history – Page 50

VJMP Reads: Anders Breivik’s Manifesto XIII

This reading carries on from here.

In this section (pages 1068-1152), Breivik writes about a wide variety of topics, including a proposal for a merit system for the society of knights, how to counter state propaganda, an entreaty to European police forces and an argument for the reinstitution of patriarchy.

Again without apparent irony, Breivik writes that “[The media] deliberately portray us as the anti-thesis of the ideal person so that we achieve a minimum of impact when it comes to appealing to the average European.” This is a curious position if it is considered that the average European, being rather civilised, generally finds murderers unappealing.

It’s obvious from reading a document such as this one that a person with Breivik’s mind was clearly capable of carrying out the deeds he was accused of. But it’s hard to know what to make of someone who advises prospective mass killers to “Visit a male salon if possible and apply light makeup” before taking photos of themselves in order to look the best.

Here Breivik gives a very interesting explanation for the phenomenon of the mainstream media describing white mass shooters as “lone wolves” or “mentally unstable”: ultimately, the Establishment wants to avoid having to explain why there is an ideological opposition to the way they are running things, because having to explain this would give that opposition the perception of legitimacy.

This explains why ruling classes of all times and places are so quick to decry their opponents as “mad” – because it delegitimises them.

Yet again, Breivik decries Nazism: “We hate everything Nazi Germany stood for, in fact we view the current EUSSR/Multiculturalist regimes of Western Europe as totalitarian Nazi regimes.” It’s apparent that there will always be people who call him a neo-Nazi, but anyone who has bothered to read this document knows that this isn’t true.

The most difficult thing for most readers of this document to understand will be Breivik’s frequently declared opposition to “all hate-ideologies; communism, cultural Marxism/multiculturalism, Islam and national socialism.” Most people tend to assume that any mass shooter belongs to a hate ideology and will therefore have considerable difficulty putting Breivik in a box.

Also difficult to understand is Breivik’s frank acknowledgement of the success of Islam in honouring those who have martyred themselves for its cause. Perhaps this has occurred out of Breivik’s will to approach the question of nationalism from a military perspective.

When Breivik writes that “It is every Europeans duty to defend their people and country against the ideology of genocide, conquest and destruction known as Islam,” this raises a number of questions. Some of these questions are fair, but many will resist asking them for fear of granting legitimacy to violent nationalist sentiments.

The biggest is this: how do we know that Islam is not an ideology of conquest? Because the only thing stopping more people from following Breivik’s line of reasoning is the pervasive belief that Islam is not an ideology of conquest. If this belief does not accord with reality then it will eventually yield.

This is no trivial point. The fact remains that if a large number of fighting-age men come into your territory with an ideology of conquest then you are literally at war, no matter how much you might deny it or want it not be true. Who decided that these “refugees” came to Europe with a long-term will to peacefully integrate? Who is even qualified to decide such things, and, if no-one really is, how can it have happened?

Certainly if the millions of Muslims who are currently in Europe decide that they don’t want to peacefully integrate – and the experience from everywhere else is that they don’t – then letting them in in such numbers was a catastrophic strategic error from the perspective of European leaders tasked with maintaining the quality of life of their people. It might be a problem that takes a century or more to solve.

Perhaps it’s not unreasonable to declare these leaders traitors?

Interestingly, Breivik explicitly mentions in this section the fact that attitudes to Jews make it extremely difficult for European nationalist sentiments to unify around a common goal. On the one hand are neo-Nazis, who consider Jews the enemy; on the other hand are Christian conservatives, who consider the Jews a common ally against Islam.

At the end of this section, Breivik underlines the strength of his identification with Christianity, making the argument that only the Catholic Church can unite and speak for all Europeans and that conservative Christian governments ought to reflect this in their policy.

In all, it’s clear that the Establishment is, and must be, very uncertain about how to respond to someone like Breivik. They appear to have mostly decided to make the subject of him and his ideas taboo (which is, of course, a red rag to those of us at VJM Publishing), but this strategy is doomed to fail because of the increasing pressure brought about by the political trends mentioned in this document.

Where the Green Vote Collapsed From 2014

The Green Party has, by far, the best looking women, but that couldn’t prevent their party vote from collapsing at the 2017 General Election

The Green Party vote collapsed at the 2017 General Election compared to 2014. They got 10.7% of the total party vote in 2014, but could only manage 5.9% in 2017 (although this may rise slightly on specials). This article looks at who abandoned them over the three years from 2014.

The largest, most immediate clue is that the average Green voter was much poorer this year than they were in 2014. The correlation between median personal income and voting Green in 2017 was 0.03, compared to 0.31 in 2014. This means that, from being about as wealthy as the average ACT voter, the average Green voter is now about as wealthy as the average Kiwi.

If we look at educational achievement and voting Green, there is evidence that the Greens were completely abandoned by the university-educated crowd.

The correlation between voting Green in 2017 and having a Bachelor’s degree was -0.09, with having an Honours degree it was -0.08, with having a Master’s degree it was -0.09 and with having a doctorate it was -0.08. These figures represent a drastic reversal of the strong positive correlations between voting Green in 2014 and having a Bachelor’s degree (0.57), an Honours degree (0.75), a Master’s degree (0.64) or a doctorate (0.67).

A further strong clue comes from looking at the voting patterns of professionals. Working as a professional and voting Green in 2014 had a very strong correlation of 0.73, but by 2017 this had collapsed, to -0.10. There was a corresponding collapse in the correlations between working in professional, scientific or technical services and voting Green – from 0.63 in 2014 to -0.09 in 2017.

As referenced in a previous article, the vast majority of these voters went to The Opportunities Party in 2017.

The other interesting change was that the Greens won a lot more working class Pacific Islander support than previously.

The correlation between being Maori and voting Green was virtually the same in 2017 (-0.08) as what it had been in 2014 (-0.09). However, the correlation between being a Pacific Islander and voting Green went from a significantly negative -0.27 in 2014 to an almost uncorrelated -0.07 in 2017.

It’s possible that the Greens won a lot of sympathy from working-class brown voters in the wake of middle New Zealand ripping into Metiria Turei during her WINZ scandal, but that the Maori half of those voters preferred Labour in the final analysis.

Essentially what these numbers suggest is that the Greens hemorrhaged the support of the professional class to TOP, but won the support of a fair number of working class Pacific Islanders who probably felt sympathy with Metiria Turei during her trial and execution by the mainstream media machine.

This explains how the Greens suddenly became a much more Christian party than they used to be. When they still got the support of the mostly atheist professional class, in 2014, the correlation between being Christian and voting Green was -0.57. In 2017, after being abandoned by this professional class and welcomed by working-class Pacific Islanders, who are frequently religious, the correlation between being Christian and voting Green had actually become positive, at 0.21.

That many of these new Green voters were Pacific Islanders can also be seen from the fact that industries with a high Pacific Islander workforce component tended to switch to them. The correlation between working in the postal, transport and warehousing industry and voting Green became markedly less negative, from -0.29 in 2014 to -0.01 in 2017, and there was a complete flip in the correlation between working in manufacturing and voting Green, from -0.49 in 2014 to 0.23 in 2017.

It could be that the Greens lost much of their forward-thinking professional class to TOP but, in doing so, flattened out their bias towards the wealthy and the educated and became more of a mass socialist party that found a voice among those at the bottom.

This theory is supported by the voting patterns of age in the 2017 election. In 2014, the correlation between voting Green and being aged 20-29 was strong, at 0.56. By 2017 it had fallen to -0.05. This collapse was the most brutal suffered by the Greens from 2014, and represents their total abandonment by the most trendy and fashionable segment of society.

Tellingly, the correlation between being aged 5-14 and voting Green increased sharply, from -0.42 in 2014 to -0.08 in 2017. Obviously, children cannot vote but this tells us that young adults who were yet to have children (that aspiring professional class) were heavily represented among those who left the Greens after 2014.

Some might be interested to note that the correlation between working for a wage or salary and voting Green dropped from 0.41 in 2014 to 0.10 in 2017. This more than anything shows the extent to which the Greens of 2017 represent the working-class brown family more than they do the professional white childless urban couple.

This article is an excerpt from the 2nd Edition of Understanding New Zealand, which Dan McGlashan and VJM Publishing will have ready for sale at the end of October 2017. This will contain statistics calculated according to the official final vote counts and will be freshly updated with data from the 2017 General Election.

Where Labour Won Their Extra Ten Percent

The Labour Party won about 10% more of the electorate in 2017 than they did in 2014 – but where did these new voters come from?

The Labour Party under Jacinda Ardern won an extra ten percent of voters compared to the previous election. In 2014, under David Cunliffe, they won a paltry 25.1% of the total vote, but in yesterday’s election they won 35.8% (specials are yet to be counted but shouldn’t affect Labour’s vote percentage much). This article, by Understanding New Zealand author Dan McGlashan, looks at where they won these new voters from.

In the broadest and crudest sense, the Labour Party won a lot of support back from middle-class, middle-aged to elderly white people who had previously voted National, and from Maoris who had previously voted New Zealand First.

The correlation between voting Labour in 2014 and being a Kiwi of European descent was -0.76, but by 2017 this correlation had weakened to -0.56. This shift from negative to positive was replicated by the correlation between being Maori and voting Labour, which was 0.42 in 2014 and which had strengthened to 0.57 by 2017.

Taken together, these statistics suggest that Labour strengthened their position among the New Zealand-born. Indeed, we can see that the correlation between being born in New Zealand and voting Labour in 2014 was not significant at 0.01, but it had grown sharply to a mildly significant 0.30 by 2017.

This was met by corresponding drops in support from demographics who have a high proportion of immigrants. The correlation between being born in the Pacific Islands and voting Labour was 0.68 in 2014, and this fell to 0.43 in 2017, and also the correlation between born in North East Asia became more strongly negative, from -0.17 in 2014 to -0.35 in 2017.

These can be explained by the fact that some Pacific Islanders have been here long enough now to become part of the middle class. Conservative religious sentiments might have pushed some to National as well. Likewise, many of the Asian immigrants who have arrived recently are the moneyed classes looking to shift capital from Asia, and are different to the younger, educated Asian immigrant that Labour tended to let in.

There was already a notable gender gap when it came to supporting one of the two major parties. The correlation between being female and voting Labour in 2014 was already 0.31, but by 2017 this had strengthened to 0.40. There was also a very large reduction in the strength of the correlation between working part time and voting Labour. This was -0.65 in 2014 and -0.40 in 2017.

The Labour vote was also a fair bit older in 2017.

The correlation between being in the 20-29 age bracket and voting Labour in 2014 was 0.32, and this had fallen to 0.13 by 2017. Many of these people would have been young students who were persuaded to vote for The Opportunities Party.

The correlations for older age groups, on the other hand, became less strongly negative. The 50-64 age bracket had a correlation of -0.68 with voting Labour in 2014, but this had fallen to -0.59 by 2017. Likewise, the 65+ age bracket had a correlation of -0.58 with voting Labour in 2014, and this fell to -0.51 by 2017.

An interesting point here is that the correlation with being born in Britain in 2014 (-0.73) remained equally as strongly negative in 2017. So this tells us that a much greater proportion of this middle-aged to elderly group that switched from National to Labour were people with family in New Zealand, probably therefore grandchildren.

It might be that these people, having observed the sharper effects of neoliberalism on their wider family, no longer felt motivated to support it in the same way they did in 2014. After all, it was mostly this same group of people who made the most cash out of National’s immigration policies.

Further clues come from the patterns of voters based on their industry. Some industries shifted sharply towards Labour in 2017. Most notable were healthcare and social assistance (which had a correlation of -0.00 with voting Labour in 2014 compared to 0.20 in 2017) and education and training (which had a correlation of -0.01 with voting Labour in 2014 compared to 0.17 in 2017). Also notable is that the occupation of community and personal services workers had a correlation of 0.20 with voting Labour in 2014, increasing to one of 0.36 in 2017.

What this might suggest is that Kiwis whose jobs put them into contact with other people were the most likely to switch from National to Labour.

It could be that the type of Kiwi who is an everyday grandparent, and who has taken on a social conscience in their semi-retirement, has switched some of their sentiments away from National because of a lack of confidence in the belief that they would leave a good New Zealand to their grandchildren.

Looking at the statistics of the income bands, we can see that Labour’s surge won it back much of the middle ground. Although Kiwis with an annual income of less than $15K continued to overwhelmingly favour Labour, there was a swing towards them in the income bands of those groups in the centre.

The correlation between having a personal income of $15-20K and voting Labour rose to 0.13 in 2017 from -0.05 in 2014, and the correlation between having a personal income of $20-25K and voting Labour rose to 0.10 in 2017 from -0.09 in 2014. Even though these income bands are the common student ones, it was not there that the gains were made – the correlation between being on the student allowance and voting Labour in 2017 was, at 0.32, weaker than it had been in 2014 (0.34).

Taking into account the big Labour gains among part-time workers, what all this suggests is that a middle-class, elderly group of voters, probably with wider community ties and a stronger historical sense of what the country used to be like, have come to feel that Kiwi values are no longer represented by the direction the country is taking.

It’s important not to overplay this – the bulk of wealthy, older, white voters still went with National – but there is a clear trend evident. The electorate is simply not as convinced that the country is going in the right direction anymore, and the centre is starting to shift towards Labour.

Who Voted for The Opportunities Party?

The Opportunities Party found the best reception among the young professional class that had previously supported the Greens

Gareth Morgan’s project The Opportunities Party (TOP) ultimately fell short of the Parliamentary threshold, but there is already enough data for us to know who voted for them in last night’s election. Dan McGlashan, author of Understanding New Zealand, has a look at the demographics of TOP voters in this article.

The most striking statistics are that TOP took a small number of votes off both the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party and the Maori Party, and a huge number of votes off the Greens.

The correlation between voting TOP in 2017 and voting Greens in 2014 was an extremely strong 0.81, which tells us that the vast bulk of TOP voters came from there. Most correlations between voting TOP in 2017 and voting for other parties in 2014 were not significant: 0.16 for the ALCP, 0.15 for the Maori Party, -0.13 for Labour, -0.14 for National and -0.17 for New Zealand First.

Only two significantly negative correlations existed here. These were -0.28 between voting TOP in 2017 and voting ACT in 2014, and -0.36 between voting TOP in 2017 and voting Conservative in 2014. The reason for this is probably because these are the two parties who most conspicuously lack the social conscience that TOP campaigned on.

Crudely speaking, that suggests that TOP voters came from two main groups of roughly equal size. The first were disaffected Green voters, and the second were disaffected voters from all over the rest of the political spectrum.

In what is perhaps a function of the degree of social media saturation they achieved, TOP did the best among the technophilic segment of society. The correlation between voting TOP in 2017 and working as a professional was 0.64. The correlation between working as a professional and voting Greens in 2014 was 0.73, and this had collapsed to -0.10 by 2017, so it seems that the professional class almost wholesale shifted their loyalties from the Greens to TOP.

This is further underlined by the fact that there were moderately strong positive correlations between voting TOP in 2017 and having any university degree: 0.40 for having a Bachelor’s, 0.63 for having an Honours, 0.45 for having a Master’s and 0.58 for having a doctorate. These were all much more positive for TOP than for the Greens.

It was mostly white people who supported TOP. The correlation between voting TOP in 2017 and being of European descent was 0.37, compared to 0.05 for being Maori, -0.25 for being Asian and -0.40 for being a Pacific Islander. Although Asians usually have better educations than Kiwis of European descent, professional Asians tend towards ACT and, increasingly, National.

Perhaps the most striking correlation was the 0.60 between having no religion and voting TOP in 2014. This may the natural result of appealing to people on the basis of evidence, which is another way of saying that they want people who can think for themselves, and people like this are the group that rejects religious dogma the most strenuously.

It follows from these numbers that the average TOP voter would be fairly young, and indeed they are. The correlation between median age and voting TOP in 2017 was -0.14, compared to 0.11 with voting Greens in 2017. Considering that the correlation between median age and voting Greens in 2014 was -0.17, this suggests that TOP took much of the student/university vote from the Greens.

Indeed, we can see that the correlation between voting TOP in 2017 and being on the student allowance was a moderately strong 0.45. Considering that the correlations between being on the student allowance and voting Green collapsed from 0.55 in 2014 to -0.10 in 2017, we can guess that this shift was largely due to the influence of TOP.

Related to this is the fact that the strongest correlation between voting TOP and being in any age bracket is 0.36 with being aged between 20 and 29. The next strongest were the two neighbouring brackets of 15-19 and 30-49, all of which reflects that young people tend to have more active online social lives, where TOP did most of its advertising.

There were also very strong positive correlations between voting TOP in 2017 and working in arts and recreation (0.70), public administration and safety (0.66), education and training (0.52) and professional, scientific and technical services (0.50). These are the same industries that are most likely to employ the forward-thinking, educated young professional that used to call the Greens home.

The negative correlations with voting TOP in 2017 and working in a specific industry came with those whose workers do not tend to spend a lot of time online: manufacturing (-0.38), wholesale trade (-0.35), transport, postal and warehousing (-0.19) and agriculture, forestry and fishing (-0.11).

TOP voters were also significantly more likely to be born in New Zealand. The correlation between voting TOP in 2017 and being born in New Zealand was 0.26. Following naturally from the absence of sharp gender-based roles among the young professional class, the correlation between voting TOP and being male was only -0.02.

Going against the easy trend of a young elite is the correlation between voting TOP in 2014 and being a regular smoker, which was -0.05. One would expect it to be much more strongly negative considering the educational achievements of the average TOP voter (educated people smoke significantly less), but this weak correlation can be explained by the sizable number of cannabis law reform supporters who voted TOP, something also suggested by the collapse of the ALCP vote in the presence of another party who offered full legalisation.

Voting for TOP in 2017 had the same correlation with family income as voting National in 2017 did – 0.39 – which tells us that the average TOP voter is doing quite well. A picture starts to emerge of the average TOP voter as a person of either gender in their mid 20s to late 30s, university educated, probably with foreign experience and ambition, who is very rejecting of dogma and hierarchical thought and wants to make a clean break with the past, but who is also well-to-do in measures of social and mental health.

Some might say that this was the best sort of person that New Zealand has to offer, which is something for Gareth Morgan to consider if he wants to run again in 2020.