history – Page 59

Is The New Zealand Government About to See A Repeat of The 1990s?

The 1990s began with the chaos of a disintegrating Labour Government and ended with the chaos of a disintegrating National one

In the leadup to the 1990 General Election, the New Zealand Labour Party appeared to be falling to pieces. They had gone through three leaders in 15 months, with Mike Moore the most recent to wrest control of the jinxed idol, having convinced the hapless Labour Party caucus that he was a better bet for staving off what was looming as an electoral disaster.

The move turned a disaster into a catastrophe – the National Party won 67 seats in the election compared to Labour’s 29, as the Italy-style rapid changes in leadership gave the wider public the impression that Labour had lost the plot entirely.

This majority was enough for the National Party to force on the nation what the people called “Ruthanasia” – a Budget so callously tight-fisted that it appeared that National were trying to cull the poor through starvation.

The Budget was so unnecessarily cruel – in many cases leaving solo mothers unable to feed their own children at the end of the week – that even New Zealanders were appalled by it, and only by demoting the clearly psychopathic Ruth Richardson to the back benches did the National majority survive the 1993 General Election.

By the next election in 1996, the National Party had eroded most of the trust that Jim Bolger had earned in opposition, and they were only able to govern thanks to a rickety alliance with the New Zealand First Party.

When Jenny Shipley rolled Bolger in 1997, New Zealand had another psychopath in an influential position, and this made the alliance with Winston Peters untenable. Being neither a psychopath nor willing to submit to one, Peters was unable to work with Shipley and was duly sacked.

New Zealand First then disintegrated under the gravitational pull of the National Party as it tried to withdraw from its influence, and the New Zealand electorate responded to the wheels falling off the alliance by chucking the whole thing on the scrapyard.

The National Party was duly destroyed by Helen Clark’s Labour in 1999.

Since Helen Clark took the reins at the end of the 90s there has been nothing but orderly Government, but “History, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page…”

Our current situation in the winter of 2017 is fairly precarious, with Bill English having taken the leadership at the resignation of John Key last year. Any development that brought the stability of Bill English’s leadership into question could well lead to a comprehensive National Party loss this September.

The most likely way this would happen is by some scandal being followed by a poll that hinted suggestively at a National Party loss, at which point the National Caucus panics, then Paula Bennett does a Jenny Shipley and convinces the Caucus to support her leadership instead (ironically it was English himself who replaced Shipley as leader of the National Party in 2001).

In other words, Paula Bennett may seize upon any weakness shown by the blundering incumbent PM in order to achieve her own Prime Ministerial ambitions, despite being grossly unfit for the role.

Judith Collins might also play the role of Shipley, depending on who moves first and with what support.

Either would be suicide for the National Party, because there’s nothing less orderly than an involuntary change of leader.

What the public wants, more than anything, is that the Government maintains good order, and what the public needs, more than anything, is that the Government maintains good order.

We don’t actually need it to do much else. If it can simply keep the peace, the rest of us can get on with our lives of commerce and trade. We can make ourselves rich and happy without their help – all we need is for them to not interfere.

From 1840 to the early 1900s New Zealanders developed our country from the Stone Age to first place among all the living standards of the world, and this was achieved without any of the National, Labour, Green or New Zealand First parties existing.

All we need is for the megalomaniacs at the top of the national dominance hierarchy to maintain good order, and we can do the rest.

This is why many political commentators miss the mark when they decry Andrew Little for his lack of charisma.

It’s true that Little has the charisma of a brick, but so what? He’s not going to be personally leading a company of men into battle. He’s going to be inheriting the reins of a civil machine that has been fine-tuned for almost two decades.

His job, as mentioned above, is to maintain order. To that end, being boring is a qualification. He hasn’t said a word about either of the two hot issues stirring up the left at the moment (cannabis law reform and increasing the refugee quota), and this is no doubt a carefully calculated tactic to make him appear suitable as the man to steady the ship.

After all, it’s a heavy increase to the refugee quota that is more likely than anything else to bring a massive amount of chaos to these shores, as both the Green and Opportunity Parties are gagging for it.

Some say that the National Party are the natural ruling party of New Zealand. If there’s any truth to this it’s because the National Party are the best at maintaining good order.

If Little really wants to become Prime Minister this year, all he has to do is what Helen Clark did two decades before him – simply maintain good order in his own party, and wait for the ambition and greed of the National MPs to cause them to devour each other.

Latest Frontiers in the War on Free Speech in the West

Free speech is the foundation of civilisation. Without it, it’s not possible for a person to express their discontent with the way things are, and without an outlet for discontent it will inevitably turn into violence. As John F Kennedy told us, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

There are powerful political movements in the world today who have calculated that criminalising free speech benefits their agenda, despite this risk. These movements usually have a kind of feminine logic at their core, in that they consider themselves to be righteously resisting masculine excesses like discrimination.

Most are predicated on the moral assumption that, in any conflict between two forces, the weakest force must automatically be the morally correct one, on the grounds that the weaker side would not start a conflict that they would lose.

After some decades of percolating away in sick heads disconnected from reality, this assumption has led the social justice warriors to now believe in the moral imperative of destroying all hierarchy on the grounds that it is necessarily masculine and therefore inherently evil.

No consideration is given to the concept of correct hierarchy that leads to good order – such a thing is simply axiomatically defined as impossible. All order is bad, therefore all must be destroyed.

Such a morality naturally leads to the idea that all weakness is inherently good – hence the resurgence of what Nietzsche would have called “slave morality” in the West.

This explains why so many are bleating the catchphrase of the modern moron: “Hate speech is not free speech” – where hate speech is defined as the promulgation of facts that, despite being true, are politically inconvenient to those who are anti-hierarchy.

In particular, any fact which suggests that a particular hierarchy might be natural and inevitable has to be the most strenuously opposed. As Nietzsche pointed out, the reason for this is the resentment that these weaklings have towards those strong enough to impose good order upon themselves, for it is good order imposed upon oneself that leads to rising in worldly hierarchies.

For instance, the proposition that the text of the Koran will lead inevitably to violence is vociferously opposed by those who want to propagate the impression that the wars in the Middle East are caused primarily by Western interference.

Likewise, the proposition that Islamic terrorism in Europe is a natural consequence of the text of the Koran is opposed by those who want to propagate the impression that the terrorism is blowback for Western interference.

Unsurprisingly, such propositions – entirely independent of any historical or logical validity they might have – are increasingly lumped under the general rubric of “Islamophobia.”

They join propositions such as statements about racial differences in intelligence, or about gender differences in propensity towards certain patterns of behaviour, as politically incorrect ones.

The latest frontier in the war on free speech is attempts to criminalise the free expression of such propositions.

Already there is a concerted movement that means to make it illegal to point out the obvious connection between Koranic verses calling for violence and Islamic expressions of violence, or the obvious connection between the belief that a paedophile was the perfect man and culturally lax attitudes to paedophilia.

The tragedy is, the only reason why the West is no longer an oppressive shithole like the Islamic World is that we have spent the last four centuries using our freedom of speech and expression to destroy the evil of Abrahamism in its manifestation of Christianity.

And, in much the same way that the West was an oppressive, miserable shithole when it was illegal to criticise Christianity, so too will it be an oppressive, miserable shithole when it is illegal to criticise Islam.

What has to happen is a cultural shift where screaming “Racist!” or “Bigot!” at someone is no longer socially sanctioned as legitimate discourse. There needs to be a mass awakening to the fact that this strategy of political manipulation has the overall effect of suppressing honest discussion, and therefore is detrimental to everyone in society, and to society as a whole.

This will require sane people uniting around the spirit of genuine inquiry into the nature of reality, and in opposition to the egomaniacs who are trying to remake the world in their image by force.

And that means uniting around a shared appreciation that free speech keeps us safe from all kinds of excesses, even politically correct ones.

After all, it’s not a coincidence that the Anglosphere, with the strongest cultural appreciation of the value of free speech, has kept itself safe from totalitarianism for the longest time.

Divide and Conquer in New Zealand

As the 2017 General Election draws nearer, the intensity of the propaganda is increasing from all sides. Even the Internet – once a technophile’s lodge of respite from politics – is now full of Gareth Morgan’s advertisements. In all the confusion, it’s easy to forget that the ruling class will win the election, as they have every other one.

The principles of iron are the same in all times and all places. Ultimately, if someone is capable of bringing more physical force to bear on your body than you can on theirs, they are your boss and you can only act freely at their pleasure.

It’s very easy to see how this operates in reality.

Iron can be used to make an axe, and the axe can divide the head of any person opposing the will of the wielder of that axe from that person’s body, rendering them incapable of resistance.

For the majority of the billion-year history of life on Earth, iron took the form of fangs and claws and teeth. Nowadays, that iron takes the form of handguns on the holsters of the loyal Police, but the principles are the same.

Everyone understands this – but few understand that the principles of silver operate in much the same fashion.

There is no need to divide someone’s body with iron if you can equally well render them incapable of resistance by dividing their mind – and this is done by silver.

More specifically, this is done by telling lies.

Take, for example, the lies that John Key told about GST to get elected – in particular, promising not to raise GST from its then 12.5%. This promise was made because it is known that consumption taxes disadvantage the poor relative to income taxes, and so the suckers in the middle were more likely to vote for Key.

When Key was duly elected and took power, one of the first moves was to raise GST to 15%. This had a particular effect on the electorate that was not noted at the time.

What this lie did was to cleave New Zealand, as if with a silver axe, into one group who profitted from the lie, and one group who suffered from it.

The group that profitted from it didn’t appear to really care much that the other half of the country had lost out from being lied to by their Prime Minister. After all, they ended up with the long-coveted income tax cuts.

The group that suffered from it found that, not only had they lost, but they had lost by being lied to, and they had lost from being lied to by their own Prime Minister. Worst of all, no conversation about the effects of these lies seemed possible.

The corporate media, beholden to Key and to the National Party for their news cycle, moved on to the next infotainment fad, and the subject was forgotten.

It can be predicted, without any great effort of foresight, that the corporate media will use this year’s General Election as an occasion to set the plebs against each other for profit.

It can also be predicted, with similar ease, that anyone who points out the grotesque nature of the charade that is the televised circus of psychopaths dumping their verbal excrement into your subconscious mind at 50Hz will not find appreciation among those same plebs.

So much so that knowing which of the possible options represent a “genuine change” and which are just the usual lineup of pocket-lining, trough-guzzling criminals will become impossible in the noise and chaos.

We could tell you that we were going to provide an alternative, but then why would anyone with sense trust us?

Understanding New Zealand: Demographics of Flag Referendum Voters

Given what is already known about the demographics of the various party voters, we can tell a lot about who supported the flag referendum just by looking at the correlations between voting for a given party and one of three other major variables.

The first major variable is the turnout rate in the first flag referendum.

The correlation between turnout rate in this first referendum and voting National was a very strong 0.86. That is enough by itself to suggest that the bulk of the people who did end up voting in it were National supporters.

The correlation between turnout rate in 2014 and voting National was, however, 0.76, so we can see that the people who voted in the first flag referendum were mostly those who are generally inclined to vote whenever they can. This was also true for Conservative Party supporters, who had a correlation of 0.70 with turnout rate in the first flag referendum.

Green, ACT and New Zealand First voters were only mildly interested. The correlation between turnout rate in the first flag referendum and voting Green was 0.07, with voting ACT it was -0.01 and with voting New Zealand First it was -0.21. None of these were significant.

Labour Party voters were almost entirely indifferent to the whole idea. The correlation between voting Labour in 2014 and turnout rate in the first flag referendum was a very strong -0.84.

This was something broadly shared by all of the Maori-heavy parties. The correlation between turnout rate in the first flag referendum and voting for both the Maori Party and Internet MANA was -0.67, and with voting for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party it was -0.55.

Predictably, given these statistics, it was mostly Kiwis of European descent who were interested in the first referendum. The correlation between being of European descent and turnout rate in the first flag referendum was 0.85.

The correlation between turnout rate in the first flag referendum and being either Maori or a Pacific Islander was -0.65, and with being Asian it was -0.27.

Perhaps the most striking correlation of all is that between turnout rate in the first flag referendum and turnout rate in 2014 – this was an extremely strong 0.90. Those who like to vote tend to take every opportunity they can to actually do it.

There was also a correlation of 0.89 between turnout rate in the first flag referendum and median age.

The correlations between wealth and turnout rate were significant, but only marginally so.

All of the income bands above $70K were significantly positively correlated with turnout rate in the first flag referendum, but only marginally so – the strongest of them was 0.31. None of the income bands below $70K had a significant positive correlation with turnout rate in the first flag referendum.

By contrast, all of the income bands below $10K had a correlation of -0.50 or more strongly negative, the strongest of all being for those who had a negative income. The correlation between being in this income bracket and turnout rate in the first flag referendum was -0.84.

Likewise, the correlations between education and turnout rate bordered on statistical significance.

Although there were significant positive correlations between turnout rate in the first flag referendum and having either an Honours degree (0.25) or having a doctorate (0.27), this was true for neither a Bachelor’s nor a Master’s degree (both 0.13).

Mirroring this, the correlation between turnout rate in the first flag referendum and having no academic qualifications was not especially strong, at -0.28.

One of the strongest correlations of all was between turnout rate in the first flag referendum and living on freehold land: this was 0.87.

All of this gives us a clear picture. The sort of person who turned out to vote in the first flag referendum was the same sort of person who is most heavily involved in running the country: rich, old, white and National voting with leisure time.

The second major variable is the turnout rate in the second flag referendum. Here it is only really meaningful to speak of the differences in voting pattern to the first flag referendum.

Although the second flag referendum was still mostly a vehicle for Kiwis of European descent (the correlation between the two demographics strengthened from 0.85 to 0.88), the people who turned out for it tended to be more Maori. The correlation between turnout rate in the second flag referendum and being Maori came in to -0.57 from -0.65.

Against this, turnout rate for the second flag referendum faded among Pacific Islanders and Asians. This may have been because the further the process wound on, the more likely the least established Kiwis were to drop out of it.

People who voted Green were also less likely to turn out in the second flag referendum. The correlation between the two fell to 0.02 from the 0.07 of the first flag referendum. This was probably because the correlation between being in the 20-29 age bracket and turnout rate fell from the -0.41 of the first flag referendum to the -0.50 of the second.

All of this reflected the fact that the second flag referedum saw a considerably higher turnout rate among those who did not want to change the flag. The correlation with voting to change the flag fell from 0.86 for the first flag referendum to 0.80 for the second.

The third major factor is the percentage of people who voted to change the flag.

These people were almost all National voters. The correlation between voting National in 2014 and voting to change the flag in the second flag referendum was a whopping 0.95. This is an extremely strong correlation, and it tells us that basically the only people to even vote to change the flag were died-in-the-wool National voters.

Maoris really didn’t want to change the flag – the correlation between the two was -0.77. These numbers suggest that there was a small core of Maoris who knew from the beginning of the process that they didn’t want to change the flag, but who waited until the second flag referendum to voice their disapproval.

Asians were a curiosity, because they had a negative correlation with turnout rate in either referendum, but a slightly positive correlation of 0.11 with voting to change the flag.

Some will find it very curious that the old were much more likely to vote for change than the young, which goes against the usual pattern of the old being more conservative.

The correlation between being aged 65+ and voting to change the flag was a very strong 0.62, which is amazing if one considers that one of the arguments for keeping the flag in the first place was that old people had become accustomed to it over many years of living under it.

For their part, the young preferred to keep the flag. The correlation between being in the 15-19 age bracket and voting to change the flag was -0.53.

Some might find these latter points extremely interesting, because they support anecdotal evidence from overseas suggesting that the generation to follow the Millenials – those who some have dubbed Generation Z – are more conservative than their immediate predecessors.

This question will be revisited in the second edition of this book, to be written after the 2017 General Election!

This article is an excerpt from Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan, published by VJM Publishing in the winter of 2017.