The Woke Identity Politics Left need to stop cancelling the wrong people
Two news stories highlight where NZ is…
New Zealand housing affordability plummets to historically low levels
…1 in 5 children are in poverty, 22 000 on social housing wait lists and entire generations have been priced out of ever owning a home.
The promise of democracy is you can look into the face of your child and know they will get a better deal than you did, when you can no longer do that, the promise of democracy becomes bankrupt.
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
This isn’t a democracy, it’s fast becoming a feudal plutocracy on a burning planet.
The real demarcation of power in western society is between the 1% rich and their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us. Splintering that down to tribal cultural elites robs us of the ability to create transformative change.
The Identity Politics Left in NZ need to understand the enemy aren’t people who disagree with us or cling to sexist, racist or homophobic lies. The enemy are corporations and failed political systems that callously sacrifice people for profit which exacerbates the social injustice that fuels sexism, homophobia and racism.
Woke Identitarians will scream patriarchy, racism and sexism to explain our malaise but the truth is economics and the weaponisation of scarcity is designed to erode class solidarity so that those hegemonic structures remain.
The Wellington Twitteratti, many paid by Unions or NGOs alongside their Identity Politic acolytes and journalist courtiers, wallow in a smug arrogance while micro aggression policing anyone who doesn’t linguistically conform to woke doctrine which only further alienates those denied economic justice while championing a very middle class ‘social justice’.
This cancel culture has left the Left intellectually ill prepared to debate the failures of the free market economy and the solutions we must adopt to get out of this…
Campbell would have reminded us that the demonization of the Trump supporters who stormed the capital is a terrible mistake. He would have reminded us that racial injustice will only be solved with economic justice. He would have called on us to reach out to those who do not think like us, do not speak like us, are ridiculed by polite society, but who suffer the same economic marginalization. He knew that the disparities of wealth, loss of status and hope for the future, coupled with prolonged social dislocation, generated the poisoned solidarity that give rise to groups such as the Klan or the Proud Boys.
The cancel culture, a witch hunt by self-appointed moral arbiters of speech, has become the boutique activism of a liberal class that lacks the courage and the organizational skills to challenge the actual centers of power — the military-industrial complex, lethal militarized police, the prison system, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the intelligence agencies that make us the most spied upon, watched, photographed and monitored population in human history, the fossil fuel industry, and a political and economic system captured by oligarchic power.
It is much easier to turn from these overwhelming battles to take down hapless figures who make verbal gaffes, those who fail to speak in the approved language or embrace the approved attitudes of the liberal elites. These purity tests have reached absurd and self-defeating levels, including the inquisitional bloodlust by 150 staff members of The New York Times demanding that management, which had already investigated and dealt with what at most was poor judgment made by the veteran reporter Don McNeil when he repeated a racist slur in a discussion about race, force him out of the paper, which management reluctantly did.
…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 all the while the woke dilute any resistance with a thousand bullshit distractions and cancellations.
Here’s Tom with the weather.
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Marxist theory seeks to artificially divide people by ‘class’
Intersectional woke theory seeks to artificially divide people by race and gender
How’s about just not trying to divide people?
“Intersectional woke theory seeks to artificially divide people by race and gender”
Not only is that nonsense, but its completely the opposite: Intersecttionality looks at how people experience a multitude of barriers and bigotry.
For example, as Clarte Foran derscribed in “The Atlantic” in March 2016;
ref: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/hillary-clinton-intersectionality/472872/
When you ask “How’s about just not trying to divide people?”, you do so from a position of privilege. You don’t encounter the prejudices that others (womem, Maori, Pacifica, LGBTQI, other ethnic/religious groups) experience on a faily basis. For example, when is the last time a bunch of racist hooms drove past you at speed, and yelled out to you,
“Go home ya fucking b**** ***t!!”
My guess is never, Andrew.
Until you try to look at the world through the eyes of eyes, you will not see what they experience.
“Until you try to look at the world through the eyes of …”
Have you done that for white men Frank? If you have what did you see?
Your calculus of oppression is daft, Frank — a blunt instrument that tells us nothing about the world worth knowing. It doesn’t take into account individual advantages such as attractiveness, temperament, intelligence, luck, resilience, native optimism or openness to the world, just for starters — none of which, of course, is determined or distributed by race or gender.
Furthermore, it tells us nothing about what sort of home environment someone grew up in and what sort of relationships he or she has with others. It tells us nothing about cultural advantages and disadvantages (eg whether someone’s culture prizes education, say).
It is a hierarchy of oppression that appeals to people without not very subtle intellects, who like to run a ruler over life rather than observing what actually makes life worth living for individuals… in all their infinite glory.
First you claim that intersectional theory doesn’t divide and then you seek to deny my right to express an opinion because I’m the wrong colour and gender.
That’s divisive
Well, pull yourself together, man!
One of the biggest issues in NZ is that lobbyists and overseas run/owned media are running continual stories that are misleading and without any statistical basis. This then gets picked up by the government who seemed to have destroyed via neoliberalism and redundancies their best employees and replaced them with arse-covering bum warmers.
First the ‘Meth’ saga, where bizarre committees of 30 unscientific groups, government and business owners created a witch hunt for a fake Meth standard. This then was used to evict people, sell state housing cheaply, create massive consultancy fees for co-horts, and destroy homeowner values.
For 10 years we hear how private landlords are rich, fat, cats increasing property values… but then we find out that the vast majority of private landlords have just one property to rent out, for their retirement and less than 1% own vast amounts of rental properties.
Nearly 80 per cent of landlords own just one property, data shows
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/real-estate/124320645/nearly-80-per-cent-of-landlords-own-just-one-property-data-shows
We hear how ‘business’ is the number one priority for government for hand-outs – but wait! That seems to be where the vast majority of rich listers reduce their tax take. Business income tax is one of the lowest in NZ but who do government target for more taxes, wage earners like Doctors (who the supposedly can’t even attract anymore) for a tax hike.
More than 40% of millionaires paying tax rates lower than the lowest earners, Government data reveals
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300238241/more-than-40-of-millionaires-paying-tax-rates-lower-than-the-lowest-earners-government-data-reveals
We also hear that re-zoning farm land will create more houses, – but instead the practise for the last decade has increased the cost of housing and land and created situations where most developers through companies (less tax, see above) concentrate on buying and re-zoning land than actually building the houses on land already zoned for it. If it doesn’t work out, just liquidate the company (after transferring the cash and assets to another entity to rip everyone else off, Shipley/Mainzeal style).
Developers are one of the woke and governments ‘good guys’ – deserving of the woke gratitude and government funds like wage subsidies, on solving our housing crisis….sarcasm. (Has anyone noticed the positive articles in NZ media of Eric Watson and other ‘rich listers’ aka the Chow brothers, NZ paid for propaganda, media washing/glorifying at work… )
“Property investor, Stonewood Homes director and former sex industry king John Chow talks to Jane Phare about his $2 billion target, overcoming his shyness and his purple Rolls-Royce.
There’s a video on John Chow’s LinkedIn page that shows him next to his gleaming $500,000 purple Rolls-Royce SUV, wearing a pair of bright orange Crocs. He’s bought another Rolls, he tells the camera, this time a red one. “Here goes”, he says gleefully, bending down to roll a miniature version of his SUV across the concrete.
He got the toy car off Ali Express for twenty-five bucks, he says chortling. The LinkedIn gag was to cheer up his 20,000 followers during the recent Covid-19 lockdown.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/the-chow-brothers-john-and-michael-chow-on-their-reinvention-and-2-billion-business-plan/2JKFUX637PAVDVKGQGEZJ4ML6I/
Ho, ho, yes Granny, we can all relate to that wonderful example of humour – cheered up by ex sex industry/liquor/now turned developer baron’s humorous gags with his collection of Rolls. Rah, rah! Totally relatable content for Kiwis….and good to see you can pay John Key undisclosed amounts to turn up to your events for re-branding.
Liberal left/woke are generally comfortable middle class academic do gooders who often appear to harbour misplaced guilt that they are comfortable middle class and their target audience, the victims they “fight” the good fight for are not.
Their imagination, which is vivid, is all that guides them to their victims plight, never reality. And they are addicted to get that next warm feeling they get in their little tummy’s when they think they’ve done good. Think the Standards contributors.
The do gooder wokes warped view of the world is absolute. And for the rest of us unthinking ordinary mortals, a painful nightmare.
The Woke are foot soldiers for Globalism.
Notice no matter what party Left or Right gets power, we get the same shit show – increasing government and corporate censorship and control, increasing economic inequality and concentration of wealth to the billionaires.
Everyone notice how the billionaires all got a whole lot richer during the covid pandemic as small businesses and jobs were destroyed via lockdowns and the wealth transferred to the super rich.
Next minute Martyn and Simon agree:
Wokeness is the problem of everything!
And all this without anybody knowing what it means! But at least if wokeness is the problem we can just keep going round in circles!
Mike, seeing as I’m the one who popularised the term in NZ, I’m very, very, very sure of what it means. It’s a middle class Wellington wank identity politics clique who see everything only through the lens of their skin colour, their genitalia and their sexual orientation.
“It’s a middle class Wellington wank identity politics clique ”
Not just Welly. I know a white female boomer who virtue signals all day long, “Im ashamed of being White!”, she doesnt work got a hubby with a lucrative profession. They live in Mt Eden Auckland a rich liberal white enclave. She tried to defend herself when I critized her privileged bubble by saying she went to the Otara Markets a couple of times a year so she had street cred.
Another Academic boomer made the comment that the major reno on his sprawling lifestyle block ( he has a yacht too ) distressed him because the demolished walls reminded him of Nazis door to door searching for Jews in Germany…
Grills… sounds so familiar…. its the white woke hating other white folk while pretending to be black folks…
So many woke parties in the leafy suburbs…. start with, I know I am just a white man but… (yep, we can see that, already, but worn as a woke badge of identity…)
also the rich woke hating other rich folk while pretending to be poor folks…
oblivious that most poor folks want to be rich folks… cos it isn’t that great to be poor if you have ever experienced it.
Woke ideals seem to be hot in parliament now, (and fits in with neoliberal globalist doctrine, aka both woke and right wing globalists want to keep more and more consumers flooding into social welfare led countries to destroy the social democrat welfare system and keep consumption high).
Works well for China and totalitarian countries, win, win!
The good news is that the global financial system, which has been on life-support for well over a decade, is now in the process of shaking itself to bits, and all the silly distractions will soon be forgotten, as people focus on finding food.
‘The UST 10yr yield is up dramatically today, up +8 bps at 1.46%. This sell-off now has global momentum, all based on rising expectations for inflation, expectations central bankers can’t halt despite their attempted unison jawboning. The US 2-10 rate curve is sharply steeper at 130 bps. Their 1-5 curve is also sharply steeper at +63 bps, while their 3m-10 year curve steeper at +142 bps. The Australian Govt 10 year yield is up +17 bps at 1.85%. The China Govt 10 year yield is little-changed at 3.29%, while the New Zealand Govt 10 year yield has raced up another +18 bps to be at 1.88%. Recall, it was at 1.16% at the start of the month and 1.02 at the start of the year, so the repricing has been sharp, with the largest rises in the past few days.’
https://www.interest.co.nz/news/109244/us-data-uniformly-positive-china-eliminates-poverty-resistant-asf-returns-rbnz-housing
The bad news is that 99% of the populace is oblivious and unprepared.
It is a well known fact that insecure, thin and slightly attractive people tend to surround themselves with less attractive larger people to make themselves look better. This also works with insecure slightly intelligent people. They surround themselves with inept clueless unqualified individuals who have zero personality. This makes them look much more intelligent.
Luckily our cabinet was chosen purely on merit and capability alone. Woods, Robertson and Mahuta are certainly the best possible candidates for their position and were in no way chosen to make our Leader look thin, attractive, intelligent or angelically woke. Fortunately for us, there is no chance that our countries future success would have been so cynically ignored and the current cabinet manipulated just to make our leader look better in media photoshoots.
Sometimes Ardern’s Cabinet picks have made me think of Rob Muldoon, who surrounded himself with ministers who could barely function when he was out of the room.
Super woke Grant Robertson here confirming that he wants NZ house prices to increase forever. John Campbell is about to get cancelled too.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/finance-minister-defends-labours-efforts-tackle-housing-crisis-in-combative-interview-john-campbell?auto=6235346787001
What’s wrong with a feudal plutocracy? It trickles down to the privileged middle classes don’t ya know. The plebs don’t really matter as they have no power. Karl got that one wrong. Although a burning planet is a bit of a worry. Not to mention ………………… Anyways Martyn, you’ve got this right, identity politics is the sideshow.
Frank sees the world through the eyes of victims, victims who should gang up and cancel their oppressors. I didnt care be cause I didnt feel oppressed, and well, hell I sure as hell wasnt oppressing anybody.
Then one night 4 years or so back I had a revelation. Some American rich bitch politico, sort of a woke type described me and my white middle age lower class cohort as a “basket of deplorables”. Hallelujah, suddenly I had an identity. I was being oppressed. I could suddenly see my enemies accusing me of all sorts of unconscious crimes against everybody, members of my family included.
Frank, you woke tosspot, you are my enemy. But I will forgive you because you are an ill considered idiot.