Vladimir Lenin famously said: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Does this apply to Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election?
I agree with Mobley. The Treaty Bill does not radically define the principles. It does start the conversation that TPM, Greens & Labour are striving to avoid. You have also not mentioned the important changes happening in South America - specifically Argentina. There is a non-violent revolution going on that the MSM here in NZ is strenuously ignoring & putting its collective head in the sand. This is every bit as radical and fundamental a change as the violent communist revolutions of the 20th century. The MSM seem to be hoping it will just go away, and that not by mentioning Milieu's enormous success, similar movements will not be encouraged in Australiasia. As with all censorship of this kind, it will not work, but will speed the demise of the MSM. Germany is also going through major upheavals you should seek to analyze also.
your blog is called the democracy project, with regards the ToW Priniciple legislation, you seem to have missed the point that if enough people support the legislation during Select Comm stage, then that is actual democracy... regardless of what politicians and parties might say. You should take the neutral position on this... state it.
I suggest that you take a good look at Trump’s policy on gender announced in February 2023. It indicates the nature of the problem and some solutions. I further suggest that our government takes heed rather adopting the blind prejudice of the Labour and Greens as they did when voting to allow changes to birth certificates. As a member of the Women’s Rights Party I am disgusted at the blatant partisanship of the Human Rights Commission in these matters. It seems that certain algorithms have overtaken the minds of academic individuals as they pursue their relentless attack on women’s rights.
Unfortunately, some of our jurists and academics have vivid imaginations, James; even if they are figments, if you spout ideas often enough, you can fool yourself into believing they are principles that soon enter the zeitgeist. Its better that we, the citizens, define these imaginary principles clearly so that jurists and academics can spend their time within the rules elected representatives have defined for us all.
I would like to think that if there is enough agreement about a need for clarification, that Winstone will step in and proclaim that there are no principles. Luxon will agree , and that will become the law
The whole world has had inflation, why do the Americans not understand this? Stupidity reigns there and let's face it the newly elected Trump is a CRIMINAL. A paedophile,a rapist, and a fraudster! How the hell is the world going to cope with him? Poor UKRAINE, poor GAZA and poor EUROPE! I don't think he will make the four years......then VANCE? Our last hope was NZ, but now what............MARS?
The pervasive and inflammatory anti Trump fear campaign is neither accurate nor helpful Margaret - least of all to that most mentally ill demographic of all - young lefty women.
It will be fine; Trump is a true patriot and hero and his team, Tulsi, Vance and Elon in particular are remarkable and successful people in their own right.
Ah, but do you believe in democracy or do you believe in it only when the ballot box result is in your favour? Bottom line more people supported the opposite view you had. Who would've thought?
Hmmmmmm.......I am not American.........I knew the race would be close and unpredictable. Shame, as I think the World will pay a hard price for this choice!
So democracy has failed us once again. What's the alternative? (Don't answer that!) I saw a pic of two gimpy lefties, dressed like parrots and with very poor muscle structure, sitting on some steps slobbering as though the world had fallen into oblivion. Talk about pathetic! I laughed myself silly. We reap what we sow! Next time support the worker, not some man who wants to play woman's sports or abortions when women feel like it or terrorists in Gaza or universities that fail in their purpose.
Are you all serious? And you seriously think TRUMP will fix this! If you are all New Zealanders, no wonder New Zealand is falling apart. I lived there and loved it, but found it financially difficult to survive there even though I was highly qualified.
Highly qualified at what - engineering, robotics, AI, STEM type jobs? Nope sociological nonsense. Helping gimps. Or is human Resources at a Woke University?NZ is in the state it is in due to six years of uncontrolled leftist government and flagrant overspending according to a family member who works at Treasury. Ardern, Little and Ginny-ginny-dreams-are-ten-a-penny from the Hutt notwithstanding, the real criminal is that fatso twat Robertson who wouldn't know a purse string if he tripped over it.
Correct. There are people working in the White House with Trump who have reasoned and persuasive powers that he will respond to. He's not a dictator; there are limits on his power, decisions are made by consensus. I read everything I could get my hands on when he was last elected and this is a conclusion I came to. He has power, sure, but it's not unbridled. A strong American internal economy is the West's only hope against those on this planet who DO wield unbridled power!
He was apparently in the Epstein files as having sex with 13 year old girls............I don't even understand what WOKE means............and I am also working class.
Well, you are not working hard enough. You don't understand what WOKE means or you're not prepared to try and understand?
here's list of things people who aren't WOKE believe in, at least for our nation:
• sex is dichotomous, not a continuum.
• a woman is an adult human female.
• Women should not have to compete against men in sports
• find terms like “chest-feeding” or “pregnant person” ridiculous.
• that we should be a country where everyone has equal rights rather than some having different rights based on ancestry.
• that science is universal, ever evolving and not bound to a place or time.
• free markets are good things that have helped millions around the world escape dire poverty and that, despite limitations, capitalism is far superior to socialism for improving the well-being of humans.
• that Jacinda Ardern was an authoritarian leader who took an axe to our civil liberties in the name of protecting public health.
• universities should be about a quest for truth and should not be forcing political indoctrination on to students.
• that the media has an obligation to report news fairly.
Trump completely disassociated himself from Epstein & Co many years ago and has promised to open up the Epstein files so highly unlikely. There are people that are sweating bullets right now over this and the P Diddy abuses. Trump is not one of them.
Trump's win for me came as a huge relief. Sure, no doubt there'll be downsides, but nowhere near the horror of a world run by an Ardern look alike in every respect that matters. Perhaps we are finally emerging from a post modern mass psychosis that has been impacting most Western democracies.
As for the TPB, it radically redefines only the fabricated Treaty so beloved of Maori activists and their leftist intellectual elite buddies (as they think of themselves) who live for the thrills and spills of the crusade against white oppression (self flagellation?), for whom the fun would be completely ruined if we were all just New Zealanders as the Principles Bill expounds. How very boring.
What has really screwed the 'working class' in NZ is the rise of the 'educated elite' and their demand for remuneration way beyond their worth. Nt only are they paid way too much, they infest local bodies and govt departments, busybodies telling us what we should be doing, with no idea of the results their idiocy causes!
Great to have this analysis so quickly and the parallels drawn between here and the US. In New Zealand despite Labour's pollster asking questions on the gender issues after the election there is little sign that they have learned the lessons of the defeat in 2023. * In the USA feminist lawyer Kara Dansky has been warning the Democrats for several years of their looming unelectibility if they continue to ignore the interests of women and girls. I think sadly she has been proven correct. She is a media savvy and a powerhouse worker and Women's Declaration International, an international NGO arguing for Women's Sex Based rights for which she is the US head has moved from a standing start less than 5 years ago to being an intervenor in Supreme Court cases to defend women's rights and to draw back on low evidence gender medicine for children, young and vulnerable people. See https://karadansky.substack.com/p/the-reckoning-3c2 and https://www.christianpost.com/voices/the-reckoning-how-the-democrats-and-the-left-betrayed-women.html In my mind she is an example of the green shoots of this incredible change that we are seeing. The left has much to learn from a return to social solidarity from its present obsessions with identitarianism. The question is will they continue to have the cloth ears that have affected them to date. * The polls show that most people believe people who identify as trans or non-binary are due human rights however they identify but it is when unacceptable demands are made on others (from mandated pronouns, to men in women's sports to transformational medicine that lacks evidence) then there is an understandable pushback. This pushback, assessed as transphobia by the woke left actually has a strong and entirely reasonable ethical basis.
Clarification: I am the author of the comment above and am also spokesperson for, (and an editor of), the Genspect New Zealand content. https://genspect.substack.com/s/new-zealand and I should have checked how I was logged in before commenting.
And here in an example from another country - Ireland - that saw the Taoiseach resign. This is the sole article that explains exactly why, when given the chance, Ireland didn't 'modernise' its constitution. https://thecritic.co.uk/the-grim-reality-of-a-citizens-assembly/
I was surprised and disappointed that The Democracy Project seem unaware of the rage many women - especially feminists and lesbians, along with gay men - are experiencing as the so-called leftist parties and Governments most of us have long supported have abandoned protecting our sex based human rights in favour the self-identification ‘gender’ politics. Male and female are biological categories. Sex matters in many, but not all, contexts: in most sports, in prisons, in health care, in education, and in spaces where women undress or discuss intimate, especially sexual, matters ( eg therapy). Labour and the Greens, as did the Democrats, pandered to the radical Transgender Activist lobbies. Mainstream media have continually disregarded or misrepresented Gender Critical feminist critiques of gender ideology ( the unscientific belief that everyone has some kind of ‘inborn’ psychological sense of being man, woman or any one of multiple neologisms). Biologically intersex bodies are very rare. Scientific evidence concurs that children and adolescents who feel ‘as if’ they were ‘born in the wrong body’, if offered psychological support, will usually come to accept their physiology and, more often than not, discover that they are gay or lesbian. Yet ‘gender dysphoric’ children in Aotearoa are being medicalised, according to Emeritus Professor Charlotte Paul, at ten times the rate of the UK and Scandinavia where this treatment is being sharply pulled back. I don’t know of any feminist group that does not support legal protection for gender non conforming adults, including those who have medically transitioned. But erasing the word ‘women’ in favour of ‘people’ in midwifery, health etc, is not only degrading but dangerous. This is why many of us abandoned those parties that still see themselves as ‘left’ - and in my case joined the fledgling Women’s Rights Party. But the only mainstream media coverage we get labels us as ‘anti trans’ ( rather than pro-sex), ‘haters’ ( rather than critics), and/ or lumps us in with the fundamentalist religious or conservative Right - movements opposed to most of the issues we feminists fought for. Until the Democracy Project engages with groups such as Genspect, Speak up For Women, Save Women’s Sport, Resist Gender Education (each of which has public-facing web pages), you will not understand the swing away from the so-called left ( which is no longer ‘left’ in its traditIonal sense.) The class war can breed Fascism as well as Socialism. When mantras like ‘trans women are women, no debate’ and ‘trans rights are human rights’ become dogma, and engaging with them intellectually is forbidden in any public space, the former is being enacted.
While I agree with your analysis Bryce of the how the Left has lost touch with the "working class" and the Left following a neoliberaleconomic path, I wonder if you are advocating the Left should drop its "wokeness." Woke is the new word for political correctness, but is actually code for the movement to address racism, sexism and colonialism, neuro diversity and transgender. issues. Do those who attack the affirmation of human diversity and social cohesion, usually described as conservative, really want to see a return to a homophobic, racist, sexist, and colonialist past? The Right is eager to exploit this conservativism with divide and rule, punishing those with disabilities, while advancing their fast track exploitation of the environment and abandonment of any attempt to have scientific and evidence based poliicies. Their cynical attacks on Maori tikanga and te tiriti, are reprehensible. but fodder to the conservative populists.
The right wing think tanks -Taxpayers Union and the NZ intiative, funded by the Atlas foundation, must be rubbing their hands with glee that political journalists and academics would write such shallow analysis of the current social phenomena (exploiting the fear of change, driven by social media and right wing owned radio and newspapers. - how does a talk back host like Mike Hoskin. financially supported by Sky City, become the most popular presenter. Are you suggesting parties of the Left should adopt conservative populist policies, in order to get elected.? While Labour might attract votes from the centre right but it would lose votes to the Greens and Te Pati Maori, both would be reluctant to form a coalition..
We live in challenging times, climate change, collapse of ecosystems, 2 dreadful wars growing inequality and hardship, no wonder people are fearful and are looking for solutions. We can listen to the science and accept the need to reduce our consumption or we can go down the rabbit hole which will result in the end of democracy.
'Some progressives hoped that Jacinda Ardern’s politics of kindness and focus on wellbeing would function as “a beacon of hope to the world”. But ... Ardern ranks as one of the least impactful elected prime ministers in our history.'
What did Labour actually accomplish during its six years of government? Even at last year's election I can only think of a promise to take GST off fresh fruit and veges.
When will Labour free itself from the ideological obsessions of the Great Awokening, and return to the basics of ending poverty, of mass building of state rental housing to end homelessness, of making health care for everyone free, accessible, timely, and comprehensive?
The case for taxing the rich, whether by CGT, or land taxes, or wealth taxes, will only win voters if there is a clear vision of what taxes are for, and how they will make ordinary people's lives better.
Much of the old unionised working-class has been union-busted and replaced by a producerist petty bourgeoisie, particularly in the Anglosphere. It's a bit less pronounced in mainland Europe where unions remain somewhat strong.
The whole election reminded me of the covid crisis in that the media of all types showed extreme bias in their reporting of Trump. I was pretty sure he'd win because I thought that the Democrats and the media actually had little grasp of the realities his supporters saw. It's interesting that they're all analysing the results from the point of view of what did we do wrong? and I don't see much of them asking what did Trump do right? Yes, he is portrayed as a pretty ghastly man but it's a very one-sided picture. For him to have won so decisively, with the votes from normally Democratic demographics, I think there's more to him that we're shown here.
The “Onserver” has just been given away to the controlling interests of the petro chemical industry.
No mention by you of the deliberate destruction of independent news or the hidden donations through the internet by controlling and largely unseen interests( ref Cadwalladr)
Interesting comparaison. I read it and love it. On our blog, we have published a neutral analysis of the campaign of both candidats and their profiles. And we have made the predictions for future mandate of the President. It match with what it is written here and brings the new elements. https://www.angelogeorgedecripte.blog/en/post/trump-vs-harris-the-critical-clash
I agree with Mobley. The Treaty Bill does not radically define the principles. It does start the conversation that TPM, Greens & Labour are striving to avoid. You have also not mentioned the important changes happening in South America - specifically Argentina. There is a non-violent revolution going on that the MSM here in NZ is strenuously ignoring & putting its collective head in the sand. This is every bit as radical and fundamental a change as the violent communist revolutions of the 20th century. The MSM seem to be hoping it will just go away, and that not by mentioning Milieu's enormous success, similar movements will not be encouraged in Australiasia. As with all censorship of this kind, it will not work, but will speed the demise of the MSM. Germany is also going through major upheavals you should seek to analyze also.
Bryce,
your blog is called the democracy project, with regards the ToW Priniciple legislation, you seem to have missed the point that if enough people support the legislation during Select Comm stage, then that is actual democracy... regardless of what politicians and parties might say. You should take the neutral position on this... state it.
Socialists just cant help themselves when it comes to politics.
I suggest that you take a good look at Trump’s policy on gender announced in February 2023. It indicates the nature of the problem and some solutions. I further suggest that our government takes heed rather adopting the blind prejudice of the Labour and Greens as they did when voting to allow changes to birth certificates. As a member of the Women’s Rights Party I am disgusted at the blatant partisanship of the Human Rights Commission in these matters. It seems that certain algorithms have overtaken the minds of academic individuals as they pursue their relentless attack on women’s rights.
I take issue with the comment that Seymour's bill will "radically redefine the principles of the Treaty. It doesn't!
There are no principles, its a figment of imagination
Unfortunately, some of our jurists and academics have vivid imaginations, James; even if they are figments, if you spout ideas often enough, you can fool yourself into believing they are principles that soon enter the zeitgeist. Its better that we, the citizens, define these imaginary principles clearly so that jurists and academics can spend their time within the rules elected representatives have defined for us all.
I would like to think that if there is enough agreement about a need for clarification, that Winstone will step in and proclaim that there are no principles. Luxon will agree , and that will become the law
The whole world has had inflation, why do the Americans not understand this? Stupidity reigns there and let's face it the newly elected Trump is a CRIMINAL. A paedophile,a rapist, and a fraudster! How the hell is the world going to cope with him? Poor UKRAINE, poor GAZA and poor EUROPE! I don't think he will make the four years......then VANCE? Our last hope was NZ, but now what............MARS?
Paedophile is going a bit far. Lesson for the Democrats is don’t ignore your base. Working class folk have had enough of woke.
You're onto it, Max!
The pervasive and inflammatory anti Trump fear campaign is neither accurate nor helpful Margaret - least of all to that most mentally ill demographic of all - young lefty women.
It will be fine; Trump is a true patriot and hero and his team, Tulsi, Vance and Elon in particular are remarkable and successful people in their own right.
Make America Great Again!
Geez.......successful con artists David. Just watch what happens. Amazing, amazing!
Ah, but do you believe in democracy or do you believe in it only when the ballot box result is in your favour? Bottom line more people supported the opposite view you had. Who would've thought?
Hey, I am a retired spy..................I take the WORLD the way it is and just keep a sense of humour.
Are you a member of the Eat The Rich club, Maggie?
Having lived in 14 countries and speaking 5 languages, these days I am just a retired cynic, who thinks the World should be socialist.
The spy who couldn't predict Trump's win!
Hmmmmmm.......I am not American.........I knew the race would be close and unpredictable. Shame, as I think the World will pay a hard price for this choice!
Therein lies the problem. Socialists, great at wasting other people's money!
Geeez!
So democracy has failed us once again. What's the alternative? (Don't answer that!) I saw a pic of two gimpy lefties, dressed like parrots and with very poor muscle structure, sitting on some steps slobbering as though the world had fallen into oblivion. Talk about pathetic! I laughed myself silly. We reap what we sow! Next time support the worker, not some man who wants to play woman's sports or abortions when women feel like it or terrorists in Gaza or universities that fail in their purpose.
Are you all serious? And you seriously think TRUMP will fix this! If you are all New Zealanders, no wonder New Zealand is falling apart. I lived there and loved it, but found it financially difficult to survive there even though I was highly qualified.
Highly qualified at what - engineering, robotics, AI, STEM type jobs? Nope sociological nonsense. Helping gimps. Or is human Resources at a Woke University?NZ is in the state it is in due to six years of uncontrolled leftist government and flagrant overspending according to a family member who works at Treasury. Ardern, Little and Ginny-ginny-dreams-are-ten-a-penny from the Hutt notwithstanding, the real criminal is that fatso twat Robertson who wouldn't know a purse string if he tripped over it.
Trump will fix this what? (I have never trusted a politician to fix anything. That way, I get a pleasant surprise when they do.)
Typical rant against Trump. He is not what you say.The world and America coped last time so what has changed?
Correct. There are people working in the White House with Trump who have reasoned and persuasive powers that he will respond to. He's not a dictator; there are limits on his power, decisions are made by consensus. I read everything I could get my hands on when he was last elected and this is a conclusion I came to. He has power, sure, but it's not unbridled. A strong American internal economy is the West's only hope against those on this planet who DO wield unbridled power!
He was apparently in the Epstein files as having sex with 13 year old girls............I don't even understand what WOKE means............and I am also working class.
Well, you are not working hard enough. You don't understand what WOKE means or you're not prepared to try and understand?
here's list of things people who aren't WOKE believe in, at least for our nation:
• sex is dichotomous, not a continuum.
• a woman is an adult human female.
• Women should not have to compete against men in sports
• find terms like “chest-feeding” or “pregnant person” ridiculous.
• that we should be a country where everyone has equal rights rather than some having different rights based on ancestry.
• that science is universal, ever evolving and not bound to a place or time.
• free markets are good things that have helped millions around the world escape dire poverty and that, despite limitations, capitalism is far superior to socialism for improving the well-being of humans.
• that Jacinda Ardern was an authoritarian leader who took an axe to our civil liberties in the name of protecting public health.
• universities should be about a quest for truth and should not be forcing political indoctrination on to students.
• that the media has an obligation to report news fairly.
If deny any of these, baby, you're WWWWWWWOKE!
Trump completely disassociated himself from Epstein & Co many years ago and has promised to open up the Epstein files so highly unlikely. There are people that are sweating bullets right now over this and the P Diddy abuses. Trump is not one of them.
"apparently"... love that word!
Trump's win for me came as a huge relief. Sure, no doubt there'll be downsides, but nowhere near the horror of a world run by an Ardern look alike in every respect that matters. Perhaps we are finally emerging from a post modern mass psychosis that has been impacting most Western democracies.
As for the TPB, it radically redefines only the fabricated Treaty so beloved of Maori activists and their leftist intellectual elite buddies (as they think of themselves) who live for the thrills and spills of the crusade against white oppression (self flagellation?), for whom the fun would be completely ruined if we were all just New Zealanders as the Principles Bill expounds. How very boring.
What has really screwed the 'working class' in NZ is the rise of the 'educated elite' and their demand for remuneration way beyond their worth. Nt only are they paid way too much, they infest local bodies and govt departments, busybodies telling us what we should be doing, with no idea of the results their idiocy causes!
Trump is President-elect for two days:
- Stock market hits record high
- Migrant caravan at our border dissolves
- Hamas calls for end to war
- Bitcoin hits record high
- Putin ready to end Ukraine war
- Qatar kicks out Hamas leaders
- EU will buy U.S. gas not Russian gas
- Putin will sell oil in U.S. dollars
- Zelenskyy phones Trump & Elon
- NYC Mayor ends vouchers for illegals
- Mexico to stop migrants at U.S. border
- China wants to work peacefully with us
- Big U.S. company to move out of China
Great to have this analysis so quickly and the parallels drawn between here and the US. In New Zealand despite Labour's pollster asking questions on the gender issues after the election there is little sign that they have learned the lessons of the defeat in 2023. * In the USA feminist lawyer Kara Dansky has been warning the Democrats for several years of their looming unelectibility if they continue to ignore the interests of women and girls. I think sadly she has been proven correct. She is a media savvy and a powerhouse worker and Women's Declaration International, an international NGO arguing for Women's Sex Based rights for which she is the US head has moved from a standing start less than 5 years ago to being an intervenor in Supreme Court cases to defend women's rights and to draw back on low evidence gender medicine for children, young and vulnerable people. See https://karadansky.substack.com/p/the-reckoning-3c2 and https://www.christianpost.com/voices/the-reckoning-how-the-democrats-and-the-left-betrayed-women.html In my mind she is an example of the green shoots of this incredible change that we are seeing. The left has much to learn from a return to social solidarity from its present obsessions with identitarianism. The question is will they continue to have the cloth ears that have affected them to date. * The polls show that most people believe people who identify as trans or non-binary are due human rights however they identify but it is when unacceptable demands are made on others (from mandated pronouns, to men in women's sports to transformational medicine that lacks evidence) then there is an understandable pushback. This pushback, assessed as transphobia by the woke left actually has a strong and entirely reasonable ethical basis.
Yes Genspect.
Just out here's Donald Trump's position on "gender transitioning" of minors and males in female's sports and private places: https://x.com/i/status/1855199877682098602
And on free speech: https://x.com/i/status/1855144438139330754
I was surprised and disappointed that the Democracy Protect
Clarification: I am the author of the comment above and am also spokesperson for, (and an editor of), the Genspect New Zealand content. https://genspect.substack.com/s/new-zealand and I should have checked how I was logged in before commenting.
Here is the first post-election that ignoring women's interests is not a winning strategy from the Canadian National Post. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/michael-higgins-the-rise-of-the-terfs-secured-trumps-victory?taid=672f7923c276f90001f41fdd which shows how the 'feminist" media analysis is entirely in denial of their own impacts.
And here in an example from another country - Ireland - that saw the Taoiseach resign. This is the sole article that explains exactly why, when given the chance, Ireland didn't 'modernise' its constitution. https://thecritic.co.uk/the-grim-reality-of-a-citizens-assembly/
I was surprised and disappointed that The Democracy Project seem unaware of the rage many women - especially feminists and lesbians, along with gay men - are experiencing as the so-called leftist parties and Governments most of us have long supported have abandoned protecting our sex based human rights in favour the self-identification ‘gender’ politics. Male and female are biological categories. Sex matters in many, but not all, contexts: in most sports, in prisons, in health care, in education, and in spaces where women undress or discuss intimate, especially sexual, matters ( eg therapy). Labour and the Greens, as did the Democrats, pandered to the radical Transgender Activist lobbies. Mainstream media have continually disregarded or misrepresented Gender Critical feminist critiques of gender ideology ( the unscientific belief that everyone has some kind of ‘inborn’ psychological sense of being man, woman or any one of multiple neologisms). Biologically intersex bodies are very rare. Scientific evidence concurs that children and adolescents who feel ‘as if’ they were ‘born in the wrong body’, if offered psychological support, will usually come to accept their physiology and, more often than not, discover that they are gay or lesbian. Yet ‘gender dysphoric’ children in Aotearoa are being medicalised, according to Emeritus Professor Charlotte Paul, at ten times the rate of the UK and Scandinavia where this treatment is being sharply pulled back. I don’t know of any feminist group that does not support legal protection for gender non conforming adults, including those who have medically transitioned. But erasing the word ‘women’ in favour of ‘people’ in midwifery, health etc, is not only degrading but dangerous. This is why many of us abandoned those parties that still see themselves as ‘left’ - and in my case joined the fledgling Women’s Rights Party. But the only mainstream media coverage we get labels us as ‘anti trans’ ( rather than pro-sex), ‘haters’ ( rather than critics), and/ or lumps us in with the fundamentalist religious or conservative Right - movements opposed to most of the issues we feminists fought for. Until the Democracy Project engages with groups such as Genspect, Speak up For Women, Save Women’s Sport, Resist Gender Education (each of which has public-facing web pages), you will not understand the swing away from the so-called left ( which is no longer ‘left’ in its traditIonal sense.) The class war can breed Fascism as well as Socialism. When mantras like ‘trans women are women, no debate’ and ‘trans rights are human rights’ become dogma, and engaging with them intellectually is forbidden in any public space, the former is being enacted.
While I agree with your analysis Bryce of the how the Left has lost touch with the "working class" and the Left following a neoliberaleconomic path, I wonder if you are advocating the Left should drop its "wokeness." Woke is the new word for political correctness, but is actually code for the movement to address racism, sexism and colonialism, neuro diversity and transgender. issues. Do those who attack the affirmation of human diversity and social cohesion, usually described as conservative, really want to see a return to a homophobic, racist, sexist, and colonialist past? The Right is eager to exploit this conservativism with divide and rule, punishing those with disabilities, while advancing their fast track exploitation of the environment and abandonment of any attempt to have scientific and evidence based poliicies. Their cynical attacks on Maori tikanga and te tiriti, are reprehensible. but fodder to the conservative populists.
The right wing think tanks -Taxpayers Union and the NZ intiative, funded by the Atlas foundation, must be rubbing their hands with glee that political journalists and academics would write such shallow analysis of the current social phenomena (exploiting the fear of change, driven by social media and right wing owned radio and newspapers. - how does a talk back host like Mike Hoskin. financially supported by Sky City, become the most popular presenter. Are you suggesting parties of the Left should adopt conservative populist policies, in order to get elected.? While Labour might attract votes from the centre right but it would lose votes to the Greens and Te Pati Maori, both would be reluctant to form a coalition..
We live in challenging times, climate change, collapse of ecosystems, 2 dreadful wars growing inequality and hardship, no wonder people are fearful and are looking for solutions. We can listen to the science and accept the need to reduce our consumption or we can go down the rabbit hole which will result in the end of democracy.
'Some progressives hoped that Jacinda Ardern’s politics of kindness and focus on wellbeing would function as “a beacon of hope to the world”. But ... Ardern ranks as one of the least impactful elected prime ministers in our history.'
What did Labour actually accomplish during its six years of government? Even at last year's election I can only think of a promise to take GST off fresh fruit and veges.
When will Labour free itself from the ideological obsessions of the Great Awokening, and return to the basics of ending poverty, of mass building of state rental housing to end homelessness, of making health care for everyone free, accessible, timely, and comprehensive?
The case for taxing the rich, whether by CGT, or land taxes, or wealth taxes, will only win voters if there is a clear vision of what taxes are for, and how they will make ordinary people's lives better.
Much of the old unionised working-class has been union-busted and replaced by a producerist petty bourgeoisie, particularly in the Anglosphere. It's a bit less pronounced in mainland Europe where unions remain somewhat strong.
The whole election reminded me of the covid crisis in that the media of all types showed extreme bias in their reporting of Trump. I was pretty sure he'd win because I thought that the Democrats and the media actually had little grasp of the realities his supporters saw. It's interesting that they're all analysing the results from the point of view of what did we do wrong? and I don't see much of them asking what did Trump do right? Yes, he is portrayed as a pretty ghastly man but it's a very one-sided picture. For him to have won so decisively, with the votes from normally Democratic demographics, I think there's more to him that we're shown here.
Yes it'll be a disaster, but at least the people sent a message that the Dems can't put the lobby groups ahead of there base.
Hopefully they are listening, and can stop calling the working class stupid. They've had enough of it.
The “Onserver” has just been given away to the controlling interests of the petro chemical industry.
No mention by you of the deliberate destruction of independent news or the hidden donations through the internet by controlling and largely unseen interests( ref Cadwalladr)
Interesting comparaison. I read it and love it. On our blog, we have published a neutral analysis of the campaign of both candidats and their profiles. And we have made the predictions for future mandate of the President. It match with what it is written here and brings the new elements. https://www.angelogeorgedecripte.blog/en/post/trump-vs-harris-the-critical-clash