The woke and a broken Fourth Estate handed Trump the culture war ammunition he used to destroy America
The total victory by Trump is a political and cultural devastation.
He is without a doubt the worst authoritarian figure democratically put into power in the West since Hitler and he represents an Orange Fascism, this time using the Undermensch to empower the Ubermensch.
History doesn’t repeat but it Rhymes and right now Trump’s nickname should be Bitler.
America was always a Military Industrial Complex death machine but now Trump’s United States of Wounded Masculinity has elected a naked Plutocracy.
How?
Since 2016 I have been a lone voice on the NZ Left warning that the Identity Politics strategy adopted by woke middle class activists in the thrall of the new power to collectively punish via Twitter and Social Media would generate political ammunition that would be shot back at us.
8 years later that warning has produced a bitter harvest of malice.
Social media has turned out to be the single worst generator of paranoia and fear and the universal lockdown of Covid has been manipulated by hate algorithms that play to the worst angels of our nature.
Journalism has been bastardised into just a product
A capitalist media can never solve the problems of market failure because it’s an inbuilt feature of capitalist media to fail.
The Early hyper-commercialisation of US Journalism saw less than 50% revenue from advertising revenue because the early media in America was highly subsidised.
When capitalist hyper-commercialisation culture kicked in, they stopped seeing their audience as citizens needing informing and saw them as consumers and the advertising percentage of revenue soars.
This has resulted in a structural crisis for Journalism.
- US Newspapers are still major source of local journalism
- ad-dependnent business model is broken because the monopoly of news has been broken.
- Local journalism is no longer profitable.
- Newspapers are closing and taken over by vulture capitalists.
- the model is broken
This has created news deserts where there is no local news.
Social Costs of the Journalism Crisis
- less informed about politics
- less civically engaged
- less likely to vote
- higher levels of corruption
- increased polarisation
The truth is paywalled, but the lies are free
No wonder people are losing trust in media.
We need to think of the media not as another commodity, but as ‘the commons’ and a de-commercialised structure demands we see journalism as a common good.
I love how it’s always a great time to buy a house according to the NZ Herald because the Herald’s advertising is so dependent on real estate. There is NEVER a genuine attempt to challenge what a class of Landlords forever fucking over renters will actually create in this country, because, according to the NZ Herald, it’s never been a better time to buy a house!
Trust in news has dropped to 33% in 2024 from 53% in 2020.
From the social contract theory, trust has fallen because people don’t believe the media are upholding their end of that contract.
Part of this is driven by the politicians themselves. Trump’s attack on the media is unhinged madness which works because he is so reliant on low news engaged voters who get their news off Facebook.
This ocean of criticism against the media goes beyond fair criticism to open hostility and abuse.
There is a correlation between distrust and unfair criticism but I also want to see the correlation between loneliness and believing bat shit crazy stuff you’ve read on Facebook.
Covid was a universal experience, we all sacrificed equally in an unequal world, it has had enormous impacts on us and one of those enormous impacts has been crippling loneliness.
More and more of us are lonely and it was kicked off by being forced to stay home during the pandemic.
That loneliness is desperately corrosive to the spirit and to the person, and the dichotomy of intense loneliness combined with mass 24/7 social media connectivity has made many of us insane with a level of anger and feral hate that is the call signs of a terribly tortured individual.
Woke Culture Wars gone bad
Since 2016 I have argued that Identity Politics is a deeply flawed strategy for the Political Left.
I have argued that Identity Politics locked into place ‘feelings’ and ‘lived experiences’ that replaced logic, rational debate and reason because logic, rational debate and reason are heteronormative white cis male privileges that we all hate now.
MeToo, Black Lives Matter and the Trans debate – all issues we were prepared to burn every bridge for have come back to bite us all.
I warned that if you spent all this time screaming white men were the problem, they would become the problem.
The greatest danger of Identity Politics for the Left is that the millisecond white poor men see themselves through the same identity lens of victimhood that the Woke do, we were collectively fucked.
The moment men stop seeing themselves as part of a class or as citizens, the millisecond they replace solidarity with victimhood – we were in collective danger.
The Woke believed their ‘feelings’ were more important than anything else, unfortunately angry and frightened right wing people have ‘feelings’ too and their ‘feelings’ are way more demented than ours.
That is what has happened in the American Election and what we have just witnessed is the most consequential election in modern political history – it is the beginning of America’s decline and the first true step towards a dystopian nightmare.
Trump’s United States of Wounded Masculinity has beaten Kamala’s Nation of Childless Cat Women.
The holy trinity of critical race and gender theory is:
- ALL white people are irredeemable cross burning racists
- B-E-L-I-E-V-E ALL Women that ALL Men are rapists
- Anyone who supports Free Speech is a Uniform wearing Nazi who hates the Trans Community
There is NO wriggle room in that middle class dogma.
From 2016 the woke cancel culture went as wild as Mao’s Cultural Revolution with less nuance.
Remember that bloke in New Zealand who we had sacked because he said he didn’t like Whittaker’s having Māori on its wrapper?
Yeah, that may not have helped.
Millennials were insufferable with their micro aggression policing because that’s way easier than challenging the neoliberal economic hegemony.
We are great at Free the Nipple Mommy Blogger cycle protests, not so good at making Billionaires pay more tax.
Pure Temple Politics that use inclusion as exclusion vs Broadchurch Class class solidarity is the issue and our woke middle class activists ended up handing the right the culture war ammunition that would kill us.
We told an entire generation of women that every man will rape you and told an entire generation of men that they were evil because they had heteronormative penises.
Apparently that message turned out to be a tad alienating for men who Trump won in staggering numbers.
How spastic did the radioactive Trans debate become?
Trump consistently claimed Democrats would allow illegal aliens sex changes in prison, what’s the truth?
Yes the American Prison system allows those transitioning to access the medicines they require because that’s a health issue, but how many have actually accessed sex change operations?
2 FUCKING PRISONERS!
When challenged on this, Kamala Harris said “I will follow the law”, rather than explaining that there are only 2 examples of this and both were domestic prisoners, not ‘illegals’.
She didn’t point this out because the Dems were terrified of insulting the woke by mentioning the Trans debate in any way that didn’t worship them.
The Trans debate – thanks to the toxicity the Woke spent 8 years injecting into this issue, was manipulated by the Right to paint us as gender extremists FFS when only 2 prisoners have ever accessed it!
When you replace class and citizenship as our guiding values on the Left for identity politics, you make it impossible to get to the 51% democratic majority required to win power.
Not one family living in poverty were sitting around the kitchen table cancelling each other for misusing pronouns, they were sitting around the kitchen table desperately attempting to work out how they were going to pay the bills!
The Middle Class Left’s pronouns became “I and Me” when they should have been, “Us and We”
The Outrage Olympics on social media killed us and provoked a cultural backlash that Trump has manipulated into an enormous vile mandate.
There are 650 000 homeless Americans, 110 000 of them children. 135million Americans live with the fear that they will become homeless and in real terms wages have not increased in 30 years.
Americans are victims of free market capitalism and instead of fighting that they have been tricked into fighting identity culture wars that our Left wing activists have helped generate!
Dystopia
We have been brainwashed by hate algorithms for the profit margins of vast Tech Gods.
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber allas where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
The American Midnight is upon us and Trump’s Orange fascism has been empowered by the Undermensch to enrich the Ubermensch.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
The post mortem will go on for years, but those seriously into politics know exactly what happened…unregulated social media–Mr Musk did not acquire Twitter for his amusement–algorithms getting into peoples heads, Dems Nat Committee full of millionaires with the subsequent world view–they did largely as Bernie Sanders said; abandoned the working class–and the working class abandoned them, even though Biden was reasonably pro union compared to most Presidents, he was also into flattening Gaza and arming the IDF butchers to the max.
I don’t buy the white man angle totally, and it was sad indeed seeing Hispanics vote for vicious mass deportations of other Hispanics, women voting against their daughters and grand daughters reproductive rights, black men against black women, working class whites for union busting…hillbillies in Tornado/flood alley against Climate Change action…divide and rule is the parasitic ruling class oldest tactic.
A minimum of two years absolute shit show has begun. Trump had the rhetoric for people doing it hard, but plans corporate tax cuts and slashing the state. Remember bleach as a treatment for COVID? Another pandemic will not be fun in US under Mango Mussolini. Cops will be salivating to be encouraged to lean on necks, and men to rape as they please, and unions busted. If there is an organised fightback developed, or some voter remorse when the reality sinks in, the mid terms are the last chance to stop a fully fascist America emerging.
But hey, despite our crap Govt. and problems such as the racist Act Treaty Principles Bill, those of us lucky enough to have valued friends, partners or family might give them extra attention for the next few weeks… we should try and have a good summer and enjoy ourselves.
p.s. I’ll be at the Hikoi leg in Kaitaia on Mon 11. the struggle goes on.
Don’t worry Martyn! We’ll be fine.
Ending two regional wars is near the top of the to-do list for The Donald.
He won’t stop shit.
Trump owes $100M to Miriam Adelson, who is a Zionist/ Greater Israel freakshow, so we can safely acknowledge that the shitstorm in the Middle east won’t end any time soon. And the Russians won’t agree to any of the plans that either he or Vance have in “negotiation” points regarding Ukraine.
As for the top of the to do list for Trump, it will be proven pretty soon that dropping corporate tax rates and taking tax off tips (so corporate CEOs can take home untaxed gratuities) is really at the top of his agenda.
Boeing, Ford, Toyota and a bunch of other huge corporates are walking back DEI policies, the tide of woke madness is surely going out.
It’s Trump policy to remove it from the public service and defund universities that use Critical race theory.
The world will be a better place if he makes good on that.
Jonathan Pie does a great rant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=x0eq7VNCcYY
It’s really not about the personalities. They are only the faces of the tectonic shifts in the rise and fall of global capitalism. Its about ‘America’s’ decline and fall.
When empires exhaust their time at the top, and are being replaced by the new contenders that still make things, rather than make things up, all the old shit buried for generations rises to the surface.
That is when we see clearly ‘America’s’ history is that of genocides, those of the destruction of indigenous nations to fuel the rise of capitalism, and those of its demise as in Palestine, West Asia and the DRC, West Africa, which fuel the fall of capitalism.
That it why both Trump and Biden represent the same ‘America’ in its decline and fall. Biden speaks for the neocons who understand that genocidal wars are the only way for it to prevent immediate collapse of its giant ponzi economy. War is the only way to defeat the economic power of the new imperialist powers, Russia and China.
Trump, sees that paying for the futile genocidal wars contributes to ‘America’s’ collapse facing the rise of China and the BRICS. So he is closing down the borders and using tariffs instead of guns to remake the industrial age in ‘America’. This delusion will rapidly manifest.
Neither ‘strategy’ can stop the decline of ‘America’ nor the rise of the China bloc. So there will be a moment during his term when he wakes up to the fact that tariff wars with more dynamic and productive economies are doomed. More importantlly the refusal of the working masses to swallow his resort to fascism will turn his fake ‘cultural’ wars into a new civil war.
So, just as he has to resort to fascism at home and to more genocidal wars abroad, the US working class will also wake up and reject not only the Democratic establishment, but the futility of Trumps populist isolationism.
The working majority will smash all their internal divisions along race, gender and national lines, and join forces with the rising masses in the global south and bring an end to the life of global capitalism.
Aotearoa will stage its own awakening when the class war over Maori land rights takes centre stage (as it is doing) and the majority of Maori and their Pakeha, Pacifica and Asian allies use their united power to end colonial capitalism and build a socialist Aotearoa.
Interesting article Martyn. Your insights are really hitting home now.
Thank you.
“Trump had the rhetoric for people doing it hard, but plans corporate tax cuts and slashing the state.”
Its a testament to the Dem party that they refuse to, at the very least, placate the working class. It is also a testament to Dem party voters because they are oblivious to this fact. And this in of itself is a reflection of Leftie leadership whom prefer to concentrate on identity politics (Trump in this case) rather than on policy (what do the Demz actually offer its voters). And this noxious dance has become standard US election fare, which suits the ‘special interests-led’ status quo while shortchanging, at the very least, the working class. Will Leftie leadership ever see the light or will more lefties drift away into oblivion or be swayed by someone who at least acknowledges their circumstance….
The global media did everything they could to affect Trump’s chances of reelection (election tampering?), and they failed. The American people chose ‘the felon’, a guy whose business dealings were elevated from a misdemeanor to unprecedented serious misconduct (lawfare?). And to see public and government figures now come out and congratulate Trump on his victory after trying to destroy him for years, so funny, so pathetic. These people have no moral compass and even less integrity, career bottom feeders they will grovel up to whomever it takes to get them ahead and to keep the welfare cheques coming. The third of the world under American sanctions and American bombs already knew this about these zombies though, for them life won’t change with a change of President, unless Donald can make a change.
The media in the US and elsewhere have been shown to be in the pockets of the elite and liars.
The Twitter files was a devastating blow to an already crumbling 4th Estate.
The Russia Hoax, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Wuhan Lab Leak, etc.
You can’t fool all the people all the time
Podcasts and new media are changing the game and we are all seeing that many of the so called elite are in fact just Emperors with no clothes
This sites hosting of a debate about the Treaty is a kiwi example of the way forward
In many ways we are entering a new age of truth and politicians, the media and so on need to adapt. It’s going to be hard because it will force much of the establishment to let go of so many tightly held beliefs but it will need to be done.
The more a government tries to force its way into the people’s lives, the more they will rebel against it. It’s human nature. Trump campaigned against more government, Kamala campaigned for it. Meanwhile energy and food prices have doubled.
More than a decade of misandry by the left and now they’re shocked they lost the male vote.
Adios Amigos!
Hang On….
In 2020 81 million odd voted for Biden against 74 million for the Big Don.
In 2024 70 about million voted for Harris against 74 million for Trumpy.
Why is no one asking why 11 million voters didn’t come out for Harris after they had previously voted for Joe Biden?
They don’t appear to have moved over to Trump. So what happened to them to not vote at all?
Asking for a friend…
It appears Trump hasn’t attracted that many more votes than he did 4 years ago, but this apparent collapse in the Democratic ones is what cost them.
A billion dollars in advertising, “the most important election in our lifetime”, the battle to save democracy, numerous endorsements from Dick Cheney ,Cardi B, Lady Gaga and Bruce Springsteen were just not enough.
Americans were the victims of four years of Democrat policy which allowed millions of illegal immigrants to walk freely across the southern border to be fed, sheltered then transported to sanctuary cities and conservative states by a regime determined to turn electoral voting patterns in their favour. Did the Biden/Harris party really think hard-working taxpayers, the vulnerable homeless and legal migrants would not pick up on and resent their subterfuge?
People don’t trust msm media anymore. They cowed to the misinformation cadres, they went along with cancel culture, they orgasm over gotcha questions and out of context sound bites.
Meanwhile Trump has a three hour conversation with Joe Rogan viewed by 60 million across Spotify and Twitter in 24hrs. The viewers get to decide if Trump is an unhinged truthful authentic lying SOB fascist maniac or not. Harris was offered the same opportunity a three hour conversation to go over her life, views, beliefs, experience yet she declined and its not like Rogan is a hard interviewer. At the same time CNN’s most popular program gets only 1million viewers.
Trump stated he is all about ending wars. American unionists like him for 20percent tarrifs, not spending their tax wealth on the MIC in Ukraine and not sending their kids to a forever war.
May be Trump will use the saved military spend on giving Musk a Mars cause why else is Musk there. At least no soldiers Mums will be mourning.
But bottom line ‘Its The Economy Stupid’. The exit polls found Trump voters who didn’t like Trump rank his economic management. The msm and democrats didnt understand people vote economy first. https://youtu.be/5IhjKlv4S2o?feature=shared
And Cheneys endorsement must have seemed like a kiss of death for democrat voters who had had anything to do with the WMD Twenty Year War. The democrats ousted Tulsi Gabbard (put her on a terrorist watch list) and welcomed war criminal Dick Cheney. Then wonder why they lost.
It will be interesting to see what happens in he next few years, or weeks come to that. This time around trump has had the chance to collect a team around him that might not oppose every good intention he had. He did manage to avoid starting any new wars though ; and if he can end tho two major wars that have erupted in his absence from power in the next six months, his election will have been a great benefit to us all.
His stage image is hard to watch I admit, but there must be more to him that those who get to know him personally can relate to. That he has already clarified that Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley will not be on the team, and that tulsi Gabbard , Robert Kennedy and Elon Musk already are is an indication that he is very different at close quarters. He claims to be against all wars is hopeful and I am inclined to believe him.
let’s see.
D J S