How National wins the 2020 election using Identity Politics and Facebook
There are lots of insights into National’s election tactics for 2020. There is the focus on how National are denigrating the whole political system as corrupt to be more ‘populist’, their use of social media…
Facebook ads will dominate the next election – but our politicians don’t have to tell us about them
Facebook has not made a new transparency tool for political ads mandatory for New Zealand and none of our parties have signed up to it.
The “Ad Library Report” is mandatory in several countries and allows the public to track every ad a political party or issue group puts out on the platform, and see how much money is being spent and who the ad is targeted at.
…and Simon Bridges own contact with the NZ based Australian right and their ability to pull out a surprise win for Scott Morrison.
No one has yet tied these threads together however to make sense of what is happening, so here is what is happening and here is how National win the 2020 election.
Cambridge Analytica changed the game. Electioneering previous to them amounted to identifying voters from a known voting pool and serving that voting pool up messages that made them vote. This was crude targeting, but if you lived in a wealthy neighbourhood, you would hear messages attuned to you, if you lived in a poorer neighbourhood, you would hear messages tailored for that environment.
Facebook suddenly allowed you to hunt not just for known voters, but that vast swathe of people who also don’t bother voting.
On the Left we have told ourselves that vast swathe of people who don’t vote are poor and brown and disenfranchised, and while that is certainly true, it also includes a large number of angry white men who don’t bother voting because they feel culturally alienated by the current paradigms of micro-aggression policing and Millennial sensibilities in an age of subjective fourth wave feminist rage. This group of males are economically paranoid by their perceived lack of cultural power and whose economic anxiety clashes with being told they are the ones with the privilege.
Rather than engaging, these male white voters simply shield themselves in apathy and cynicism.
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica changed that. Suddenly they had hundreds of data points to know how to precisely push those angry white non voters into rage fuelled voting machines. This manipulation of white male anger become the driving force that saw Trump win, Brexit win and Scott Morrison win.
National will adopt the exact same tactics. Their social media campaign will target white male nonvoters with cleverly coded sexist memes like #PartTimePM and the sense that the last election was stolen somehow.
The problem for the Left is that to gain a similar response from the brown, poor, young and disenfranchised nonvoter they have to actually promise real policy that will make their lived day to day experience better and seeing as beneficiaries are still queuing outside WINZ at 2am in the morning, this Government have dumped the aspirations of the poor as quietly as they dumped affordable housing. Labour fears spooking the middle in a way National never do.
The Right can gain from the white nonvoter in a way the Left are too frightened to promise to the brown nonvoter.
Identity Politics is an important personal journey of how the individual becomes politically conscious, but as a means to win the 51% democratic majority it is terribly flawed. Class focus helps that electoral math, Identity Politics can’t and in a political landscape shaped by Identity Politics the greatest danger is that white men start seeing themselves as an identity that is victimised because once that happens, dark outcomes become the result.
Scream at white men that they are the problem long enough, and they’ll become the problem.
The NZ Left have allowed Identity Politics to become the dominant theory without appreciating the danger that creates. National intend to exploit that danger no matter the consequences.
We need bonded values that go beyond our skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, religion and creed. Class has the beauty of that wide ranging solidarity, and when it is the 1% and their 9% enablers who are the true demarcation line of power, we as the 90% should be winning all the time.
Unfortunately, the inclusion through exclusion woke mindset currently championed by the deplatforming cancellation culture Left is as alienating as it is exhausting.
The Left are too busy finding traitors while the Right are busy recruiting.
2020 is going to get vicious.
“The Left are too busy finding traitors while the Right are busy recruiting.
2020 is going to get vicious.”
Yes and where Labour will loose is because they hae no media platform as National has all the media backing everything they say.
Labour failed because they never begun the plan to build a “public free to air TV media channel that would have a focus on “public affairs investigative journalism” where they could havve bought out the “other side of every story so we could see the real truth”
The blame lies at the door of the ex Minister of Broadcasting Clare Curran, as she will be totally responsible for labour’s immminent demise sadly.
Their last chance is to rush through a plan to start a public media which gives every voter a voice to be heard as Jacinda promised we all would have but we elderly and disadvantaged have no voice at all as the current RNZ/TV One/TV3 newhub, lot are not interested in covering our issues after we email our issues they never respond to them.
Last call now is for a ‘public affairs TV free to air channel ‘ to recieve our emails and cover our own community issues is badly needed.
“The Left are too busy finding traitors while the Right are busy recruiting.
2020 is going to get vicious.”
Yes and where Labour will lose is because they have no media platform as National has all the media backing everything they say.
Labour failed because they never begun the plan to build a “public free to air TV media channel that would have a focus on “public affairs investigative journalism” where they could have bought out the “other side of every story so we could see the real truth”
The blame lies at the door of the ex-Minister of Broadcasting Clare Curran, as she will be totally responsible for labour’s imminent demise sadly.
Their last chance is to rush through a plan to start a public media which gives every voter a voice to be heard as Jacinda promised we all would have but we elderly and disadvantaged have no voice at all as the current RNZ/TV One/TV3 news hub, lot are not interested in covering our issues after we email our issues they never respond to them.
Last call now is for a ‘public affairs TV free to air channel ‘ to receive our emails and cover our own community issues is badly needed.
Are you aware that Monarchism, Nazism, and Bolshevism are all forms of Fascism? Research Iron Front, Spanish Civil War, Spanish Anarchists.
A lot of truth there. But I’m not sure “the last election was stolen” will bring in extra votes – only rusted on Nats really care and they vote in numbers anyway.
It will be easy to point out the lefts attack on NZs traditional way of life: anti farmer, anti gun and hunting, anti white baiting, anti car, anti male, anti white, the list is long and growing.
For a branch of politics that promised relentless positivity, the left really are just anti everything without fixing anything.
Should play well in election ads.
Ctuskl said; “No, this government is on track to lose because of its own incompetence.”
Yes that is true but if this Government had a good platform to sell its policies and have us all involved in the planning phase we would have gotten a better outcome.
Remember what labour promised us?
Quote; “We will have a warm, caring, inclusive, transparent Government that will give everyone a voice to be heard” and that would have given us all the tools to work for and with this government but as Martyn said they have turned off that “inclusiveness” now.
Martyn said; quote; “Unfortunately, the inclusion through exclusion woke mindset currently championed by the deplatforming cancellation culture Left is as alienating as it is exhausting.”
We are saying ;instead Labour act like ‘we are worthless minions’ and they “know that’s best for us all” and that will lead to a loss of trust in the Government as we had with National.
Pharknhell Mr Bradbury that is a sobering blog and I hate being sober especially on a Sunday or a Monday or a ……. anyway I think you’re on the money in pointing out that WOGs or to be more precise GWOGs grumpy white old guys are becoming the disenfranchised these are the people who live in the small towns are your hunting and fishing type have manual jobs and were once upon a time traditional labor voters guarantee you they were probably bought up with a portrait of MJS on the wall until now especially with a labor green government who constantly take the piss out of this sector and I refer to when our conservation minister who conveniently replaced the h with a c in the word hunters in a 1080 debate doesn’t do anything for the left
However there is a solution that maybe you Mr Bradbury can be the answer in a new political party if not we will call for volunteers anyway this party will be called the GET SHIT DONE party and as the name suggests you will make use of these gwogs and instead of setting up working parties with judges and university professors we can set up working bees with chippies and drain layers and build a thousand homes in a couple of weeks. we can launch the party on national crate day coming up in December….just a thought
Bloody well said Mr Bowie;
“grumpy white old guys are becoming the disenfranchised”
You are as sharp as my old ‘Bowie hunting Knife’ that I bought in ‘Bowling Green Kentuky’ in 1993 to teach my kids how to throw a knife that will stick into a nearby tree.
My 75th Birthday is today and a had a drink to celebrate the passing of Davi Koch as he was among the crroks that also upset us grumpy white old guys that are becoming the disenfranchised .
Well put martyn. Indeed, identity politics ideally should be part of an overall class based political approach, addressed seriously, just not the main focus. The substantive political strategy for the left has to be the 90% vs the 10%–“The Many not the few”.
The issues that cause many people to first experience and sense oppression and victimisation –disability, gender, ethnicity, religion etc. are in a personal sense “entry level discrimination” but very important if you a refused a rental because you are Māori or get paid less because you are female! There are layers of exploitation and oppression, some have multiple shit heaped on them. White guys can suffer from stressful precarious work, rising prices, locked out of home ownership etc. so they theoretically grumpy tradies etccan be persuaded on economic arguments. Problem there is wide spread self employment and ‘contracting” has encouraged thousands to be aspirational and identify more with the 1% than their own class!
It is easy enough to chart why Identity has trumped Class for many. 30 years of legacy Roger’n’Ruth–neo liberalism–has seen working class organisations reduced, and the institutional memory of collective action and community action fade. And the small left marxist parties that had sizeable memberships in the 60s, 70s and early 80s played their role with disunity and sniping amongst themselves. A united NZ Communist Party would have been a powerful thing as the continuing work of people like Robert Reid, Mike Treen, Roger Fowler, Sue Bradford and others shows.
That is why Ihumātao has been so important, it illustrated that direct action works. The call went out on social media, and within hours the cops were outnumbered, and their operational weakness in Auckland for such things revealed. If a serious call goes out if the state forces ramp up as per Bastion Pt. then I am confident thousands would turn up.
There are very few indeed in the current Govt. with even a glimmer of a class analysis, so ministers seize on Identity politics, which does not challenge the 1%, and toe the line of the CEOS in MSD and so on as the likes of Carmel Sepuloni do. Many of the ministers are not evil people as such, they literally just do not have a political clue and who the enemies of the people really are.
A mobilisation is needed to pressure the Govt. to return all SOEs to Govt Department status, run infrastructure projects, repeal the Reserve Bank Act, the State Sector Act etc. etc. on and on until the remnants of Rogernomics are no more.
As for a response to the Nats FB/social media blitz, surely that is one thing that today’s digital generation can do!
Bring it on! this Labour Government is trying to imitate the Clark government and get 9 nine years in power by doing nothing substantial – so what difference does it make if they last 9 or 3 years?
Either Labour loses this year and we get the last burst of neo-liberal destruction which will inevitably lead to push back from a pissed off population or we wait another 6 years for it to happen.
Ideally we would have been in our 4th term of National right now with most of the population ready to chuck out neoliberalism itself. The more successful Labour is this term, the longer we have to wait for our version of Bernie Sanders to show up