Dr Kevin Donnelly: How the Frankfurt School Captured the Culture – and How to Fight Back

Conservatives have too often failed to realise that “politics is downstream from culture”. So argued Douglas Murray in a recent obituary of the late Peter Whittle, founder of the New Culture Forum (NCF), following the adage popularised by the late American journalist Andrew Breitbart, himself the founder of Breitbart News. “Too many conservatives for far too long felt the crucial battles were about economics”, Murray writes. “The NCF founder helped to correct that error.”

NZCPR Newsletter: The Politics of Division

Most New Zealanders will have watched last week’s Albert Park demonstration against British woman’s rights campaigner ‘Posie Parker’ with alarm and disgust, as a surging mob of howling rainbow rights activists threatened to crush her, while the Police stood by and did nothing.

The division, violence and anger that was on display that day, will be an enduring legacy of the Ardern-Hipkins Labour Government.

Instead of advocating the democratic ideal of equality and unity, Labour has championed diversity and division.

NZCPR Weekly: The Failed Ideology of Cultural Marxism

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

In this week’s NZCPR newsletter, we reveal how the separatists’ attacks on colonisation is underpinned by the failed ideology of Cultural Marxism and we outline the real cause of tribal disparity; our NZCPR Guest Commentator Professor Jeff Fynn-Paul of Leiden University provides a must-read analysis which proposes a new model for dealing with indigenous and post-indigenous difficulties based on human capital development; and our poll asks whether New Zealand needs a Race Relations Commissioner.

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Dr John O’Leary: A deadly uniformity

Toward the end of last year, I went to an academic conference. I’ve attended quite a few in the past – they’re one way of keeping up with the latest thinking in one’s subject, especially valuable for independent writer/researchers like me who work largely alone, only occasionally dipping into the academic milieu. Generally, I’ve enjoyed these conferences, though they are perhaps more fun in retrospect, or at least after one has given one’s paper, when one can relax. But this one left me depressed.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a nice enough conference. The organisers had gone to some trouble to make attendees feel welcome. There were thoughtfully arranged extra-conference activities, and an elegant dinner, complete with a piper and a man in a kilt telling jokes between the main course and dessert.

NZCPR Weekly: Powerful Forces Threaten Our Future

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we look into the forces that are dividing New Zealand and threatening our future; our NZCPR Guest Commentator Bob Edlin investigates the Race Relations Commissioner’s recent attack on a newly elected local body councillor, and our poll asks whether you believe Meng Foon should be asked to resign.

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Karl du Fresne: The long march of cultural Marxism

A significant anniversary passed recently with surprisingly little fanfare.

News stories marking the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx focused on the fawning tribute paid to him by the Chinese president Xi Jinping.

There was a large dollop of irony here, since the modern Chinese communist party is highly selective in its application of Marxism. It has combined Marxist-style political totalitarianism – brutal suppression of dissent and absolute obeisance to the party – with a largely unfettered capitalist-style economy. 

Melanie Phillips: The Tory Jacobins

The reason why conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have lost their way so badly in recent years is that they never understood, and paid scant attention to, the culture wars. In Britain, this has now led some of them to come out as warriors on the wrong side.

Conservatism is not an ideology but an attitude of mind. It involves identifying and holding onto what is most valuable and defending it against erosion or attack. In the 18th century this was embodied in the thinking of Edmund Burke, widely considered to be the philosophical godfather of conservative thought, when he defended freedom and human rights against the barbarism of the French Revolution.

Karl du Fresne: Dunedin - finger-wagging capital of the world

What on earth has happened to Dunedin? I’ve always thought of it as a city of hard-working, practical, no-nonsense people, reflecting its Scottish Presbyterian heritage. It was the home of Sir James Fletcher, founder of a construction empire, Henry Ely Shacklock, who made the country’s first electric ranges, and Bendix Hallenstein, whose name lives on in the menswear chain he established.

I wonder what such men would make of Dunedin today. Once a southern bastion of industry and commerce, it’s now chiefly known for the torrent of shrill, moralistic scare-mongering emanating from Otago University. It seems hardly a week passes without someone from Otago University, or one of its satellites in Christchurch and Wellington, warning us that our drinking and eating habits are leading us to moral and physical ruin.