Category: futurism

Which of Labour or National Shares the Most With New Zealand First Demographically?

Is has been argued that Winston Peters ought to go with whichever side is most like New Zealand First demographically – but which is it?

There are many competing reasons for thinking that Winston Peters ought to go with one or the other of Labour or National in the post-election negotiations to form a Government. Some say that any arrangement with the Greens involved will not be stable enough, some say that the Opposition parties won a clear majority and therefore a mandate for change, some say that Winston will go with whoever he feels like going with. This article, by Understanding New Zealand author Dan McGlashan, looks at things another way.

We will follow here the argument that Peters ought to side with whichever out of Labour and National represents the people most similar to their own, and to that end this article will make a judgment using six major demographic categories, viz. age, ethnicity, education, income level, gender and homeownership rates.

Age

The correlation between voting National in 2017 and median age was a very strong 0.77, which represents the old people who own everything, and between voting Labour in 2017 and median age it was -0.66, which represents the people who are yet to become financially established and are living primarily on their wages.

The correlation between voting New Zealand First in 2014 and median age was negative, at -0.08, but by 2017 it had become significantly positive, at 0.24. This is primarily because of a large number of young, working-class Maoris shifting to Labour.

Young people drifted away from New Zealand First this election, and old people drifted in. The correlation between being aged 20-29 and voting New Zealand First was -0.38 in 2014 but had become -0.60 by 2017, whereas the correlation between being aged 65+ and voting New Zealand First was 0.10 in 2014 and had become 0.36 by 2017.

Young voters tend to not like either National or New Zealand First, whereas elderly voters like both, so that suggests a greater age overlap with the National Party. Decisively, the correlation of 0.24 between voting New Zealand First in 2017 and median age is 90 basis points away from the Labour figure, and only 53 basis points away from the National figure, so National win this one.

National 1, Labour 0

Ethnicity

The stereotype is of New Zealand First as an old, white, racist’s party, which is a very odd perception when it’s led by someone who played for the Auckland Maori rugby team. The truth is much more complex.

Voting New Zealand First in 2014 and being a Kiwi of European descent was perfectly uncorrelated, at 0.00. Between voting New Zealand First in 2014 and being Maori the correlation was a strongly positive 0.66. That means that at the time of the last election, the stereotype of New Zealand First voters was entirely false.

Some truth crept into it in 2017, however. By 2017 the correlation between being a Kiwi of European descent and voting New Zealand First had risen to 0.19, whereas the correlation between being Maori and voting New Zealand First had fallen to 0.40. This means that New Zealand First is still more of a Maori party than it is anything else, but that sentiments of white Kiwis are also well represented.

The correlation between being a Kiwi of European descent and voting National in 2017 was a strong 0.51, and for voting Labour it was correspondingly weak, at -0.56.

This means that New Zealand First is slightly more like National when it comes to whiteness, but far more like Labour when it comes to Maoriness. The correlation between being Maori and voting National in 2017 was a strongly negative -0.68, whereas the figure for voting Labour in 2017 was, at 0.57, very close to the New Zealand First figure.

New Zealand First was fairly to similar to National in that their party was mildly disfavoured by Pacific Islanders, in contrast to Labour. The correlations between being a Pacific Islander and voting National or New Zealand First in 2017 were -0.35 and -0.17 respectively, very different to the correlation between being a Pacific Islander and voting Labour, which was, at 0.57, as strong as the one with being Maori and voting Labour in 2017.

This is unlike the case of Asians, who were moderately more likely to prefer National to Labour, and who despise New Zealand First. The correlation between being Asian and voting National in 2017 was 0.10, only a smidgen stronger than what it was in 2014. Between being Asian and voting Labour in 2017 it was -0.09, but between being Asian and voting New Zealand First in 2017 it was -0.58.

All in all, if you weight each ethnicity by the number of Kiwis belonging to it, it’s more or less a draw.

National 1.5, Labour 0.5

Education

Labour shares with New Zealand First an affinity from those with few NZQA qualifications. New Zealand First was by far the most poorly educated voting bloc in 2014, and, although it’s true that they still are, the margins became smaller.

The correlations between having no NZQA qualifications and voting New Zealand First or Labour in 2017 were similar, at 0.69 and 0.45 respectively, and very different to that of having no NZQA qualifications and voting National in 2017, which was -0.32.

This isn’t really surprising because someone with no NZQA qualifications is not likely to have a large income or a number of rental houses, and so will not benefit from National’s refusal to institute a capital gains tax, and they are very likely to be living hand to mouth or close to it, which means they lost out from the rise in GST to 15%.

Some will be very surprised by the voting patterns of the highly educated, though. On the one hand, it might not be surprising that the university educated were mildly disinclined to vote Labour in 2017. The correlations with doing so were -0.32 for people with a Bachelor’s degree, -0.28 for people with an Honours degree, -0.27 for people with a Master’s degree, and -0.21 for people with a doctorate.

But neither were they particularly inclined to vote National. The correlations with voting National in 2017 were 0.15 for having a Bachelor’s degree, 0.10 for having an Honours degree, and 0.09 for having either of the two highest degrees. As it turns out, a large number of these people voted TOP, ACT or Green.

Compared to their sentiments towards Labour and National, university graduates are extremely disinclined to support New Zealand First. The correlations between voting New Zealand First in 2017 and having a university education was -0.73 in the case of having a Bachelor’s degree, -0.69 for an Honours degree, -0.74 for a Master’s degree and -0.60 for a doctorate.

This suggests that neither Labour or National have much in common with New Zealand First educationally, but Labour does share with New Zealand First a supporter base of very uneducated people. This is worth three-quarters of a point to Labour and one quarter to National.

National 1.75, Labour 1.25

Income

Leaving aside the truly broke, who know that their bread is buttered with Labour, not National, and who are indifferent to New Zealand First, voters in every income band are about equally likely to prefer Labour and New Zealand First to National.

The most wealthy Kiwis dislike New Zealand First even more than they dislike the Labour Party, which is perhaps a commentary on how the Labour Party supports the wealthy by way of supporting neoliberalism.

People with an income of $150K+ had a correlation of 0.24 with voting National in 2017, -0.43 with voting Labour in 2017 and -0.51 with voting New Zealand First in 2017, and those with an income of $100-150K had a correlation of 0.26 with voting National in 2017, -0.40 with voting Labour in 2017 and -0.54 with voting New Zealand First in 2017.

This suggests that the people who are creaming it the most look at Labour and New Zealand First with a similar level of disdain.

People in the $50-60K income band were almost perfectly indifferent to all three parties. The correlation between being in this income band and voting National in 2017 was 0.01, with voting Labour in 2017 it was -0.03 and with voting New Zealand First in 2017 it was 0.04.

This tells us that people in the middle – either the young, poor, ambitious and going up or the old, middle-class, satisfied and looking to hang on – wouldn’t really mind which way Peters went.

The people in the working-class income bands between $25 and $40K, in contrast to those in the $100K+ income bands, look at Labour and New Zealand First with a similar level of approval.

Kiwis earning $35-40K had a correlation of 0.49 with voting New Zealand First in 2017, which is much closer to the correlation between being in this income band and voting Labour in 2017 (0.38) than it is to the one between being in this income band and voting National in 2017 (-0.37).

In the income bands lower than this, people tended to support New Zealand First all the more. To the poorest New Zealanders, there is no apparent difference between National and Labour, and such a mindset seems to find a home in New Zealand First.

Ultimately, wealthy Kiwis like National and dislike Labour and New Zealand First, and poor Kiwis dislike National and like Labour and New Zealand First, so this one goes to Labour.

National 1.75, Labour 2.25

Gender

The correlation between voting National in 2017 and being male was 0.23, understandable as men earn more money than women and are therefore relatively likely to lose from the balance of taxation and welfare spending.

The correlation between voting Labour in 2017 and being female was 0.40, also understandable for the opposite reasons to why the men vote National – women earn less money and therefore benefit more from a party that raises taxes for the sake of social spending.

New Zealand First voters fell right in the middle. The correlation between voting New Zealand First in 2017 and being female was 0.10, which placed it almost exactly as far away from the National figure as from the Labour one.

In other words, New Zealand First voters were slightly more likely to be female, which fell in between National’s moderately more likely to be male and Labour’s strongly more likely to be female.

National 2.25, Labour 2.75

Homeownership

Curiously, the correlations between living in a mortgaged house and voting in 2017 for any of the three parties under discussion were basically identical. For National and Labour it was both 0.16, and for New Zealand First it was 0.14.

For living in a freehold house, things were a bit different. Predictably, people who lived in freehold houses were much more likely to vote National than Labour. The correlation between living in a freehold house and voting for National in 2017 was 0.65, and with voting for Labour in 2017 it was -0.51.

But people who voted New Zealand First fell almost right in the middle – the correlation between living in a freehold house and voting New Zealand First in 2017 was 0.22. This might be marginally closer to National but this was not the case in 2014. At that election, voting for New Zealand First had a correlation of -0.05 with living in a freehold house.

A similar pattern presented itself for those who were renters. The correlation between living in a rented house and voting for National in 2017 was a very strong -0.79, and with voting for Labour in 2017 it was also fairly strong, but in the other direction, at 0.56.

Again, New Zealand First voters fell in the middle. The correlation between living in a rented house and voting Nw Zealand First in 2017 was -0.26, which again falls right in between Labour and National. This one has to be another tie, at half a point each.

Final score: National 2.75, Labour 3.25

In the final analysis, it would be far from easy for Peters to choose between Labour and National on the basis of demographic similarities. Age would push him towards National, income towards Labour, and gender and homeownership rates would be even.

This makes for a very strong negotiating position in one sense. Unlike the Green Party – who cannot support National without committing suicide in the manner of the Maori Party and the British Liberal Democrats – New Zealand First could plausibly support either Labour or National, meaning that either side has an incentive to offer as much as it can to them.

However, Winston Peters has also been forked. He has to make one group of committed New Zealand First supporters unhappy. Either he makes the elderly European contingent unhappy by going with the Green Party, or he makes the working-class Maori contingent unhappy by going with National.

No doubt this calculus means that Peters will take his sweet time, and consider every possibility, before deciding on whose head he will place the crown.

*

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.

The Best Argument For Taking Thousands Of “Refugees”

If we let in a hundred of these a year, we’d soon forget about our petty differences

Ronald Reagan gave a very strange speech at the United Nations once. He spoke about how the nations of the world would settle their differences and come together if faced with an extraterrestrial threat. This is actually a reference to a law of human psychology, and this same law provides the best argument for increasing our refugee quota.

There no denying that social solidarity has steeply declined in New Zealand over the past 25 years. Ever since the Mother of all Budgets, as a consequence of which the rich and the poor learned to truly hate each other, we have seen a Labour Government open the borders to Pacific Island immigration, and then a National Government open the borders to Asian immigration.

After all this, New Zealand citizenship has been devalued so much that hardly anyone really feels like a Kiwi anymore, apart from in the most superficial ways.

There’s no longer any cultural value that defines us as unique among the cultures of the world. Some say we are “multicultural” but that’s just another way of saying that we have nothing in common with each other. Some say we have the All Blacks but for the majority of immigrants, who could just as happily have ended up in Australia, this is little more than a flag of convenience.

Seeing what’s happened in Europe in recent decades, however, gives us a clue as to how we can strengthen our national bonds.

For the vast majority of its history, the kings and tyrants who wished to unite Europe faced a particular problem. Europe is an extremely culturally diverse continent, and the vast majority of Europeans hate basically everyone else. So they have never been inclined to unite under the banner of “European” because they identify with their village above all and then their shire and maybe at a stretch with the idea of a nation.

The idea of a “European race” is really a New World idea, applied retrospectively by American, South American and British Empire thinkers to the old continent, to describe how it appeared in contrast to their own racially heterogenous societies. Europeans aren’t fond of it.

However, the rulers of the European Union know one thing about the fundamental laws of human psychology: nothing brings a disparate group of people together faster than a common enemy. To that end, the last twenty years of mass Muslim immigration has been a godsend.

It’s inevitable, given the tenets of the faith that they follow, that if large numbers of Muslims immigrate to a particular locale, they will end up clashing with the incumbents. There’s simply no way that an ideology that commands its followers to seek out non-believers and kill them can co-exist with its neighbours, any more peacefully than Nazism could.

So now, a curious phenomenon has arisen in Europe. Any two Europeans (or Western Europeans at least) can meet and share a common story of how much they hate Muslims. Every European now has a story about being robbed or beaten, or their car set on fire, or their girlfriends sexually harassed, by a Muslim.

This has led to bonds of intra-European solidarity first starting to appear all across the continent, and now – as more stories are shared – starting to strengthen. An astute observer of history can see the battle-lines being drawn already.

If New Zealand lets in a large number of Muslim refugees, such as the 5,000 per year that the Greens and The Opportunities Party are proposing, then it’s only a matter of time until the first Truck of Peace attack kills a significant number of Kiwis. The terrorists, when they make their move, will not discriminate between types of Kiwi: we will all be infidel.

It is then that we all – Maori, Pakeha, Islander and Asian alike – will have, for the first time since World War Two, a mutual enemy. Therefore, it may be that the country needs mass Muslim immigration so that Kiwis – as the Europeans have been forced to do – can come together in mutual rejection of the hate ideology of Islam, as we once did against the hate ideology of Nazism.

However, this is also very close to the worst argument for taking in thousands of refugees.

Over a century ago, it was prophecised by high-ranking Freemason Albert Pike that World War Three would involve the mutual annihilation of Israel and the Muslim world, leaving the Christians in charge of the planet.

If one looks at the mass Muslim immigration that Western political leaders have pushed on us over the last twenty years, it’s possible that the West is being conditioned to hate Muslims with the intent of making Westerners psychologically ready to wipe them out if they should annihilate Israel. If this is the case, it might not matter what we do.

However, taking in a large number of Muslims may, in the short term, bring Kiwis of all races together in mutual rejection of infant genital mutilation, abuse of women, abuse of homosexuals, hatred of Jews and hatred of outsiders. We should keep in mind, however, that doing so is truly to play with fire.

Why The Concept Of White Genocide Doesn’t Make Sense

The concept of white genocide, as popular as it currently is in some quarters, doesn’t make sense if seen from a biological perspective

The discourse in some quarters of the Internet appears to be obsessed with race rhetoric. Some hysterical people are talking about “white genocide” and “white replacement” – the idea that nefarious forces have conspired to completely rid the world of white people forever. As this essay will demonstrate, there are three major reasons why the entire concept of getting rid of white people doesn’t even make biological sense.

The first reason is natural selection. Because race is such a taboo subject in our societies, relatively few people are aware of the basic biological reality that the different races are merely different adaptations to different environmental conditions.

For example, everyone knows that black people tend to live near the equator and white people tend to live further away from the equator. The reason for this is that people whose ancestors lived in Africa evolved to have black skin on account of that black skin is much less likely to get damaged by the intense heat and light that characterises that continent.

The exact opposite is true of people whose ancestors lived in Northern Europe. In Scandinavia there is very little heat and very little sunlight. This has led to people whose ancestors lived there evolving to have white skin because white skin is much more sensitive to the light and therefore absorbs more of it.

The highest rates of skin cancer in the world are in Australia, New Zealand and the Southern USA. The reason for this is because these countries are mostly populated by descendants of Northern European immigrants, whose skin has evolved for much lower levels of sunlight. As a consequence, becoming sunburned is a very common experience for white people in these countries, and sunburn leads to skin cancer.

Black people who live in Northern Europe run a much higher risk of developing rickets, for the reason that the human body needs Vitamin D to stave off rickets and Vitamin D is mostly gained from absorbing sunlight. Because black skin has evolved to be insensitive to sunlight on account of there being so much of it in Africa, the low levels of sunlight in Northern Europe can mean that the bodies of black people don’t create enough Vitamin D to be healthy.

What all this means, from the perspective of natural selection, is that if you took millions of black people and moved them all into Europe, their descendants would evolve to be white, because black skin will always provide a relative selective disadvantage in latitudes with low levels of sunlight.

A “great replacement” is therefore impossible on account of that it goes against the will of Nature. People with black skin in Northern Europe will get sick relatively more often, which means they will die before reproducing relatively more often, and so over time the gene pool will whiten. This is, of course, very similar to what will happen to white people in Australia and New Zealand.

There is absolutely nothing that puny humans can possibly do to stop this from happening. The Will of Nature will out.

The second reason is sexual selection. Even people who know about natural selection often don’t understand sexual selection very well. The short of it is that any phenotype that is more sexually attractive to the people around them will have an evolutionary advantage as long as that perception of sexiness exists.

Let’s say that the white nationalist’s nightmare scenario came to pass, and Europe opened its borders entirely to the third world, which led to hordes of Muslims and Africans males flowing into Europe to inseminate white women. Not only would this fail to wipe out the white race, but it could actually backfire completely, thanks to something called genetic drift.

If the borders between Europe and Africa were erased overnight, and black people and white people started intermixing, the result after two generations would be a population of strongly varying phenotypes. There would be people with light skin and light eyes, people with dark skin and dark eyes, people with light skin and dark eyes and people with dark skin and light eyes.

Sexual selection would mean that the most attractive of the resulting offspring would come to reproduce at a higher level, on account of having a wider range of mating opportunities.

It is believed that all of the blue-eyed people in the world are descended from a single common ancestor, who lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

It’s possible that blue eyes have a selective advantage over brown eyes for reasons of sexual attraction. When a person becomes sexually aroused by another person, their pupils usually dilate. This dilation is one way that humans signal a readiness for mating. This means that the more noticeable the dilation, the more likely it is that any such dilation will be picked up by a potential mating partner and lead to copulation.

Because the contrast between the dark iris and the pupil is greater for blue eyes than for brown, sexual arousal is more apparent in a blue-eyed person than in a brown-eyed one. As detailed above, this increased ability to communicate sexual arousal leads to a greater number of instances of copulation, which – all other things being equal – leads to more offspring and therefore genetic drift that will increase the proportion of blue-eyed people in the population.

Essentially what this means is that increased instances of interracial reproduction will simply lead to increased opportunity for any phenotype with a meaningful selective advantage to drive out the other phenotypes.

This process doesn’t necessarily favour white people, even if it did favour blue eyes. For example, it could be that white skin has a selective disadvantage compared to black skin because it makes it easier for an onlooker to notice the presence of disease, so that diseased lighter-skinned people would come to reproduce less than diseased dark-skinned people, leading to genetic drift that favoured the dark-skinned phenotype.

It’s even possible that these two processes are both occurring simultaneously. This might mean that increased racial mixing will simply create a new race of dark-skinned, blue-eyed people.

Ultimately, much like the case of natural selection, the will of Nature will out. There’s nothing that the will of malicious anti-white racists could do about this because the sexual response to physical signs of fertility occurs almost entirely at a subconscious level.

Genetic engineering is the third reason why the idea of a race war doesn’t make sense. Technology is already at the point where designer babies are starting to become possible. Although genetic engineering has so far been mostly limited to aborting fetuses that have genetic diseases, there’s every chance that future technology will allow parents to make more specific decisions about how their children look.

When this technology becomes advanced enough, it will become possible for parents to essentially choose the race of their offspring, even if this meant that the child was a different race to either of its parents.

What would likely happen in a scenario like this is an increase in people choosing the phenotype of their offspring for reasons of fashion.

It’s already common among South Korean and Eastern Chinese women to have a procedure called a blepharoplasty, which is surgery to change the shape of the eye fold to look more Western. This suggests it isn’t long until parents get the procedure done for their children before birth by genetic engineering.

Once such things start happening then the entire concept of race will start breaking down. After all, when a phenotype can simply be chosen out of a number of faces in a catalogue, then it no longer represents any kind of link to one’s genetic ancestors. Indeed, the idea of genetic ancestors stops making sense after a certain degree of genetic engineering.

This could even mean that as-of-yet unknown races will show their faces in the human phenotype in the future. It could be that future environmental conditions mean that human skin becomes engineered to be capable of photosynthesis, as this would mean much less pressure on the environment for agricultural land, and so all skin colours are replaced with green.

We could easily end up with a world where the majority of us have blue eyes, green skin and a wide range of different hair styles depending on what was fashionable to who that month, and it would be an entirely logical and natural progression from where we currently are.

In summary, thinking in terms of white genocide is not meaningful for reasons of biology. Nature will select those who she favours, and any human schemes to the contrary are destined to fail.

Why A Canterbury Government Is The Natural Successor To The Fifth National

The Helen Clark-Winston Peters alliance of 2005-2008 was the last time the New Zealand Government didn’t suck

The National Party is clearly and evidently falling out of favour with the New Zealand electorate. An opinion poll publicised last night showed that the Labour Party now has more public support than National, for the first time since John Key became Prime Minister in 2008. The various coalition possibilities after September 23 are numerous, but this essay argues that a Canterbury Government would be the best for New Zealand.

This means Canterbury as in red and black, not the province. In other words, a coalition of Labour and New Zealand First would be the most likely to improve the standard of living of New Zealanders.

We can’t take it for granted that Labour will win just yet, but the signs are ominous for Bill English. Usually the incumbent Prime Minister dominates the Preferred Prime Minister poll against all comers. This has been the case ever since Jim Bolger was in charge. However, Jacinda Ardern is now ahead of English in the latest poll, despite being in opposition.

Moreover, the Labour Party has leaped almost 20% in the polls since Ardern became leader. This is partly because the electorate did not think highly of the stuffy Andrew Little, but mostly because of the growing perception that the National Party has completely lost control of immigration, of housing and of mental healthcare. The long-term effects of slashing funding to rape crisis centres and suicide hotlines for the sake of tax cuts are now starting to be felt, and the feeling is bitter.

The heartfelt desire in many quarters is for a Watermelon Government after the 23rd, namely Labour in coalition with the Greens. Indeed, this seemed like the most likely outcome for a long time – the Greens were, until recently, polling at close to 15%, and that meant that Labour only had to get up to 32-33% for the two parties to rule without any outside help.

Unfortunately for Meteria Turei and her Greens, the chaos of recent weeks has eaten away at that support. The party effectively committed seppuku in the wake of Turei’s confession about cheating WINZ and the electorate no longer seems to consider them to be a competent and reliable party.

This is where a Canterbury Government could be the most effective. The black of New Zealand First could help moderate the excesses of the reds in Labour, and prevent the lunatics in the Greens from having any excess influence.

Perhaps the most dangerous, if not outright suicidal, of the Greens’ policies relates to their desire to raise the “refugee” quota to several thousand. Letting in hordes of fighting age men who are possessed by criminal religious attitudes has been a catastrophe for Europe, yet the Greens, mad with ideology, would happily make the same error here.

As we have seen in Europe, the problem with letting in even a thousand “refugees” is that they soon become eligible to bring their families here, and then those family members become eligible to bring other family members here, and eventually the floodgates cannot be closed.

Peters and New Zealand First would provide a much-needed nationalist bulwark to this fashionable Marxist insanity. Peters is not afraid to have crowds of hysterical teenagers and twentysomethings shrieking “Racist!” at him – he’s endured much worse in his time in politics.

If he does become the kingmaker after the 23rd, he is therefore in a good position to reject the demands of the Greens to throw open the borders. This will make it possible for the Sixth Labour Government to focus on the issues that matter to all Kiwis, in particular housing, wages, mental health and drug law reform.

Considering that Peters has already shown himself entirely capable of working successfully with a younger, intellectual, female Prime Minister, as he did with Helen Clark between 2005 and 2008, there is good reason to think that a Canterbury Government is the best option for maintaining and raising the Kiwi standard of living for the next electoral cycle.