Implicit in this strategy is a strong belief that New Zealand society, or, at least, a majority of those New Zealanders determined to vote on 14 October, have embraced the Labour Government “line” on Ethnicity and Gender. Clearly, those who balk at the idea of injecting the concept of co-governance into the provision of public services; or reject as unfair the idea of trans-women competing against biological women in sport; will no longer find a welcome in Labour’s “big tent”. Once celebrated for its broad inclusiveness, Hipkins’ party has opted to greet potential supporters with a grim array of ideological bouncers.
This is not, however, the picture Hipkins wishes his audience to conjure-up. Quite the opposite, in fact:
“Elections are contests of policies and values”, says Hipkins. “Disagreements are a fundamental part of a healthy democracy. But I won’t seek to divide our communities. Labour’s focus in this election won’t be on imported culture wars, but fighting an economic war against inflation and inequality.”
From the man who issued a “Captain’s Call” ruling-out a Wealth Tax, these lines have a disturbingly Orwellian quality to them. It wasn’t Labour’s opponents who commissioned the He Puapua Report, and then kept its recommendations hidden from both NZ First and the voting public in the months leading up to the 2020 General Election. Nor was it National, Act or NZ First that whipped-up opposition to the visit of “Posie Parker”, and then downplayed the violence unleashed upon those who came to hear women exercise their right to free speech. No, when it comes to importing culture wars, Labour is well out in front of its rivals.
How else are we to interpret the following sentence explaining Labour’s refusal to work with Winston Peters’ party?
“New Zealand First has become a party more interested in toilets than the issues that really matter.”
The reference is to NZ First’s policy of ensuring that biological women’s – and men’s – right to privacy is protected by requiring public toilets and changing-rooms to include spaces for those whose definitions of gender differ radically from those of their fellow citizens. NZ First’s “architectural” solution to the intrusion of biological males into biological women’s spaces, may well strike voters as a laudable attempt to broker a compromise between the contending parties.
That’s not how Hipkins sees it. According to the Prime Minister, Peters is:
“[S]eeking to make trans people the enemy in this campaign.”
That is an extraordinary accusation. It does, however, comport with the political style of the aggressively woke, who interpret anything other than 100 percent acceptance of the “correct” ideological position as proof positive of “incorrect” beliefs and “genocidal” intentions.
In for a penny, in for a pound, Hipkins presses on:
“Living fully in your own skin isn’t always easy for any of us at the best of times, and it can be particularly hard for our rainbow communities. None of them deserve the kind of abuse that is being directed their way, stoked up by politicians who should know better.”
This is hard to take from the political party which, alongside the Greens, lent its support to a social movement whose followers openly threatened violence against those who dared to oppose them – and then delivered it.
It is all of a piece, however, with a party so convinced of its own rectitude that it has become incapable of construing disagreement as anything other than – to use the buzzwords du jour – “misinformation, disinformation and malinformation”. In its mildest form, this mindset offers “education” as the optimal solution to the “wrong-think” of dissenters. Among the hardcore, however, dissenters are to be suppressed. What Hipkins has signalled in his speech is a personal preference for the hardcore’s response to the communicators of “wrong-thought” – among whom he clearly includes Winston Peters and NZ First.
That Hipkins has opted to drag New Zealanders into the strange, looking-glass world of the super-woke is deeply troubling. According to the Prime Minister, dissent on questions of gender threaten the unity of the nation and automatically disqualify the dissenting party, NZ First, from any role in government. At the same time, Te Pāti Māori may pour scorn upon the principle of majority rule, and the democratic system it upholds, without rebuke. The party’s claim that Māori genes are superior to those of New Zealand’s other ethnicities, likewise, presents no barrier to entering a Labour Party-led coalition government.
What Hipkins’ speech makes clear is that Labour has opted to “go negative” for the seven weeks remaining before the election. The Prime Minister may wax eloquent about the unity of the nation, and claim that only Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have the right to speak for the shining Aotearoa-New Zealand of tomorrow; but what he has done, in the fractious world of today, is divide the nation into an “Us” who agree with the Red-Green-Brown troika’s radical programme, and a “Them” who cling to the wrong-thought of their outdated ideas and dangerous beliefs.
It is the intractable problem that besets all populist movements, be they of the Left or the Right. Who is, and who is not, to be counted among “the people”? Because, once you have determined who may properly be included in the “true” nation, then it follows that all those who fall outside your definition must be “untrue”. And what is the usual fate of those who prove untrue?
By the strictures set forth in his speech, Hipkins has identified the untrue nation as those who still believe that one-person, one-vote, one-value is the unalterable foundation of representative democracy. Also excluded from Team Chippy are those who answer the question: “What is a woman?”, with the words “Adult human female”.
By sunrise on 15 October, New Zealanders will know which nation is larger: the Woke Left’s “Us”, or the Centre-Right’s “Them”. Whatever else follows, the “others” being “worked with” are unlikely to include the untrue. The side, representing close to half the nation, that lost.
Chris Trotter is a political commentator who blogs at bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz - where this article was sourced.
This is not, however, the picture Hipkins wishes his audience to conjure-up. Quite the opposite, in fact:
“Elections are contests of policies and values”, says Hipkins. “Disagreements are a fundamental part of a healthy democracy. But I won’t seek to divide our communities. Labour’s focus in this election won’t be on imported culture wars, but fighting an economic war against inflation and inequality.”
From the man who issued a “Captain’s Call” ruling-out a Wealth Tax, these lines have a disturbingly Orwellian quality to them. It wasn’t Labour’s opponents who commissioned the He Puapua Report, and then kept its recommendations hidden from both NZ First and the voting public in the months leading up to the 2020 General Election. Nor was it National, Act or NZ First that whipped-up opposition to the visit of “Posie Parker”, and then downplayed the violence unleashed upon those who came to hear women exercise their right to free speech. No, when it comes to importing culture wars, Labour is well out in front of its rivals.
How else are we to interpret the following sentence explaining Labour’s refusal to work with Winston Peters’ party?
“New Zealand First has become a party more interested in toilets than the issues that really matter.”
The reference is to NZ First’s policy of ensuring that biological women’s – and men’s – right to privacy is protected by requiring public toilets and changing-rooms to include spaces for those whose definitions of gender differ radically from those of their fellow citizens. NZ First’s “architectural” solution to the intrusion of biological males into biological women’s spaces, may well strike voters as a laudable attempt to broker a compromise between the contending parties.
That’s not how Hipkins sees it. According to the Prime Minister, Peters is:
“[S]eeking to make trans people the enemy in this campaign.”
That is an extraordinary accusation. It does, however, comport with the political style of the aggressively woke, who interpret anything other than 100 percent acceptance of the “correct” ideological position as proof positive of “incorrect” beliefs and “genocidal” intentions.
In for a penny, in for a pound, Hipkins presses on:
“Living fully in your own skin isn’t always easy for any of us at the best of times, and it can be particularly hard for our rainbow communities. None of them deserve the kind of abuse that is being directed their way, stoked up by politicians who should know better.”
This is hard to take from the political party which, alongside the Greens, lent its support to a social movement whose followers openly threatened violence against those who dared to oppose them – and then delivered it.
It is all of a piece, however, with a party so convinced of its own rectitude that it has become incapable of construing disagreement as anything other than – to use the buzzwords du jour – “misinformation, disinformation and malinformation”. In its mildest form, this mindset offers “education” as the optimal solution to the “wrong-think” of dissenters. Among the hardcore, however, dissenters are to be suppressed. What Hipkins has signalled in his speech is a personal preference for the hardcore’s response to the communicators of “wrong-thought” – among whom he clearly includes Winston Peters and NZ First.
That Hipkins has opted to drag New Zealanders into the strange, looking-glass world of the super-woke is deeply troubling. According to the Prime Minister, dissent on questions of gender threaten the unity of the nation and automatically disqualify the dissenting party, NZ First, from any role in government. At the same time, Te Pāti Māori may pour scorn upon the principle of majority rule, and the democratic system it upholds, without rebuke. The party’s claim that Māori genes are superior to those of New Zealand’s other ethnicities, likewise, presents no barrier to entering a Labour Party-led coalition government.
What Hipkins’ speech makes clear is that Labour has opted to “go negative” for the seven weeks remaining before the election. The Prime Minister may wax eloquent about the unity of the nation, and claim that only Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have the right to speak for the shining Aotearoa-New Zealand of tomorrow; but what he has done, in the fractious world of today, is divide the nation into an “Us” who agree with the Red-Green-Brown troika’s radical programme, and a “Them” who cling to the wrong-thought of their outdated ideas and dangerous beliefs.
It is the intractable problem that besets all populist movements, be they of the Left or the Right. Who is, and who is not, to be counted among “the people”? Because, once you have determined who may properly be included in the “true” nation, then it follows that all those who fall outside your definition must be “untrue”. And what is the usual fate of those who prove untrue?
By the strictures set forth in his speech, Hipkins has identified the untrue nation as those who still believe that one-person, one-vote, one-value is the unalterable foundation of representative democracy. Also excluded from Team Chippy are those who answer the question: “What is a woman?”, with the words “Adult human female”.
By sunrise on 15 October, New Zealanders will know which nation is larger: the Woke Left’s “Us”, or the Centre-Right’s “Them”. Whatever else follows, the “others” being “worked with” are unlikely to include the untrue. The side, representing close to half the nation, that lost.
Chris Trotter is a political commentator who blogs at bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz - where this article was sourced.
8 comments:
"Working with others" through Public Private Partnerships (PPP) with the UN, WHO, IMF, WEF, Blackrock and other evangelic NGO'S, who of course have all of our best interests at heart and doing it for free???
That speech?
As I stated yesterday Labour will lose because they are lost.
They are lost because they have embraced (like the Greens and the Maori Party too) an absurd ideology that is a cult and in being lost they have betrayed every single New Zealander.
They all now pray to the 'absolute' of the doctrine of their individualised ideology as they see no other and any idea(s) outside the strict lines of their ideology are false to them and are seemingly the enemy.
Unless they drop the neo-marxist, critical race theory, gender psuedo science based (woke if you like) absurity that exists in minds that cannot critically analyse research, science, nature, education and of course visible reality then their can be no trust in their policies or politics.
The trust is lost because of the treason done by their capture of the absurd rather than living in reality like we all should.
Gee, it almost sounds like Hipkins has convictions. And I'm not talking about those imposed due to the crime wave he ushered in as Police Minister.
But we all know different. He is a one-dimensional woke caricature who is not fit to lead a nation.
And like his beloved but broken Labour Party, he has succumbed to a virus, far worse than Covid, that has infected all centre-Left parties in the West (and a fair few on the centre-Right too), robbing the sufferers of logic, fairness and common-sense. They now worship racism, tribalism and cancellation.
Misinformation is their rallying cry to anything they disagree with or haven't the wit to understand.
The woke wally just can't help himself...and he most certainly can't help the rest of us either.
Good riddance, Chippy. Go be woke somewhere else!
Another great article, two in two days. Hopefully someone in radio and tv land can learn a lesson and figure out the dross they are feeding the public and getting them to pay for it is a model for failure.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand our somewhat deranged PM.
He is a product of the woke group think currently infesting the beehive.
He has some thoughts of his own but really not many. Flitting from one meeting to another like a social butterfly gathering the feel good factor from left wing interest groups.
Never stopping for a moment to stop and think 🤔 does this make sense?
No, it all makes sense to him because he is God like in his thinking, above the little people who actually get shit done.
You saw the same traits in She who cannot be named, giving off an air of authority with no substance at all behind it.
"In It For You," states the Labour Party billboard. There are no prizes for guessing what the "It" stands for!
Kevan
How Hipkins contrives to project such assurance beats me. In his shoes I would be as composed as Kiri Allan. I wondwer how a person apparently so divorced from reality can ever govern rationally.
Isn't it psychotic to be so totally out of touch with reality by living in the woke fantasy world?
Parents and others usually wish to be considerate of the LGBTQ crowd but they quite rightly don't wish their unstable teenage children to be forceably indoctrinated into becoming one of them as has happened with the transgender movement with something like a 400% increase in girls wishing to transition since about the year 2000. Oddly, it used to be mostly boys transitioning last century.
Reference 'Why so many teenage girls want to change gender.' Family First.
Just how is it hateful in being justifiably concerned about this trend (fad) along with irreversible puberty blockers and gender assignment surgery?
Thank you Chris a satirical "on the money" summary of our condition 😊 A lot of us (Uri Tāngata) hate being used as a means to an end, not to mention the trauma we have experienced from resisting such madness.
Post a Comment
Thanks for engaging in the debate!
Because this is a public forum, we will only publish comments that are respectful and do NOT contain links to other sites. We appreciate your cooperation.