Winston and the use of the N-word
Nazi is such an epically evil brand that almost 80 years after that German party’s demise it just has to be uttered once and it is – according to the New Zealand media – the most important thing to come out of an hour-long speech. Allude to Nazism, if ever so briefly, and it eclipses everything else.
If Godwin’s Law is that the longer a dialogue continues it will eventually get round to comparisons with the Nazis then Godwin’s Law by proxy is that the first thing to be reported on by the news media, no matter how long the dialogue, will be the bit about comparisons with the Nazis. It has been this way for 80 years. Winston Churchill was comparing the British Labour Party to Nazis while the blood in the Führerbunker was still wet. His namesake Winston Peters was comparing the Maori Party to Nazis in his State of the Nation speech at the weekend. And then as now the media have dutifully headlined the news-bait spook word. Then as now everyone in polite society is presumed to be aghast at the invocation of the boogey man. As Olivier’s unrepentant, sneering Nazi character says to Hoffman in ‘Marathon Man’ in the end scene: “You’re all so predictable!” (followed by a hoiking great spit in the direction of his face).
Winston Peters has such good timing I checked out of curiosity – his State of The Nation speech was one hour… exactly. On the button. From the moment he got to the lectern and the awful Chumbawumba music stopped to the moment he delivered his punch line slogan and the awful Chumbawumba music began again was precisely one hour and Winston filled it all with his Trumpian mix of script and digression like it was thirty years ago. A swaggering, hostile sortie of missives and invective, a denunciation of social misfits, delivered without missing a beatnik. Hard to believe the guy’s nearing eighty. How many other leaders could deliver down to the second like that? None have this capacity, but Winston does, and he does it with ease.
As far as State of The Nation speeches go, Winston is incapable of giving anything other than an opposition-style speech. He is firmly establishment and conservative but realises the tension necessary for political traction comes from challenging – thus he casts himself as a populist reactionary. This is his stock and trade – no matter whether he is in or out of government or in or out of parliament – a pin-striped suit, a coiffed hair-do, homilies from the 1950s and a barrage of insults against the media. While Winston has never changed his audience may have.
The event at Palmerston North was clearly overflowing. From the responses you may have thought he was chucking out meat packs from the back of a ute to party members, but I believe him when he says the 600+ were mainly public. The crowd at his Opotiki election meeting I went to (and wrote about here on The Daily Blog) were very much members of the public and he got a similar strongly positive response. The difference in audience from the 2020 campaign could be discerned from gauging what landed and what didn’t. The Covid points and pharmaceutical repeal met with great applause.
Watching various commentary following Winston’s speech that wasn’t from the Nazi-fixated mainstream media it seems clear that he has successfully attracted a sizeable number of Covid anti-vaccine, anti-mandate “truthers”. By sizeable I mean somewhere between one and two percent of the voting population – enough that if he keeps faith with them to the next election they could get NZ First over the 5% line again without the normal sub-5 decline they have previously been prone to.
The audience (and voter bloc) situation was probably best summed up by a ‘Counterspin’ bunny, Samantha Edwards, on Vinny Eastwood’s show (I’ve kept in the beginning ramble to give a flavour of where things are at in that dimension):
“That’s how these things are done. They don’t come in and are going, ah, ‘We want to cull you! Come over here so we can cull you!’ – they do these things subtly. […] The truth is they don’t know what we are up against. For example […] I was at Winston’s State of the Nation […] yesterday and – good people. My goodness you could hear the hope in the room. It was like a religious experience, you know, it was like Church. Because he was giving them so much hope, and when he says ‘no more Covid-19 mandates’ everyone cheers the loudest so you know this room is full of hundreds of people who are aware of that – who know the danger of that; but all the other stuff they’re not aware of it […] and so they are gravitating to the voice that’s giving them that hope.”
They have gravitated, across the flat plane of the Earth, criss-crossed by chem trails, to the voice of hope.
‘Hope’ was the word she used, but that was a vacant blonde take on the matter. ‘Hate’ and ‘fear’ are more applicable for the buttons he was pushing. She may have sensed hope, and there was an element of relief that the would-be colonial calvary was on the way to defeat the would-be Te Kooti’s of Te Pati Maori, but the reversal of liberal permissiveness Winston was cataloguing was not hopeful. His tone makes it clear the motivation is resentment. That said, if he can extend that feeling of salvation from the Covid enraged for the whole term his chances for re-election look promising.
Winston swivelled to attack the media just before halfway. His point on the Public Interest Journalism Fund having a mandatory Treaty ideology was well made. Positions are so entrenched however that concessions are impossible. The media and the Left are blind to the damage the Treaty ideology prerequisite has done to the perception of bias when it comes to the PIJF. Even Willie Jackson was shocked the officials had recommended such an overt politicisation (but went along with it anyway, I mean whaddyagonnado?).
The remedies appeared more like revenge for the most part – putting a stop to things, making things shittier for minorities, turning back the clock, applying “the handbreak” gleefully. The crowd was fully engaged by the end. The unmistakable voices of the women kept chiming in: “yes” after each threat, “yes”. He was going to get the whole darn NZ First slate of coalition promises through too, no matter what. He got two more pages of stuff out of the Nats than Rimmer did, so there’s more to manage. The cynic would say this is a set up for breaking the coalition at the first moment the rest of the Cabinet tries to stymie NZ First – keep a hardline, refuse to compromise, then play victim.
I thought it interesting that there were only four (maybe five) microphones on the stand. Was it a media boycott or is that all the media that remain in 2024? Winston addressed the crisis in media with some hope – at least it sounded like hope, he wasn’t specific at all – but funding might be forthcoming if they do their jobs properly. He can’t even offer hope without it being in the form of a menacing Muldoonist taunt.
Reviewing the coverage Winston’s SOTN it may be that rather than his rhetoric being extreme it is that journalists, and time, has moved on while he has stayed the same. Sure he has been completely consistent in everything he has said since the 1970s, but that’s the problem. Those things are just, increasingly, unacceptable forms of public discourse and the media will frame his words and sentiment in a contemporary context, not as he would prefer on an NZBC newsreel.
Winston said virtually nothing on the other two legs of the governing trifecta. We would expect nothing less – it was all about him and always will be. So when he was interviewed on The Platform with Sean Plunket on Monday about it he refused to answer if Luxon ‘was a good leader’ only saying when pressed that he was easier to deal with than previous leaders. So Luxon is not a good leader then – and a push-over to boot – glad Luxon’s deputy isn’t out of step with everyone else’s thinking on this issue.
The only n word that should be associated with Peters is NO. As in move on, do something else
I suspect that he gets support from various people (from all nationalities but mostly European-based) who are totally unable to accept that the position that NZ is in today was built on the theft of Maori land so they reject any idea of a treaty process or repayment to settle past wrongs. Often the people complaining about treaty settlements are not blessed with an abundance of wealth so they start feeling cheated when they perceive that Maori people seem to be getting more than them, as I implied earlier they are not interested in evidence but are controlled by selfishness.
It’s Winnie and David’s skill at propoganda tactics inventing new parables that muddy the water and capture the gullible.
I’d liken it to there being a family. All the kids are healthy and thriving except for one, wee Johnny who has chronic health issues.
The parents then spend more of the household budget on helping Johnny than on the healthy kids.
Then the lucky healthy kids , rise up in protest claiming Ma and Pa are practising ‘ seperatism ‘ , or worse apartheid and that Johnny is gaining privileges above them while they miss out.
In comes the RW government and wee Johnny is villified..
Treaty settlements are long established and widely accepted.
Co Governance is not on both counts.
Christopher Finlayson wrote a defence of co-governance in E-Tangata.
You can find it here. Finlayson was John Key’s Treaty Negotiations Minister. He continued the trend of both National and Labour governments until 2023 to have moderates quietly working in the background to conclude and ink treaty settlements. I am not a National or Labour supporter, but I’ve noticed this is one constant in 20 years of following politics.
The public perception is what Im talking about.
Well it is at a provincial/local level according to Luxon himself. He said he was quite happy with co governance arrangements at that level just not with central government. Makes little sense of course but that’s consistent with the incredible bullshitting man.
Public perception, hmmmm, taking $52,000 whilst claiming to be entitled?
Treaty settlements are widely accepted by Pakeha only
Deal with it
That attitude has a long history. They simply don’t like what they consider to be the undeserving poor. Who just happen to be anyone they don’t like.
It was OK for tariana turia to make the comparison but not Peters apparently.
No double standard there at all.
FFS. Someone who retired 10 years ago? They might have forgotten. You don’t have to go back that far to find a National party (and ACT) that had no issue with co governance.
Funny, no one had an issue with co governance when the Key government went into bed with the Maori party.
No double standard there at all.
Did you read that comment through before posting? As it lacks perspective, relevant information, or rationality, I think not…
Key was never going to give the “proles” any credible grievance to unite them, as he had orders to follow, so doing what soapsuds is doing now would have interfered with the process of “globalizing” NZ, which, I might add, he accomplished brilliantly…
The calculation may well be that the population is sufficiently “under the hammer” as to be too busy just surviving to work up the necessary anger at this blatant act of sabotage…
At this point, NZ will have to rely on the Maori, and the Governor General to kill this piece of evil work.
There’s plenty to criticize in Peters, and my own position on him has long been that I wouldn’t feed him to my notional dog, or vote for him if he died and rose again.
But the candidly anti-white racist rhetoric routinely employed by TPM, however well it may play to their disadvantaged base, deserves a serve. Cheerful racism is not to be celebrated, and TPM sabotages its position by going low in this way. If racism is ok for thee, you have no complaint whatsoever against me, should I choose to act in that fashion.
Spot on Stuart.
From recollection I don’t think he actually uttered the N word, but we all know what he was referring to.
But as a matter of principle, any political party dividing the nation down racial lines is in fact a fascist by definition.
don’t take it personally lads – white colonialist arsehole is an euphemism – bloody pakeha are so woke these days. Did you hear the one about the irish yadda yadda – maybe you should ask Sinn Fein about facism
Meh – read Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism.
It is of course in the interests of indigenous peoples to overstate the negative consequences of racism, just as Trans overstate the ‘importance’ of pronouns. The facts remain important however, and the moral standing of a disadvantaged group is progressed by lying their asses off.
” . . . delivered without missing a beatnik”. Very clever.
So now references to Nazi Germany, Nazi philospohy, Nazi actions are somehow sancrosanct, at least in New Zealand. Interesting
The last government can hardly be described as being nazis as they were giving the indegenious minority an oportunity to be involved in the running of our country,which has been denied them for 2oo years .The current government has behaved in a far more nazi way by trying to take away any opportunity for Maori to be involved in their wellbeing and life ,which is exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews .
Winston needs to look in the mirror in the morning and try and deny he is a racist brown nazi throwing his whanau under the bus.Also he needs to take a look at history and see how poorly the Maori who fought with the British in the land wars feared .They were shit on big time and ended up being servants to the pakeha.Winston is still a servant to his pakeha big spending donors .
An N.Z.B.C. newsreel was actually serious reporting, akin to the most serious of broadsheet newspapers. Bill Toft or Dougal Stevenson would lead their bulletins with stories about international relations and foreign wars — something that would never fly in the quasi-tabloid T.V.N.Z. newsroom.
This “dumbing down” effect has apparently lead to political parties that barely have a policy platform, and voters that have the mentality of an uneducated little villager. To make matters worse, any motivated, informed person simply leaves the country as soon as possible.
Treaty settlements are not accepted across the board because it is clear they are only token payments and, in no way, come close to fully compensating for grievances – wake up.
Superb, as always, Tim.
For my money, you’re the best contrarian writer in the country.
Second only to Martyn Bradbury.
Agree CT
Poor ole Winnie. Have I got a dementia care unit ready for you. But, please God not in the same place as my wife. Last sentence is to explain that I know it when I see it.
I’d been dreaming that Winston had lost the plot for a minute – thanks for waking me up. lol
lol – some pakeha are so fragile these days – esp. the men. There actually might be some merit in what TPM are alluding too. you should start a prepper cult or heaven forbid, a woke movement.
As usual, beautifully written Tim.
Except he wasn’t talking about them
Winston the Narcissist. Nasty neoliberalism and now Nazi. Shutting down media… sounds very much like Putin.
I am looking forward to his lawyer skills when he is sued by Chumbuwamba.
‘Smears’,’racism’ and in particular ‘political opportunism’ are the hall marks of Winston Peters political career.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/09/26/winston-goes-full-orewa-speech-the-sad-last-chapter-in-a-once-mighty-career/
Tuaranga was once known as the “Retirement Centre of New Zealand”
When Jim Bolger went back on the National Party’s election promise to pensioners to repeal the Lange/Douglas Superannuation Sur-Tax, after forming an alliance with ‘Grey Power’ and campaigning strongly on this policy in Tauranga. After Bolger’s turnaround, Winston Peters was in serious danger of losing the previously the safe National Party seat of Tauranga. To save himself from being tossed out of parliament by the voters of Tauranga, positioning himself as the champion of the elderly and pensioners, Peters bitterly attacked the Bolger National government over the broken promise on the Super Sur-charge. But even then polls showed Peters could still lose the seat of Tauranga. Peters started a campaign attacking Asian migrants for ruining the country, immediately Peters poll ratings jumped 7% enough to see Peters retain Tauranga.
Realising that he had tapped into a dark vein of racism in this country and it had paid dividends for him, Peters never turned back. Peters branched out into tapping anti-Maori sentiment. Being Maori himself, Peters could go further in exploiting Pakeha racism against Maori and go further with it than any White politician in this country would previously dare to.
It doesn’t always work.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300116810/election-2020-winston-peters-unleashes-on-labour-over-ihumtao-in-racerelations-speech-says-nz-first-stopped-deal-three-times