Why the New Zealand Working Class is Destined to Turn to Fascism

With the signing of the UN Compact on Migration, the Sixth Labour Government all but assured that the New Zealand working class will turn to fascism. They won’t do so straight away, and many will claim that they won’t do so at all, but the snowball has been set in motion. This essay will explain why.

From the turn of the century in Europe, a new pattern started to emerge: the resurgence of anti-globalist sentiments. Globalism had dominated the world for the previous half-century. Nationalism was comprehensively defeated in World War II, and the next fifty years were characterised by anti-protectionist trade agreements that liberalised commerce and trade all over the world.

Western workers were promised that this liberalisation would lead to better living conditions, as their wages would be able to buy goods and services more cheaply and efficiently. The reality turned out to be the opposite. Western workers turned out to be the product, and trade liberalisation simply meant that international companies could play workers in different countries off against each other, bidding their wages down to the floor.

Eventually the globalist propaganda stopped being effective, as people started to see through it. They realised that they had been cheated – not only were they not richer, but they now had to live with the effects of the mass importation of cheap labour into their communities. This meant increased violence, increased property crimes and increased sex crimes, all of which the elite were safely inured from by virtue of living in wealthy neighbourhoods.

The European working class were brutalised by globalism. Their wages went down, their neighbourhoods became less safe, and on top of it all, they were regularly humiliated by the same political class who claimed to represent them. Leftists habitually dismissed working-class concerns as “bigoted” or “motivated by racism”, as if it were unreasonable to complain about the destruction of one’s community or of the possibility of raising a family on one wage.

This sentiment has found increasing expression in fascism. At the last Swedish General Election, the Sweden Democrats won 17.6% of the vote. The globalist parties refuse to co-operate with them, and as a consequence the country has been ungovernable for the last 100 days. In Germany, opinion polls are suggesting that the Alternative Fuer Deutschland now has as much support as the major social democratic party, which suggests that the government of Europe’s largest economy risks falling into a similar state of paralysis.

New Zealand is merely a few decades behind on this same miserable path of social decay.

You’d have to be insane to vote National as a working-class person. Not only do they want to cut all of your social assistance, but they also want to import the same hordes of cheap labour that has destroyed Europe over the last 40 years.

But you’d also have to be insane to vote for Labour. The New Zealand Labour Party has long ago replaced all of its working-class sentiments with bourgeois ones. As a result, they’re right behind the UN’s Global Compact on Migration. This follows in the same vein as the recent increase in the refugee quota, and is commensurate with Jacinda Ardern’s ambition to become a highly-ranked UN official.

As a working-class person, an increase in the refugee quota, and an liberalisation of the ability of cheap labour to move here, have a number of terrible consequences.

The first and most obvious is the destruction of the economic position of the working class. The economic position of those who sell their labour for a living is entirely dependent on the supply of that labour. Basic economics tells us that if the supply of cheap labour goes up, the wages go down. So the more people who are let into the country to compete with the working class, the lower the standard of living becomes.

Even worse is the destruction of the social position of the working class. Instead of being seen as economically disadvantaged individuals who might need extra social assistance, the working class (especially the white working class) are now seen as enjoying privilege that refugees don’t have. They now find themselves facing verbal abuse for defending their own class interests by opposing globalisation.

These consequences come on top of the changes brought by the last 30 years of neoliberalism, which has changed the position of the working class from an essential part of the nation to a disposable commodity to be bargained down to the cheapest possible price. The net result of it all is a deep sense of humiliation, rage and betrayal.

If the working class feels like the left has abandoned them (perhaps because the left has become captured by bourgeois interests), they will find an alternative from outside the right-left liberal democratic dichotomy. There is ample historical precedent for this – indeed, it was a deep sense of anger among the working class that led to Mussolini and Hitler taking power in their respective countries.

The Maori working class will be the most receptive to the fascist message. This is apparent from their existing high level of support for the (supposedly) nationalist New Zealand First party. This particular group has already lost their social position from colonisation, and are not at all keen to lose it again to what is effectively more colonisation. They will be among the strongest supporters of fascism in New Zealand.

If the left react to this intensifying sense of abandonment by lecturing the working class about how they are racist, and how they are selfish, and how they need to sacrifice more to do their share of helping out, then a fascist resurgence is all but guaranteed. As Emmanuel Macron recently proved in France, nothing will amplify the fury of the working class more than to inflict moral lecturing on top of their economic and social suffering.

The New Zealand working class will turn to fascism because the two mainstream parties are co-operating – and will continue to co-operate – to take measures that will destroy the economic and social position of that class. The inability of the working class to find expression within the liberal democratic system will lead to them destroying it by supporting a fascist alternative as soon as one arises. The New Zealand Establishment will not heed the lessons of history.

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