Can the woke screw up Election 2026 for the Political Left (again?)

As someone who likes to credit myself with the wide spread use of the word ‘woke’ as a derisive term aimed at identity politics activists in NZ, I feel we need an urgent redefinition of the term as the Right keep using it as a weapon to provoke culture war responses the Left can’t win.

As a class lefty, I see identity as an important personal journey that leads you to politics but Identity Politics becomes terribly limited in gaining the democratic 51% as its most shrill advocates in the cancel culture landscape manage to make progress as alienating as drinking a cup of cold sick.

Class solidarity can gain 51%, Identity Politics risks pure temple over broad-church and you get endless schisms and little to show for it.

For most ultra woke activists, their starting point is all white people are racist, every man is a rapist and anyone supporting free speech is a uniform wearing Nazi who hates the Trans Community.

There’s not much intellectual wriggle room there.

That virtue-signalling-middle-class-micro-aggression-policing-identifiably-Green-Party-militant-bike-riding-vegan-condescending-supporting-pronoun-Spinoff-subscriber in your social media feed screaming endlessly at you in the ubiquitous world of social media certainly thinks they are shouting truth to power, unfortunately it all ends up as a cacophony of self righteous struggle sessions alienating the vast chunk of voters who just want to know how they are paying for the roof over their heads and the food on their tables.

So that’s ‘Woke’. Identity Politics activists suffering the narcism of petty difference and subjective triggering who put their identity above all else.

They engage in outrage olympics and cancel culture because it’s easier to shut down an idea because you have feelings than actually put together a cohesive intellectual argument.

It’s middle class and it’s very virtue signalling.

We get it wokies, your self created identity is more important than our shared humanity.

The problem is the Right keep using woke to provoke culture war over reaction that the Right points to and says, ‘I told you so’.

Now that feelings are the dominant currency over thinking and rational objectivity (because rational thinking and objectivity is a heteronormative white cis male privilege), peoples feels get hurt and they vote against their economic interests.

Wokeness wouldn’t be so toxic if the Woke hadn’t launched online cancel culture pogroms.

The Left needs to focus on the material well being rather than empty hashtag virtue signals.

The Ipsos survey highlighting the deepening cynicism of the NZ electorate should be seen for what it is.

Truth.

The study, conducted in February 2024, also shows a significant consensus among New Zealanders that the system is rigged in favour of the rich and powerful, with 65% agreeing to this statement.

That’s because it’s the fucking truth!

In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth

By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals

In 2018, it was 42

In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.

And in 2021, 20 people owned more than 50% of the entire planet.

And now in 2025, 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity

This isn’t democracy, this is a feudal Tech plutocracy on a burning Earth

We need a new taxation and regulation model to stop the neoliberal rot. We need to remove the yoke of taxation from the 90% and reset it to the 10% richest.

The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.

Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.

This isn’t progress.

Unfortunately the Left are culturally too busy micro aggression policing everyone under the rules of the new woke dogma while the Right are silently harvesting that alienation for more neoliberal exploitation.

The Political Left responds to rising populism in NZ by leaning into that  populism with Broadchurch Politics rather than alienating pure temple middle class Identity Politics woke dogma!

We need more Zamdani and less Keir Starmer.

Woke middle class activism has made our movement an alienating unfunny joke that the Right have weaponised.

The woke’s pronouns are “I” and “Me”.

The Left’s pronouns are “Us” and “We”.

Activism this year must be Economic Justice, not Social Justice.

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