.
And there’s the thing of this. These laws won’t stop another hate based killer like in Christchurch. Not even close.
But Labour are on borrowed time as you say because of their continuing failure to deliver.
Housing is a mega failing of Labour and it is getting worse and worse, quite quickly. And what government sits idly by to allow it’s citizens to be locked out of housing with all the negative consequences that accompanies that?
Answer, Jacinda Arden’s Labour government.
That’s what has been implied, but would be interesting to see Ardern, Faafoi et al discuss it on camera: would their proposals have stopped or reduced the likelihood of Chch?
Is the Chch attack the reason or the excuse?
The anti-smacking law may have helped finish the Clark government, but it was still passed into law after an agreement was made with Key to add an additional clause. When Key became PM and never repealed the act during his tenure, some of the commenters who raged against Clark now praised Key for his pragmatism. Winston Peters raised the promise of repealing it again while campaigning in 2017, but never achieved any change while in coalition.
Sounds like the rage can be mined for votes, but when in power just ignore it. The good parents getting rounded up and sent to jail? Not sure that really happened, but that’s what people bought into.
Likewise with prostitution law reform. Scary scenarios of high school children being given career advice on how to work in the sex industry, or people on a benefit being pushed into sex work by WINZ. That could be your child, your daughter!
Here we are again with hate speech. Worst case scenarios brought to the fore before the law has been written, with opposition parties as the only hope to prevent it all happening.
There was a multitude of thinks that Helen’s government started to get wrong . Interfering in things like shower heads light bulbs and a host of other small moves that perhaps on there own would not have gained tracsion but the total picture of the interfering state was one that could be promoted by National. I can certainly see similarities with the present government but I am not sure National are strong enough to play this card and the memory of the missteps they made in the last year of power are still fresh .
This government gained their overwhelming power due mainly to the fear around covid and a misstep in it ongoing control is the main risk they face .
Is opposition to this proposal ‘woke bashing’? It wasn’t in some of the challenges Clark faced – smacking, shower heads/light bulbs. The Woke are allies of this cause but it’s the proposed law changes that are really likely to irritate people and cause the ‘battle’, the Woke are just going to be willing enemies.
Collins and Bridges gave Question Time their best (?) shot today and neither Adern nor Faafoi were flummoxed. Both were much better prepared than during their weekend TV interviews and put the LOTO and would-be LOTO slumped back in their sets, losers that they are.
And why perpetuate the lie by insisting on calling this proposal “hate speech”? Journo’s short-hand, perhaps? It’s all about “incitement”, or is that too non-emotive a word for a journo to use?
One minute you want Labour to use their majority to push through legislation that may be less than popular but still good for the country, next minute they do so and you bawl them out for it.
What do you really want?
A Nat/ACT government?
It’s is no lie that during the Key years the suffering they inflicted on the less-moneyed in NZ was appalling and it will take at least 10 years of this government to dig us out of the cesspit Key et al threw many into.
Give them a break! ‘Coz TINA!!!!
For some, insight and balance come early in life.
For others it clearly doesn’t.
Well said Verity, it’s like I wrote that comment myself.
Instead of a point by point rebuttal on why you think Martyn or the opposition are wrong, we get a diatribe on how everyone disagreeing should shut up and the opposition are “losers”.
This does not indicate the “pro” hate speech crowd are arguing from a position of strength.
You just want to silence people who don’t agree with you.
You mean how Judith shut Todd Muller and Nick Smith up. Rather hypocritical don’t you think?
I’m not a Nat supporter but I see a large difference between a leader ruthlessly culling within the party to maintain power (see also Helen Clark) and attempts to shut down debate in the citizenry which is supposedly what our democracy springs from.
*It’s not necessary to be partisan about literally everything bert.
This whole argument is illogical. The majority of boomer and older folk have very little use for social media and like me don’t understand WTF wokeism and cancel culture are. Never see it, not effected by it and have no skin in the game. Unless your a right wing troll desperately stirring up any and all possible trouble to discredit the PM. Irrelevant to boomers and oldies.
Millennials and younger just don’t give a shit about this political grandstanding. Yawn. They are not racist and haven’t stamped their colors to the mast like old redneck boomer Nats. In fact a lot would agree with laws to reduce hate speech so they can carry on their social media use with less hate messages effecting them.
I don’t see this being a major issue for the Labour/Greens/Maori majority and is only an issue for the Nat voters to rage and spew up their hate for this Govt. Storm in a tea cup. Labour/Greens and Maori will romp in next election. Just look at the opposition, what a shambles, a desperate bunch of irrelevant idiots.
Plus 100 John the new free speech legislation seems to have upset Martyn and brought out all nasties of which there are many.
Serves Labour right and in my opinion anyone who voted for them. Free speech is a fundamental in any democracy. People knew where they stood on this since the last election so why so surprised when they act on it?
If I recall, it was Aunty Helen’s attempt to rig the election laws in her favour that gained her the ire of the general public.
If I recall it was Key who changed the boundaries around election time amalgamating constituencies to get him over the line for 9 years.
You don’t understand how boundary changes take place. Read the Electoral Act 1993 and get back to me.
I think why so many are scared/worried about Labour this term is their absolute majority, they can pass what they like, they are the MMP version of FPP, they dont need the Greens or any other party, I ghink this is very evident by the crazy sfuff they working thru parliament, EV,s, taking over the water, dual sovereignty, hate speech ….. God only knows that elese is in the line yet to be released. All of this requires basically no discussion because of their position of Absolute Power. To me that is scary
Actually milk is a hate crime. Bobby calves are thrown into pits, sometimes buried alive. The female calves are torn from their mother at an early age, then are fed milk powder by machines.
It wasn’t Clarke or Key that won the Natz the election. It was Brash and his anti-Maori stance and Maori bashing that did it. He lost the election by a whisker. The Natz went from 21% to 47 % which they maintained up to 2020.
“The Woke’s threshold for white supremacy is so low they would consider milk a hate crime!” Martyn, have you not heard the cows bellowing for days on end when their calves are taken from them, just so that you can drink your evil glass of milk? Of course it is a hate crime!
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