One of the weirdest manifestations of political polarisation has been the attempted cancellation of Dr Bryce Edwards for having the temerity to disagree with Morgan Godfrey over the class nature of the Parliamentary protests.
I’m surprised his latest examination of woke identity politics hasn’t had him cancelled and branded an enemy of the Left.
The Professional Managerial Class is an issue TDB has focused on. We’ve argued that middle class virtue signalling dogma has over run the activist base of the Left and while the Woke fight over pronouns and the militant pronunciation of Te Reo, the voters trying to pay their bills weekly are disillusioned and alienated from our cause!
This same Professional Managerial Class are over represented in the Wellington Twitteratti and the nexus of hashtag activism and Elite Radio NZ smugness that allows for Neale Jones to exist.
We’ve seen how the Wellington Middle Class Marxists panicked and wanted an immediate Police State to deal with the protestors…
…middle class fear has always driven social policy so it’s no surprise the vast amounts of money now being sunk into the domestic intelligence apparatus.
If a middle class person is threatened on social media, Western Civilisation has ended.
The low hanging fruit of identity politics doesn’t just alienate voters from focusing on social policy that materially benefits their lives, it also fuels extremism.
The most dangerous part of Identity Politics is when white men start seeing themselves as a seperate identity and start seeing themselves as the victims…
Misogynistic influencers are trending right now. Defusing their message is a complex task
Andrew Tate, the professional fighter-turned media personality who earned the ire and admiration of millions with his viral rants about male dominance, female submission and wealth, is everywhere these days.
…this hyper toxic masculinity is erupting as a push back to the extremes of the post me too movement and the B-E-L-I-E-V-E all women argument, that’s why the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp Court case was so caustic, it was more than a celebrity divorce, it was an attack on the pillars of logic hastily arranged in real time social media intellectual creation.
Identity Politics is an important journey on understanding your relationship with power, but if all you come to the table with is an all consuming connection to your skin colour, gender or sexual orientation then there is no shared values or common ground on which to build.
The Professional Managerial Class are selling elite middle class virtue signals as social policy which alienates voters whose concerns are on how to pay the bills, not what pronouns you use.
We need more solutions to housing, poverty and the climate crisis, we don’t need more social media cancellations for crimes against middle class dogma.
The Left look for traitors and the Right look for recruits. That’s why ACT is on 10+%
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I insist that video evidence of Andrew Tate openly advocating violence against women be produced.
In the few hours that I’ve watched of him the opposite is true.
Andrew Tate: “men protect and provide.”
Woke: “that’s violence against women.”
Both statements have been quoted.”
Only one jumped the grand canyon of conclusions.
First of all.
Woman make 80% of consumer decisions
Men hold 80% of consumer debt.
It’s in silicon valley’s best interest to cancel masculine males so that woman spend more. That’s all cancel culture is. Dumb asses.
Then both females and males are being manipulated Sam. Women are often buying food, necessities, and being sold fancy clothes as a way of establishing themselves as worthy. Men push their women out to work as well as them being mothers, so they can have some money to buy beer for themselves etc. You are too simplistic Sam and you write a lot, if you also read what is on the posts they offer insights.
the twatterati only matter because the media quotes them…they’re an easy version of the ‘rent a quote’ mp plus you don’t have to leave the office to knock up a piece…uninformed ‘opinion’ is not difficult to monetise
brass eye- sums it up
Great article MB.
Thankyou.
I have a Twitter account just in case, but actually rarely use it, so not too concerned with today’s equivalent perhaps of the old “literary spat” which other media outlets then regularly report to other media outlets…
I have no problem though calling Bryce Edwards a prize wanker and a re-cycler of others writing and graphic work. Rare is the day he writes something original of his own creation. His attitude is contrarian and shape shifting, like so many pundits these days.
TM have you not figured out that’s what he is trying to do- summarise the current writings of multiple political commentators to present a “current state of current political thought” on a given topic.
Or sometimes a particular angle.
Good god he’s not pretending it’s his work. He even tells you who said what.
I get that – as Martyn suggests-he is loathed by you and all of the blinkered left as represented by The Standard because he summarizes thought outside what you drones are allowed to regurgitate.
I admire his courage in remaining fairly objective with the amount of cowardly online woke warriors taking potshots.
Eh.
Well aware of his precis method (copy and paste), and it is a cop out in my view.
At least with Hosking and Soper there is little doubt what they really think about an issue or what their world view is.
He’s an ‘aggregator’ @ TG – always has been. In the era of convergence and divergence where everyone has become an expert media whore in pursuit of stardom, to my mind he’s become quite useful – a time saver even. A portal (in the nicest possible way). A lazy man’s guide
Apparently just like many in the PMC, he’s not a bad bloke either even though I do see the PMC as just another load of grifters dressed in designer clothing, and all with comfy little abodes and popular playlists
Oops. *@Tigger Mountain
Well put KC.
“His attitude is contrarian and shape shifting”
Is it really? I haven’t followed Bryce Edwards, but another possibility is that he changes his mind when the evidence changes. Of course ideologues (of all persuasions) don’t do that – they keep trotting the same old story, never mind what the evidence shows.
Yes there is a saying “Show me a person who has never changed their mind and I’ll show you a failure.”
Male is an identity. There is no way of talking or thinking your way out of it. It is not a default – it’s not even a majority.
Much of the uprising of other identities has been a reaction to this mental trick.
The ‘victim’ comes in because not being an unexamined centre means that like everyone else, questions are asked and positions must be defended.
That’s not an injustice, it’s just reality. There is no central arbiter to which everyone else is answerable. It is ridiculous to ”believe all women” and it is equally ridiculous to imagine there is any varierty of human that is not a variety but a central authority that is therefore beyond question.
It’s okay for a female to think that she’s a male but woman still need a breast exam at age 20.
Women? I’m afraid you’re using an outdated term to refer to breast-owners.
Gosh that’s dreadful MK.
Huh? Compulsory breast exams for women age 20? Wtf?
and the dangly bits signify what? now exactly where you want to stick the dangly bits is up to you…as is whether you want to remove them but the dangly bits exist….sorry if reality is inconvenient and yes we do have ‘fixes’ but they are ‘fixes’
The display of the Pride Flag is now a social signal that the person displaying it is good and proper, like Little Ms Marple’s ostentatious Sunday church attendance, followed by her affirmations of social virtue over tea and Lamingtons in the vicar’s office afterwards, where she might discuss which missives are to be included in the up-and-coming community news letter.
Just as in her day you would never find a moral force of Dostoevsky’s magnitude among Ms Marple and her cohort, you will not find one among the ostentatious pro-government contingent of flag wavers we see today, who retreat to their “safe spaces” to discuss which missives are to be included in the up-and-coming Herald column of one of their number that week.
FGS : how silly. Bryce Edwards is an academic. His job is working as such. Sometimes, just some days I wish we could hear from others who don’t even see, let alone consider his writings. I get really sick of the pontificating. And I include you in this Martyn.
There is a complex replay of the decline and fall of the Weimar Republic era, again a combination of economic difficulty (this time a global supply chain disruption and nations indebted because of the GFC and pandemic), a struggle between necessary evolution to social democracy (financial and tax reform) and the neo liberal and fascist alternatives, an imperial ambition impasse (risk of war) and of course the global warming problem.
Of course governments with pretensions of being left of centre and which might take opportunity to openly declare a social democratic platform will face considerable opposition – from the establishment neo liberal public service and the middle class media estate. They will however partner up on the progressive social reform and increase in government power over the people (either to manage the public narrative or to enforce an order). Of course the government plan to bring in “hate speech” law has already met a response – most obviously the free speech coalition and NACT opposition but also a number of conspiracy theory groups (such as control of the public space via government funding of media media and censorship because they are part of some global plan to do x and y to democracy etc).
In that matter, restraint by government is the grown up example. For example online anonymity protects people from (real life) persecution for the exercise of their free speech. All the current system needs is the ability to identify those making threats to others (which are a matter of existing law) and removing some of them from the right to legally possess weapons.
“Of course governments with pretensions of being left of centre and which might take opportunity to openly declare a social democratic platform will face considerable opposition – from the establishment neo liberal public service and the middle class media estate. ”
Yeah right, it’s not Jacinda’s fault, the wicked public service won’t let her have her way. LINO has a thoroughly symbiotic relationship with the public service – bureaucrats are one of their most reliable constituencies, so it’s no surprise this government has created thousands more of them in Wellington.
What we’re seeing from this government is simply the expression of their political DNA. They’re progressive neoliberals, not social democrats.
As for blaming the “middle class media estate” – what is this government, if not middle-class? It’s been along time since LINO represented the working class. They’re now the party of the WOKING class.
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