The Impossible Rise of NZFirst and how the Feral Right will eat their own
National could be wiped out by nationalist right – who will be first to jump?
In Britain, Conservative MPs are fleeing to Reform UK. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation leads Australian polls. Trump’s MAGA has consumed America’s Republican Party. Nationalist populist movements don’t reward compromise, they exploit it. Give them airtime, validate their fabricated grievances, or flirt with their talking points, and they will abandon you the moment a more radical option presents itself. Parasites eventually consume the host.
NZ First are generating the momentum they have in the Polls because culture war revenge fantasies driven by social media hate algorithms are recruiting the lonely, angry and disconnected.
Winston has the capacity to tap into sub 5% threshold fringe voters with trigger words like ‘globalist’ and by attacking the WHO.
For the rest of us this is demented, to the feral conspiracy swamp so many have rabbit holed into, Winston’s words are manna from heaven.
It’s a trick Farage, Trump and Pauline Hanson have perfected.
So Winston scoops up voters no one else is targeting.
This generates a real problem for National who are being assaulted by ACT and Winston because not every National voter is a raving racist fanatic. Many are cosmopolitan urbanites who are as horrified by Luxon’s spinelessness on race relations as we are.
These National voters wanted their house price to go up 10%, they didn’t want a race war!
For them, MORE race baiting by Winston and Seymour (enabled by Luxon) is the kiss of death.
For these voters, they can’t vote Greens and won’t vote Labour, but they most certainly would vote TOP.
Winston and NZ First believe they can keep trading in toxic conspiracy theory memes without any penalty, but if the grandstanding reaches a threshold where Blue/Green voters leave National for TOP and TOP hit the 5% threshold, it’s all over for Winston.
TOP could finally be the antidote that renders Winston meaningless.
