Unstoppable and Explosive
IT’S VOLCANOLOGISTS who detect the first signs of the pending eruption. Barely discernible tremors, swarms of them, imperceptible to those not equipped with a seismograph, but indicative of something stirring beneath the seemingly solid earth. Magma, rising from the depths, disturbs an equilibrium that may have endured for centuries, causing the ground to shake. Inside the volcano, things are heating up. Expanding gases create fissures in the volcano’s flanks, asphyxiating birds and other creatures caught in their invisible plumes. The quakes grow more violent. The air reverberates eerily – as if the mountain itself is groaning. In the final few hours before eruption, the volcano begins to deform, swelling ominously as the magma and the superheated gases expanding ahead of it approach the surface. Finally, with a roar like that of a stricken god, the volcano belches millions of tons of molten rock and ash into the upper atmosphere. For miles, across the landscape, Hell rises and walks around.
The metaphor of the erupting volcano is often pressed into service by journalists and historians. Understandable, since political upheavals, like volcanic eruptions, tend to take all but the most attentive observers by surprise. The existing political order, like a dormant volcano, seems stable right up until the moment it blows apart. Destroyed by forces which have been gathering strength for weeks and months right under the authorities’ noses – not so much unnoticed – as disregarded.
In this volcanic metaphor, the role of the seismograph is played by the polling agencies. It is the pollster who picks up the first tremors of political mobilisation. Barely noticed at first, generating results well inside the margin-of-error, but real nonetheless. Unmistakable evidence that beneath the familiar political topology magma is rising, gases are heating, hitherto solid rock is melting.
It was Act which provided the first indication that the fragile equilibrium established in the aftermath of the Covid Earthquake was coming apart.
As National began its belated rise towards electoral respectability (i.e. a Party Vote in the low-to-mid 40s) it soon became clear that getting there, and staying there, was more than it could accomplish. Meanwhile, the angry Right was refusing to cool down. New Zealand society was being changed radically, and without the permission of those who saw changing things as their prerogative. Moreover, National didn’t seem to be that bothered – as if they regarded the changes as tolerable.
Act’s take-off in the polls was the first sign of the roiling masses of magma churning away deep below the surface. More than willing to take the hard lines that National was eschewing, Act gave voice to the fears of those whose long-established privileges were being challenged by proudly insubordinate social movements pushing transformational ideas about ethnicity and gender.
Below the Me Too and Black Lives Matter agitation, however, and below the bewildering claims of the transgender activists, there was an upward thrusting force that at once empowered and overwhelmed the causes which Act and its fellow travellers dismissed as “Woke”. This was the magma of Māori nationalism, the expanding force of a people whose numbers and aspirations simply refused to stop growing.
The Māori Question was being put to Pakeha New Zealanders with an urgency born of too many wrong and/or misleading historical answers. It was heating the rhetorical gases of the Left, but it was not the Left. To the defenders of Pakeha privilege, however, the denizens of old New Zealand, two things were terrifyingly clear. That all this “Māori stuff” was huge – and that it was rising inexorably towards the surface of New Zealand politics.
Act placed itself athwart the Māori nationalists’ path. It promised to turn back the relentless advance of “Aotearoa” against “New Zealand”. The Treaty of Waitangi would be re-written, all traces of co-governance would be swept away. A new, written constitution would entrench Pakeha privilege forever. But, these were horizontal solutions: as if the Māori cause was an army advancing towards a defensible border; a force that could be stopped and turned around.
Wrong metaphor.
The upward thrust of the Māori cause is magma – unstoppable and potentially explosive. It may flow down the slopes of New Zealand as lava, reshaping the state in dramatic and irreversible fashion. Or, blocked by the congealed rock of racist resistance in its throat, its pressure will grow and grow until New Zealand disappears in an explosion of fire and ash, leaving behind only Aotearoa.
Therefore, take note of the latest Roy Morgan poll. In that dramatic upward tick of Te Pāti Māori – to a system-busting 7 percent – perceive the first, tell-tale tremors of a political eruption in the making. It is the young people, the rangatahi, who are rising. Not simply in response to Act’s futile policies of obstruction and suppression, but because there is in them a passion for growth and expansion that must, by whatever means necessary, find its way to the sky.
act and thier supporters can’t see that cupidity is the cause of so many of our ills, to them it’s a solution all in itself.
Which just proves that our rangatahi, are smarter than your average bear boo boo.
Having mainly lived in the Far North since the mid 90s I have noticed the changes. In Pākehā dominated towns on the East Coast Māori would shuffle through heads down, some doing the bidding of developers for “consultation” in unwarranted cars. In 2023 it is heads high, cool fashions, small businesses galore, previous horticulture and infrastructure now Māori run. Papakainga housing on collective land. Increasing chunks of prime land being won back–like Ngati Kahu at Taipa Point.
COVID response and resource delivery showed the capacity that had been built. The Tai Tokerau Border Control was actually supported by a number of non Māori whatever the media channels may have told you–but the local Te Hiku Media told the truth. The young are more political and young leaders campaigned for vaccination and for completing the Census, previously anathema to those that wanted to stay under the radar.
Non Māori NZ birth rates are around 1.6 %–below replacement at 2.2%, Māori birth rates are at replacement level. The rhetoric from Debbie Ngarewa Packer is that Ngati Tiriti (pākehā that get and support the new dynamic) are welcome in their movement. So a change is definitely coming.
This election we are being asked to choose which extremists we want to rule us, there is no middle at the moment. If that’s not a volcano waiting to explode I don’t know what is.
Daniel. At the moment Winston Peters looks as middle road as we’re likely to get; nothing extreme, and not an opportunistic band- waggon hopper – hard to see him embracing the pernicious gender ID dogma being pushed onto school children, let alone employing Shaneel Lal to advise the Education Department on sex education. Peters is a qualified lawyer, and the fact that Ardern & co hid their He Puapua and other secret agendas from him when he was actually the Deputy PM is pretty telling.
So perhaps a grand coalition of the right of Labour and the left of National would be a solution? Straddle the middle ground and neuter any opposition vote from the extremes?
What could possibly go wrong!
But history shows it’s hard to form lasting new parties in NZ and it’s way too late for the 2023 election
So called “purple coalitions” have been tried in Europe. They rarely last more than a single term.
The problem is that 40 years the middle moved and no one talks about it. Since then Labour is a centre-right party, Nation is far right (and not at all conservative) and ACT is kinda off the scale. The Greens also seem to go along with the neo-liberal consensus and so has the majority of the population.
Sophisticated PR has caused the country to ignore this reality for a long time but like Chris says, the pressure is building.
TPM seem angry, unfocused and unrealistic. As far as I can tell their main goal is utu against the white man – do they have any constructive policies that have a chance of working in the real world and surviving future political cycles?
Agree they are a very racist party.In 100 days we will see how many brought into their hate speech .
And ACT don’t want the Maori party in parliament, I guess that makes them racist also.
Not sure if a volcano is a good example, sure they explode, but just as quickly lie dormant again. They simply spew out a bit of the red stuff and cover as all in ash, before resuming the slumber.
Race relations wont be healed by either TPM or ACT. Race relations will be on the road to inclusiveness when ALL parties agree that those born of this land are recognized as having an equal bond to said land we currently call New Zealand.
I don’t see either TPM or ACT reaching out to the other side of the racial divide and construct a better Aotearoa.
Actually treating all equal is exactly ACT policy.
Of course it’s not Keepcalmandcarryom
Agree
… And very significantly, one not inconsiderable ‘mass of Maori magma’ has just put her name down for the Rotorua seat, contesting general electorate.
Merepeka Raukawa-Tait is a force to be reckoned with, whatever her political alignment.
Ignore her at your peril.
Same Merepeka, who visited the opening of a strip club when she was head of women’s refuge?
Im not too sure how long the waiting list is for the surgery you need to have the stick removed from your arse Anker.
You don’t like women do you Millsy
You dont like queer people and blacks do you?
Besides you are the one who expresses disgust at women who work in strip clubs, or refuse to dress modestly and conduct themselves like good Christian women.
So?
Well this is good Stephen. Best way to resolve race issues is intermarriage.
We are all one
So she seems unable to see a connection with male violence and the objectification of women.
If you have a daughter would you encourage her to work at a stripe club?
You seem to have a very puritanical view about how women should conduct themselves. No pole dancing allowed. Such a view abhorrent and has no place in modern liberal society.
Anker It looks more as if she frequented strip joints, rather than attending one opening. Green lesbians do, and some wealthy owners are National politicians associates. Managers’ punishment of workers who object to further in situ degradations is unconscionable, but the clientele aren’t exactly the sophisticates of the community, more drunken sports’ teams losers, and inadequate oddballs.
Piss off to Saudi Arabia if you hate exposed womanly skin so much.
Your best post
I find it truly bizarre that some people can see the ideas of universalism as somehow ‘entrenching X group’s privileges’ or ‘racist’ while suggesting that ethnonationalism isn’t exactly that.
We used to only afford political power to the nobility. That didn’t do so we threw that old piece of paper in the bin.
Then we allowed a few more, landed men into the ‘in group’. That didn’t do, so we threw that old piece of paper in the bin.
Then we decided that having land shouldn’t be the prerequisite of political power, and threw that old piece of paper in the bin.
We expanded the vote to include women and ethnic minorities, as the old piece of paper that said only men could vote didn’t do, and we threw it in the bin.
We afforded political power to all, because all citizens must be morally, politically, and legally equal for the state to be legitimate. This is the promise of universal liberalism and universal suffrage.
Now we’re stuck with an old treaty, signed not to form a nation state, but to mediate relations between the natives and whalers, to block French and American expansion in the Pacific, and to enforce orderliness in land markets. In the modern day some groups are attempting to use this piece of paper to shatter the idea that all citizens are morally, politically, and legally equal, and return us once again to a state where some members of society have more political power than others.
You know what we have to do.
Umm get an interpreter to work out what you just said?
Matt is really clear to me
100% Matt
A powerful allegory that is a relatable snapshot of the political reality
Every political pundit in the country needs to ponder Chris Trotter’s latest allegorical post.
The Left to divine what progressive forces to build and support.
The Right to dwell on schemes to subvert or divert the growing and unstoppable pressure, into dark fascist channels.
So it’s not a class war then?
Well, maybe, in a curious sort of way, it is, JSB.
Who, after all, is the working-class these days?
I see an awful lot of blue collars around brown necks.
Race + Class = a potent political combination.
I believe behind the scenes there is class war. The war on the poor. But it’s hush hush. Those at the top would never admit being in a class war. Go figure.
85% trumps 15%
The only reason the right haven’t exploded is because the media took $55000000 not to tell them what was happening.
Articles like Chris’s , Bombers , stuff from the Free Speech Union , Taxpayers union and The Platform are breaking that wall .
It would be really nice if things would settle peacefully but Tamahere and his crew keep pouring petrol on the fire
This is what you get when you do everything by stealth. We would not be here if the electorate was both educated, consulted and involved but they werent. Polarisation has been the name of the political game so where to now? For example, He Pua Pua where is that now? I’ll tell you where – it has 75% been implemented. Did you get to read it? Did Sione in Mangere get to read it? No, none of us did?
We know apartheid doesnt work, we know that Maori wont sit back and we know that the aspirational youngsters dont understand how expensive and economically unviable so many of these good causes are.
I really fear that where ever we are going in future is more like Argentina or Zimbabwe (Not from a Race aspect – in terms of inflation and economic collapse).
I dont know what the future holds but for the majority of NZers, it is effed. At the end of this, we will be begging Klaus Scwab to come and save us. Maybe even the plan all along.
Klaus Scwab doesn’t give two shits about NZ. We’re so small we’re irrelevant.
Upsidedown. Schwab may not care about New Zealand per se, but we have what others want, i.e. land and water; his grads acquire the skills and the connections to make them members of the “ haves”, and at a global level.
Schwab’s goals are free markets, austerity and privatisation. If he has to go woke to achive that, he will, and if he has to go reactionary to achive that, he will do that as well.
Fantail. “ Maybe the plan all along”. Well Ardern did smile when she told the media that she was implementing a “two-tier society”. That particular phrase probably helped sink her. Smiled nicely in that photo with Klaus too. It is effed, but the societal damage may be horrendously worse. The genderID scenarios and sexualisation of kiddies being played out in the education system is shocking and indefensible; equally so is the police sidelining women at Albert Park, and allegedly claiming it’s not their job to protect them. The first overt signal of the “rule of law” being put into abeyance was probably at the Parliamentary protest, when Parliamentary Services refused a police request to turn off Mallard’s sprinklers, thereby interfering in a police operation, and violating the separation of powers, IMO.
Teaching kids that some people are gay/trans and it is OK for them to be do, despite your foul Biblical objections is not sexualising them.
People who are unvaccinated are bascially anti-social and anti-human.
For a lot of voters particularly Labour, woke woker and wokest is not an option.
ACT appears to be less woke than the rest.
Expect ACT to hit 20%
No chance Jack.
You’ve got it backward. The tide is coming in for the right. The pendulum is about to swing back to sensible conservativism and old values. What you’re seeing in the Māori party’s polling is little more than a final gasp as the ventilator keeping their movement alive (Labour’s Māori caucus radicals) looks to be ousted from power.
What you’re seeing is a final threash, not a gearing up.
The momentum is with ACT and a harder style of right. Despite not being a conservative party, they’re only one fighting for core conservative values.
And if you’re right, that the separatist movement of radical Māori is picking up steam, I can guarantee you that will fuel ACTs rise faster. He Puapua woke a sleeping beast, and that’s ultimately why Jacinda knew she was better of bowing out before being tossed out.
Add to that the fact that PEW and other pollsters are starting to find that the Gen Z zoomers are suprisingly becoming increasingly conservative on a lot of issues, more so than millennials in some areas, and I think you’ll find sensationalist forecasts of the death knell of the right at the hands of the youth to not only be premature, but contrary to the facts.
Andrew? Is that you? How’s the weather in Romania? I can assure you, that for every sniveling right wing incel wannabe there are many rational and educated youth who can understand basic maths and statistics. I was an idealistic conservative once…. then I left school and grew up.
There is no Left or Right…only a broken political system that serves the Above and messes around with everybody else Below. Until the heavy hitters of NZ politics gets this, we’ll just get more of this waste of space, fighting among ourselves b/s.
A0. “ There is no left or right.” This was well exemplified when National failed to call out the Police Minister for the police’s dereliction of duty at Albert Park and seemingly helping set the scene for that day of shame. National was able to ignore the terrorising and silencing of women because the complicit New Zealand MSM did likewise; all on the same page.
A O You’ve hit a winner. But can we, when some of us gather together, nut out something that goes around obstacles while still keeping an eye out for what the paid sideshow is performing! It may be b/s but someone has to do the dirty job of dealing with the middens
and the sewers. And it takes time, commitment and informed action. Let’s face it we would not be in our present mess if we and our parents had not been nincompoops and fatheads all through the 20th century to now, and much earlier!
Note below: fatbergs build up over time – take much time to clear away.
Large fatbergs can take months to get rid of completely. Crews break up the monstrous clumps into smaller portions using pressure washers and slowly chipping away at the mass. Most of the fatberg has to be extracted by hand before it is put into trucks for disposal.
What are Fatbergs and Why does it Matter? – FryAway
fryaway.co https://fryaway.co › blogs › blog › what-are-fa
But mixing with kindly, practical people who will be loyal to the group and not go off half-cocked, to talk and plan and action with would be a better use of time than fighting. Example Student Army; organised to do a job of helping in emergencies in a certain way effectively and were much appreciated. They also thought on gender roles.
The thinking pattern has to widen, the good possibilities can then be envisaged; people who are hidebound can stay in their ruts, and the group/s can find new good ones to follow. That will enable thinkers and committed humans to climb over the middens, and learn to use composting toilets! A few metaphors/analogies there to put on the menu for chewing over.
I’m uncertain of the framing of Chris’ argument. I don’t see it as only young Maori aspiration versus older Pakeha status quo. Chris is missing complicating factors so large that old Pakeha versus younger Maori may become a sideshow. How about the 15% Asians, 9% Pasifica, groups likely to become significantly larger proportionately.
Their presence alone changes the argument.
Fair point, Nick.
You might be onto something there Nick J
Maybe someone should get some technical advice from GNS.