Why the NZ left is losing men — and what it must do to win 2026
For more than three decades, I’ve covered New Zealand politics up close — elections won and lost, movements built and destroyed, parties reborn and hollowed out.
What follows isn’t theory, polling data, or consultant fluff. It’s an account of how political supporters actually behave, how social media has poisoned our civic culture, and why — if the New Zealand Left wants to win in 2026 — it must urgently bring men back into the fold.
I’ve been covering politics in this country for 31 years now, I know, what a terrible waste of life right?
You might not like my style or conclusions, but you can’t doubt my experience.
How Different Political Supporters Actually Behave
Personally over that time the nastiest insults I get are from Green supporters.
NZ First supporters are aggressive, but in a really stupid way that is comical, where as Green Supporters always go for the throat, they immediately bring knives that have only ever cut vegetables to a fist fight.
For me Labour supporters are always very enthusiastic, Māori Party supporters the warmest and friendliest, ACT supporters actually enjoy the intellectual argument and biffo while National Party voters do everything to avoid any contact.
Why the NZ Left Is Alienating Men
If the Left wants to win the next election, we have to overcome the alienation much of our woke middle class identity politics activists have generated and bring men back to the fold.
We need to tell the Men of Aotearoa New Zealand – Brothers, Comrades, Mates & Fellow Blokes – there’s a place for you on the NZ Left!
Just because you have a penis doesn’t make you toxic!
Don’t feel alienated by the more woke voices of the Left, you should not side with the corporations and the Billionaires and the speculators.
300 000 years of evolution that have gifted you the altruism to protect isn’t a sin!
As a man AND as a citizen, you have an obligation to protect everyone weaker than you, and you should stand against corporate interests, implemented because our anger and alienation have been manipulated by their social media hate algorithms.
Social Media, Loneliness, and the Collapse of Community
Look.
We hate each other thanks to social media.
While we hate each other more than ever before, we are more lonely than we have ever been before.
We are lonelier, more depressed and sicker.
Our loneliness, our depression, our sickness are all fomenting the spin of social media hate algorithms which only further polarise our debate into All Tribe and No Village politics.
I think we are a clever ape who has evolved over 300,000 years. Because we have to compete against other sentient and self conscious clever apes and work with them as groups so our intelligence and ability to use tools could change our environment, we have had to bond and understand each other over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
When we meet in person, our bodies and brains are taking in millions of different details subconsciously and we are working each other out through facial cues, pheromones, gait, stance, smiles, eye contact, etc etc etc: we have taken those 300,000 years of evolution and replaced that with flat screen interaction where we lose all that unseen evolutionary advantage and instead become brainwashed and trapped in rabbit holes of demented reality.
Flat screen interaction is warping our human capacity to tell what is real. Without the physical presence of another human — without facial cues, tone, gait, posture — our evolved instincts fail us. Algorithms replace judgment. Rage replaces understanding.
We have become an ocean of spite and resentment in an All Tribe No Village politics distorted by social media hate algorithms because 300,000 years of evolution can’t work in a flat screen interaction loneliness.
We’ve got to fight against this anathematising of our hopes and aspirations.
Turn that flat screen interaction into a platform where we can challenge this empty intimacy!
There Is a Place for Men on the NZ Left
Brothers, Comrades, Mates & Fellow Blokes
There is a place for you on the NZ Left! Don’t let yourself be manipulated by flat screen interaction.
The Left will need more than the return of male voters, they will need BRAVE, NEW and INNOVATIVE policies to give us all hope. After this obnoxious CoC gutted the ‘climate’ budget, FM Willis has just wound up the $6 billion National Resilience Plan put in by the Left, with approx. $3.2 billion of unspent funds returned to the government’s central coffers!!! Is there no end to their stupidity? The insurance companies will back out big time. So how are National still showing such support in the polls – or are these rigged like everything else they touch, or are we a nation of wishful-thinking, dumb-assed morons? Therefore if RW voters become victims of a climate disaster, don’t bleat when there are no funds to assist you! The left also need to bring in a fairer pay scale and tax those who have given themselves huge increases to even the playing field. There is no equality in NZ – just rampant greed. Left get together and work as one – time is running out…….
Talk is cheap. The New Left’s policies show a blind adherence to Critical Social Justice ideology, and an inevitable hostility towards straight white men. Just ask Marama Davidson if you don’t believe me.
What’s up with Green supporters who insult you?
I wouldn’t mind a dollar for every time you, MB, warned us of ‘the burning planet’.
You are a great advocate for a truly Green policy.
Perhaps the Greens themselves need to sort out their priorities and go back to basics.
” Just because you have a penis doesn’t make you toxic!”
That rules Trev and Bob the knob first out.
Btf is a robotic troll trev on the other hand still struggles to get his fly undone
You are stuck in a rut CG. Yahboo to you on the other side. Mud pies. FGS.
We have a death spiral for the world here – forget this petty stuff. And don’t bother to tell me to go jump. I’m right about there being more serious matters so suck it up and tell us what we could do to help the community, animals, and land and sea. It’s a big topic.