Can the NZ Left win back male voters?
Diving into the recent Roy Morgan polling numbers the issues are stark for the Left, the simple truth is that Identity Politics has driven men away from us as a movement…
On an overall basis, men heavily favour the National/ ACT/ NZ First coalition government on 56%, well ahead of the opposition Labour/ Greens/ Maori Party on only 38% – a gap of 18% points.
In contrast, a high plurality of women are behind the opposition Labour/ Greens/ Maori on 49.5% – ahead of the governing National/ ACT/ NZ First on 44.5% – a gap of 5% points.
Support for the governing coalition is strongest for older men. For men aged 50+ there are a massive 63.5% supporting National/ ACT/ NZ First almost double the 34.5% supporting the Labour/ Greens/ Maori Party. Support for the governing parties; National (38.5%) and ACT (17%) is stronger amongst this demographic than any other age or gender group analysed.
For younger men aged 18-49 there is an edge for the governing coalition with 47.5% supporting National/ ACT/ NZ First compared to 42% that support the Opposition Labour/ Greens/ Maori – a gap of 5.5% points.
The Holy Trinity of Woke Dogma are:
- ALL White people are irredeemable racists.
- B-E-L-I-E-V-E ALL Women that ALL Men are rapists
- Anyone supporting Free Speech is a uniform wearing Nazi who hates the Trans Community.
Pure Temple Politics demands you accept that Woke Dogma before you can join, using that Identity Filter drives male voters away from the movement.
This is a point I’ve been making for what, 5 years now?
Identity Politics is most dangerous when poor white people start seeing themselves as an identity.
Tell men they are the problem long enough and they become the problem.
Class binds us in solidarity, its pronouns are Us/We.
Middle Class activists posing for the ‘gram using hashtag politics, their pronouns are I/Me.
Alienating male voters is now accepted by actual students of politics and culture as a main problem for the Left.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s some of that evil Patriarchal Right Wing Rag, The Guardian for you..
The ex-president is courting a demographic drifting away from the Democrats. What’s driving the widening gender gap among young people?
…young Men are suffering more mental health issues, education problems and self harm driven by a system that alienates them and then lectures them on privilege creating a deep resentment because identity is the only thing that matters now..
Richard Reeves – whose 2022 book, Of Boys and Men, has become a foundational text on what has gone wrong for young men in the country – is damning of framing that puts young men’s rightward turn in terms of UFC fights and incels, when he believes it’s about deep-seated inequalities of outcome in education, mental health and employment.
“I want to talk about why only 60% of Black boys graduate high school on time in Michigan, or the fact that the share of male teachers has gone from 33% to 23%. Or that we’ve lost more than half the men who work in social work and psychology,” he says. “I’d want to talk about that rather than, for example, whether the Barbie movie was unfair on Ken.”
He says people are misinterpreting the polling. “It’s not enthusiasm for the reactionary right, it’s a sense of being taken for granted by the left. There are more young men shrugging their shoulders than raising their fists.”
It’s true that there is now a growing gender gap in education; for every 100 bachelor’s degrees awarded to women, 74 are awarded to men. In many US cities, young women are earning more than young men and moving out of parents’ homes earlier than them.
Reeves is careful to say that improving conditions for men and boys should not mean slowing down similar efforts for women and girls. But he says that government institutions do have a tendency to purposefully avoid naming the problems young men face. Suicide is one of the clearest areas in which there is a huge gender divide – there’s a fourfold gender gap in rates for young people – and yet, says Reeves, “the CDC website breaks down suicide rates by every demographic except gender. Why? Why don’t the Democrats have a taskforce on male suicide when there are 40,000 deaths a year?”
He gives other compelling examples of how Democrats have failed to signpost their achievements to young men. Biden’s infrastructure bill – his key piece of legislative success – was a huge jobs creator for working-class men, “but the administration tied itself in knots not to say so”. Instead, it focused on the million women in construction initiative to ensure women got some of the funding. “That’s amazing. Now, er, where’s the million men into teaching initiative? … There are so many initiatives for women in Stem; why not one for men in teaching? Who is going to attack that?”
On the Democrats’ own website is a page titled “who we serve” that lists 14 different groups. Men are not among them.
…the article points out that young men are turning Right because they’ve been pushed out of the Left because Identity Politics states the worst human being in the world is a white male who must apologise every 90 minutes for having a Penis, and I’m talking the awful heteronormative penis, not the beautiful amazing non-binary penis so popular in Wellington these days.
The Middle Class Woke Activism may have not been the great tactic so many on the NZ Left thought it was.
The modern Woke Left are great at organising ‘Free-The-Nipple’ protests for vegan cycling mommy bloggers, not so good at deconstructing the Neoliberal Economic Hegemonic structure.
No poor family is sitting around the kitchen table cancelling one another for mis-using pronouns.
If the Left wants to win, it needs to win back male voters.
The true demarcation of power in a Capitalist Democracy is the 1% richest plus their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us.
Once you understand power in that framework, we can never lose an election!
Too true Martyn!
I’ll go one further: If the left is attacking working class men, is it even really left anymore?
Today’s left in the USA is funded by billionaires and lead by elitist radical academics. Is that a working class movement? Its obsession over race makes it look rather, well, hmmm, fascist to me.
‘Tell men they are the problem long enough and they become the problem.’ – Too late.
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
So true James. There needs to be a grass roots movement to bring the men back maybe 40 years ago more men were left but became alienated. I think Alienation is the key there. It needs some change in direction to get the male working class voter back. How I don’t know. But greater minds than me can figure that one out. It’s been done before and I am sure it will.happen again.
Our men are weak, and some are just plain stupid and easily influenced we only have to look at our Olympic success it’s our women who rose the bar.
So in 2014 is the definition of what a male actually is anyless problematic than that of a woman?
Being kind, being humble about who you are, having un-conditional empathy and using your strengths and insights to be protective of and care for others (without having a judgement or voicing an opinion) are the ultimate masculine qualities you can aspire to. They are also very rare amongst the sort of male role models who achieve large and lucrative followings amongst the younger male demographic.
Someone who did epitomize these qualities was former UK Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn who was the first politician I ever heard use the word “kindness”. (Not the last). Closer to home I look at people like Raf Manji (TOP)- the first politician I ever heard articulate an empathetic defense of beneficiaries.
Men who are humble don’t feel the need to join the unnecessary, whining, butt-hurt masculine grievances stirred up by the right to mask a brutal economic agenda that many young men will be tricked into voting for.
This economic agenda will destroy employment opportunities and education for these same young men and stifle small businesses and innovation – exactly as we are seeing play out now in NZ.
The left must keep a razor sharp focus on the economics and the effect on the lives of the people who are getting made poorer generation by generation. An economics focused left will be capable of winning elections.
Sounds broadly sensible and on track. Hopefully some males and females in places where they can exert some power will take note and act and be gay about it. (Two words with double meanings these days. Let’s go back to the old ones.)
So it’s a race war if this government remove the redress of the privileges imbalance imposed on Maoridom since colonization, a pretty heavy theory given the absolute lack chest beating that’s been displayed by Maoridom since the privileges imbalance was rightly redressed.
Whereas the non-binary, pro-pronoun with cosmetic phallic attachment since birth lot, who’ve finally found a pole to be at the top of and gladly challenged everyone to fuck around and find out like Posie Parker did, will gladly share that same pole with the patriachy now they’ve got them under the heel of their ugly shoes and weighed down by backpacks? The extreme level of toxicness and propensity to violence in all forms shows otherwise. So the “Left” is fucked Martyn if that’s the hope for success.
Start a new taxonomical term, one that isn’t “of the left”. one whose opponent isn’t the “right”, but the elite. Anyone who actually identifies as left or right, groups whose only differentiation is wealth, given they’re all mouth breathers who can only curse the other lot as being on the other side and not agreeing with the views they carry , “how dare those _____ _____ _____ “(insert any 3 of rich, landlord, poor, beneficiary, brown, white, cycling, suv driving, tax cheats, sports mad, luvvy, clipboards, wankers, dropkicks, arseholses, crims, addicts) needs to stop texting with one finger and move on.
but given the lack of Innovation and Intellectualism displayed in New Zealand by anyone who represents, identifies as or actively writes about using the terms ‘left’ or ‘right’, it won’t happen.
NonBinary vs Binary wars it is. I Wonder which side maoridom is on?
There is no Left or Right, only masters & slaves, and many don’t realize into which category they fall.
Traditionally the standard working class male worked forty hours and brought home enough to house feed and clothe the family. He was in the union and the left wing party was Labour. That all ended in 1984 on every count.
We are told that we can’t turn back the clock. Who is telling us that nonsense?
Wokeism is fascism, allowed to thrive so as to destroy any real threat from the left at the neoliberal elite fascists in control of the world.
It’s the oldest trick in the book divide and rule,
The same could be said for the decolonisation mob of so called elites at Nz universities re-writing our history and reframing Māori as some Gandhi Esk Mother Nature Gatekeepers when really and truely they were the most destructive people to walk into Aotearoa
Wokeism is fascism, allowed to thrive so as to destroy any real threat from the left at the neoliberal elite fascists in control of the world.
It’s the oldest trick in the book divide and rule,
The same could be said for the decolonisation mob of so called elites at Nz universities re-writing our history and reframing Māori as some Gandhi Esk Mother Nature Gatekeepers when really and truely they were the most destructive people to walk into Aotearoa in regards to the native species they ate and made extinct
No.
The Left are too ingrained in ideology & hate.
Bullshit Eric the current lot have a bad track record for pay increases and employment rights.
But do they want my vote?