MANA Party + Internet Party vs Advance NZ + NZPP
Back in in 2011 I helped form and run strategy for the MANA Party.
In 2014 I helped join together and run the strategy for the Internet-MANA Party.
A german internet entrepreneur who had 70 paramilitary armed police invade his home and steal his business at the behest of Corporate Hollywood found he had more in common with radical left Māori nationalists than anyone else on the Political spectrum.
We launched the Party with 5% in the polls.
We fought an actual conspiracy, Mass Surveillance run via the GCSB and 5 Eye Network.
Internet-MANA could have brought into Parliament the most radical MPs ever assembled, Laila Harre, Hone Harawira, Annette Sykes and John Minto were all looking possible with a 5% win. It was an X-Wing fighter up against the Death Star of neoliberal status quo.
We had Anonymous, activist hackers exposing vast Government abuse of power and at the Moment of Truth, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange proved that a CIA mass surveillance program was operational but because Kim didn’t;t prove Key knew him before a certain date, the mainstream media screamed the entire thing was a hoax.
Despite being shown evidence by Snowden and Assange that a mass surveillance program was operating here.
I can still remember Simon Wilson and Paddy Gower barking at the post Moment of Truth press coherence.
Internet-MANA failed because the entire mainstream corporate media turned on it. The NZ Herald likened Kim Dotcom to the Nazis and the infamous Pam Cokery interview fight totally overshadowed the launch of the free health, free education and free public transport announcement.
Fast forward to 2020 and we have QAnon fanatics this time. We have Jamie Lee Ross copying the Internet-MANA formula of party coalitions and trying to use Hone’s old electorate to gain entry. This time the conspiracy is a Facebook fantasy that the Covid virus is a bioengineered weapon spread by 5G technology to bring about a shadowy one world Government out of the UN.
The media focus to Billy TK has been to laugh (although David Farrier did an excellent take down which Stuff Circuit regurgitated and charged NZ on Air for). He’s a joke and a reason to roll ones eyes at the easy led Voters Beyond The Wall.
Here’s Hone’s position against Billy TK…
Here’s one of the best arguments for staying clear of Billy TK Jnr and friends. It was written by MOANA MANIAPOTO and states the case perfectly.
…Billy TK and JML are opportunistic snake oil merchants who are twisting people’s genuine fear about Covid and manipulating it for their own ends!
And that’s ultimately the real difference between MANA Party + Internet Party vs Advance NZ + NZPP.
In 2014, InternetMANA posed an actual threat to the neoliberal establishment and had to have every mainstream media gun turned on it to destroy it. In 2020, Advance NZ + NZPP are a distraction from the neoliberal establishment and as such are tolerated to exist.
In 2014 we fought a real conspiracy, in 2020 we are being distracted by false lies and pretend threats.
As an architect and insider to that 2014 battle, I’ve got to write a book about the madness of that 2014 election campaign one day.
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Well say what you like about Internet Mana, something had to be tried as a circuit breaker given FJK’s then huge popularity.
I still maintain that if KDC had been kept in the background more, and Hone had stayed in the North and prioritised winning Te Tai Tokerau (and not had that unfortunate car crash), that the dream could have happened.
It was a disgusting spectacle to see even the Greens turn on Internet Mana like all the other parties and media.
Indeed, the Greens didn’t want to be shown up.
And NZF’s hand in the Te Tai Tokerau electorate vote to prevent Hone getting in was just one more piece.
i thought mana party lost maori voters because it was starting to look like an alliance of all sorts rather than an alternative to the maori party. we all lost because of the split from the maori party. heartening to see Hone supporting the new revived maori party. the movement is on again!
Internet Mana was ahead of its time. Would be at 5% if they had stayed in politics (Act formally 2% now 8%) but with the amount of dirty politics who can blame Mana for leaving?
Meanwhile Greens and NZ First in power seem to have bombed voter support, and changed their ‘brands’ as environmental party and more controlled immigration/assets sell offs party and became self promoters of the MP’s themselves not the party, with predictable results.
Labour are the new Natz, National is the new ACT party, and ACT seems to be benefiting from some sort of vertical hybrid of workers on higher salaries and bizarrely freedom of speech advocates.
There is not really any credible party for the environment and higher tax payers/higher paid workers anymore (like doctors and professionals who are some of the few generally paying taxes that are a net gain), but with all the free money from Labour for supermarket, chefs, aged care, horticultural workers and the local and migrant crims who like competing for state housing (our new heroes of the cultural revolution here) (unlike the Chinese cultural revolution, we hate the farmers), they are popular with the non critical thinking masses who can obtain free money and exploitative employers, so I guess it’s working for them.