Mallard vs Bridges: Why National will die in a ditch for their social media propaganda
National defies Speaker’s ruling: Ads using Parliament TV footage to remain
The National Party has announced it will not take down social media videos despite a ruling by the Speaker to have them removed by 5pm.
“Freedom of speech is of fundamental importance to our Parliamentary democracy and to New Zealanders,” National leader Simon Bridges said in a statement Friday evening.
The Speaker made a ruling on Thursday that videos using edited Parliament TV footage featuring MPs without their permission must be removed by 5pm on Friday.
But Bridges said his party will fight the ruling.
“We have the highest respect for the role of the Speaker. But in the interests of freedom of expression and against censorship, we will keep the videos up to decisively bring this to a head.”
Oh for the love of God! This isn’t a free speech issue! National passed the rules on not using Parliamentary footage for attack adverts when they were last in power, now they are the Opposition suddenly they want to break the very rules they made?
National will die in a ditch for their social media propaganda because it is critical for their 2020 election strategy.
The Dark Art of politics now is not in the proposal and debate of ideas, it is the promotion of anger as policy which is communicated to potential voters based on the outrage it generates amongst identifiable tribal protagonists.
On social media platforms algorithmically fuelled by subjective rage, that person always denouncing you as racist or homophobic or sexist or transphobic becomes the person you resent. When you see them scream at National’s plan, even if you don’t understand the idea, even if it’s economically counter to your interests, you support it because it makes that person you resent angry.
Cambridge Analytica rewrote the entire 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.
Simon Bridges isn’t fighting to keep his attack adverts influenced by the Kiwi team who won the election for Australia’s Scott Morrison online because of ‘free speech’, he’s keeping them online because injecting resentment into politics via micro-targeted social media is a clear path to victory for the Right.
Superb analysis.
I’m afraid I have to take issue with my old friends Martyn and Chris.
While it is true that there exists a large and resentful pool of angry and disillusioned white voters in all the English-speaking nations, it is, I believe, incorrect, to suggest that these voters are exclusively male. Careful analyses of the Brexit and Trump victories have revealed equal-opportunity bigotry and hurt.
Overwhelmingly, the Brexit and Trump voters fall into one of two camps. They are either the loyal and traditional supporters of the main conservative political parties – Conservative or Republican; or, they are former supporters of the traditional working-class parties – Labour or Democratic. These latter voters are the ones who made – and are continuing to make – all the difference.
The consistent failure of the Labour and Democratic parties to address the needs of their base has fueled a rage that manifests itself either as an angry rejection of all politics, or as a desire to be revenged upon the “elites” they blame for perverting the purposes of their old party-of-choice.
The dark art of Steve Bannon and Dominic Cummings was to identify and mobilise both of these groups: the angry abstainers and the revenge seekers.
What we are witnessing in the UK and the USA is not the flowering of white male identity politics, but the right’s successful diversion of class consciousness: steering it away from the quest for social equality and progress, and into the much more destructive quest for racial superiority and social vengeance.
And, God help us, it’s working.
I would love to see a video splicing together John Key talking about why they made the rules, and Bridges talking about why it’s a free speech defence to break those rules, as if the two are debating each other 😉
Genius and in the same vein as what Bridges is doing.
Probably a mix of Chris and Martyn’s analysis really. There is certainly a subset of disgruntled white blokes. I have ended friendships with a few long time car culture mates the last several years, because of their idiotic and offensive attitudes on Trump, climate change, firearms–most things really! They picked it over time in most cases from uncritically interacting with social media–the gateway to reactionary views. No amount of fact waving could influence them, because at base they wanted the shit they were reading to be true.
In the North, Matt King pumps out some horrendous stuff on his social media. When Northland Regional Council member and long time environmentalist Mike Finlayson challenged him to public debate his Climate Change denial, King ran a mile. He had made his impact with the audience already. People who by and large will not be triangulating or researching anything.
The individualist psychology of neo liberalism, and break down of collectivism has assisted in making people more vulnerable to wacko and destructive world views.
In general terms too, the National Party is injecting itself in the form of it’s MPs pages, into peoples social media unasked. That the Nats have an internal, as well as outsourced e.g. Farrar, digital dirty politics dept. should be evident after the infamous Treasury non hack. It is essential they hang on to the ability to distort Parliamentary TV clips, not for free speech in the democratic rights meaning, but to be free to miss speak and manipulate potential voters.
And negotiating pay rises isn’t really optimal. To get a pay rise tens of thousands of teachers and nurses had to go on strike. That’s no way to run things. That makes it almost impossible for industries with fewer workers to negotiate pay and conditions.
I think a lot of people are fundamentally lazy and disinterested in politics. I’ve had screaming arguments with members of my extended family about their smug apathy. “These people make the rules that govern your daily life, and you can’t be fucked even voicing an opinion that isn’t ‘Politics is gay, herp a derp!'” Sadly, you can’t force people to give a shit, even if not giving a shit is counter to their own interests, God knows I’ve tried.
What probably bothers me the most is that, despite routinely exhibiting stratospheric levels of hubris, National isn’t even that clever. I mean, you don’t have to be Sherlock fucking Holmes to figure out what they’re about most of the time, and Bridges is more unintentionally transparent than most. They tend to follow predictable patterns of disingenuous behaviour, and their track record of dishonesty, evasiveness, purposeful misinformation and conducting smear campaigns with the support of their pet journalists is well documented, not least by Nicky Hager.
National are dirty players. That’s a demonstrable fact. The true believers, the zealots, and the pathologically self-interested will always vote National. Anyone else is fair game. I just wish people would be less complacent about having a tosspot like Bridges lie to them. If you’re so keen to be offended by things, be offended by that. National think you’re a sorry collection of easily manipulated simians incapable of critical thought and disinclined to dig too deeply, if at all. They play you because you let them.
Educate yourselves. It’s not fucking hard.
Yes Wensleydale, educate yourself and many don’t care maybe we need to do this our schools so the next generation have more clues and actually care.
I doubt people will be too concerned about this and I say that with no bias, its simply my view based on past experience. There is so much nonsense in politics in general these days after a while its starts to feel like white noise. What does antagonise people however is if you hit them in their back pocket and in my view this coalition has done that whilst delivering little in return that would justify increased taxes and other forms of compliance that mum and dad investors may not be too thrilled about.
Of course no one hears the grumblings of the Kiwi voter until voting day rolls around. My guess is 2020 is going to be close, much closer than it would have been in this government had actually kept its promises and listened to disaffected voters like myself.
Out of all this I have alot of respect and admiration for Trevor Mallard. Certainly cannot say the same about Simon Bridges. He(Bridges)just comes across every time he opens his mouth as a Village Idiot. He(Bridges)is indeed a credit to the NZ National Party. Long may Simon Bridges remain the National Party leader because whilst he is at the helm of National he merits no votes and neither do any of his colleagues who seem to be completely incapable of pulling up Simon Bridges for the idiot he is.
Yes basically what you are saying is national will do anything they can to get back in power and they are already doing it which is why soimon has been quiet cause its all being done online bombarding people with messages and anything damaging to there opposition whether it be true or not is out there targeting the many that believe everything they see and hear and don’t check facts.