Tuesday 29 August 2023

Going For Broke With Woke.

Not Welcome Here: Once celebrated for its broad inclusiveness, Chris Hipkins’ Labour Party has opted to greet potential supporters with a grim array of ideological bouncers.

WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE of Chris Hipkins speech “Working With Others”? Ostensibly about unity, the Prime Minister’s address homes in on the two issues which, for the last three years, have divided New Zealanders the most – Ethnicity and Gender. For good measure, he has also ruled out leading Labour into any kind of coalition agreement with NZ First. Taken in its entirety, Hipkins’ speech has much less to say about unity than it does about refusing to work with anyone who declines to embrace Labour’s radical social agenda. That being the case, it would have been more honest to entitle his address: “Going For Broke With Woke”.

Implicit in this strategy is a strong belief that New Zealand society, or, at least, a majority of those New Zealanders determined to vote on 14 October, have embraced the Labour Government “line” on Ethnicity and Gender. Clearly, those who balk at the idea of injecting the concept of co-governance into the provision of public services; or reject as unfair the idea of trans-women competing against biological women in sport; will no longer find a welcome in Labour’s “big tent”. Once celebrated for its broad inclusiveness, Hipkins’ party has opted to greet potential supporters with a grim array of ideological bouncers.

This is not, however, the picture Hipkins wishes his audience to conjure-up. Quite the opposite, in fact:

“Elections are contests of policies and values”, says Hipkins. “Disagreements are a fundamental part of a healthy democracy. But I won’t seek to divide our communities. Labour’s focus in this election won’t be on imported culture wars, but fighting an economic war against inflation and inequality.”

From the man who issued a “Captain’s Call” ruling-out a Wealth Tax, these lines have a disturbingly Orwellian quality to them. It wasn’t Labour’s opponents who commissioned the He Puapua Report, and then kept its recommendations hidden from both NZ First and the voting public in the months leading up to the 2020 General Election. Nor was it National, Act or NZ First that whipped-up opposition to the visit of “Posie Parker”, and then downplayed the violence unleashed upon those who came to hear women exercise their right to free speech. No, when it comes to importing culture wars, Labour is well out in front of its rivals.

How else are we to interpret the following sentence explaining Labour’s refusal to work with Winston Peters’ party?

“New Zealand First has become a party more interested in toilets than the issues that really matter.”

The reference is to NZ First’s policy of ensuring that biological women’s – and men’s – right to privacy is protected by requiring public toilets and changing-rooms to include spaces for those whose definitions of gender differ radically from those of their fellow citizens. NZ First’s “architectural” solution to the intrusion of biological males into biological women’s spaces, may well strike voters as a laudable attempt to broker a compromise between the contending parties.

That’s not how Hipkins sees it. According to the Prime Minister, Peters is:

“[S]eeking to make trans people the enemy in this campaign.”

That is an extraordinary accusation. It does, however, comport with the political style of the aggressively woke, who interpret anything other than 100 percent acceptance of the “correct” ideological position as proof positive of “incorrect” beliefs and “genocidal” intentions.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Hipkins presses on:

“Living fully in your own skin isn’t always easy for any of us at the best of times, and it can be particularly hard for our rainbow communities. None of them deserve the kind of abuse that is being directed their way, stoked up by politicians who should know better.”

This is hard to take from the political party which, alongside the Greens, lent its support to a social movement whose followers openly threatened violence against those who dared to oppose them – and then delivered it.

It is all of a piece, however, with a party so convinced of its own rectitude that it has become incapable of construing disagreement as anything other than – to use the buzzwords du jour – “misinformation, disinformation and malinformation”. In its mildest form, this mindset offers “education” as the optimal solution to the “wrong-think” of dissenters. Among the hardcore, however, dissenters are to be suppressed. What Hipkins has signalled in his speech is a personal preference for the hardcore’s response to the communicators of “wrong-thought” – among whom he clearly includes Winston Peters and NZ First.

That Hipkins has opted to drag New Zealanders into the strange, looking-glass world of the super-woke is deeply troubling. According to the Prime Minister, dissent on questions of gender threaten the unity of the nation and automatically disqualify the dissenting party, NZ First, from any role in government. At the same time, Te Pāti Māori may pour scorn upon the principle of majority rule, and the democratic system it upholds, without rebuke. The party’s claim that Māori genes are superior to those of New Zealand’s other ethnicities, likewise, presents no barrier to entering a Labour Party-led coalition government.

What Hipkins’ speech makes clear is that Labour has opted to “go negative” for the seven weeks remaining before the election. The Prime Minister may wax eloquent about the unity of the nation, and claim that only Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have the right to speak for the shining Aotearoa-New Zealand of tomorrow; but what he has done, in the fractious world of today, is divide the nation into an “Us” who agree with the Red-Green-Brown troika’s radical programme, and a “Them” who cling to the wrong-thought of their outdated ideas and dangerous beliefs.

It is the intractable problem that besets all populist movements, be they of the Left or the Right. Who is, and who is not, to be counted among “the people”? Because, once you have determined who may properly be included in the “true” nation, then it follows that all those who fall outside your definition must be “untrue”. And what is the usual fate of those who prove untrue?

By the strictures set forth in his speech, Hipkins has identified the untrue nation as those who still believe that one-person, one-vote, one-value is the unalterable foundation of representative democracy. Also excluded from Team Chippy are those who answer the question: “What is a woman?”, with the words “Adult human female”.

By sunrise on 15 October, New Zealanders will know which nation is larger: the Woke Left’s “Us”, or the Centre-Right’s “Them”. Whatever else follows, the “others” being “worked with” are unlikely to include the untrue. The side, representing close to half the nation, that lost.


This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 28 August 2023.

39 comments:

DS said...

Hipkins' jibe about toilets is actually sound politics.

Transwomen in sports and the labelling of toilets is esoteric culture war silliness that no-one outside nutters actually cares about. It generates much heat and light, but is about as relevant to the lives of ordinary people as dogmatic nitpicking between fringe Trotskyites and Maoists was in the 1970s.

The cherry on top is that the sort of people who do embrace this front of the culture war have already gone down the rabbit hole on other issues. The people voting for NZ First over toilets? Many are really doing it because they've already decided that there's a globalist conspiracy to implant things in vaccines. Once upon a time, the word 'globalist' would have been identified as a red flag, a rehashing of ancient antisemitic ugliness from a century ago. Now, it's out in the open, and no-one seems to notice.

Culture wars put no food on anyone's table. As much as I detest Hipkins generally, on this front he's got it right.

annonymous said...

Thanks so much for writing this article Chris. One of the best I have read

Anonymous said...

Thanks you so much for writing this article Chris. You have absolutely nailed it

The Barron said...

I have noted before that a theme in this blog seems to be that social progress and change are externally imposed. Education curriculum has been blamed as a catalyst, commissioned discussion papers, media and media funding, the mob and political individuals and parties. It is almost if without these factors, the social concerns would not exist. The issues and the people concerned could be out of mind, out of existence.

The He Puapua Report was commissioned because the Key government signed onto the UN declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples. That UN declaration pre-existed the NZ commitment and was an internationally negotiated agreement borne from a realization indigenous rights must be defined and protected as a universal human right. The incoming Labour government had to look at how this commitment could be implemented, and commissioned a report. Not to have engaged would not negate Maori national and international rights. Maori rights are not necessarily defined by the UN, but there is an alignment that should not be ignored. Maori rights are not limited to the He Puapua Report and would not disappear if the report had not been commissioned, but the report incorporates the UN declaration with Maori aspirations and is a guideline for the state to consider. If National, ACT or NZ First govern, then commitments to the Declaration are either engaged with or breached. The latter does not make the issues go away, but puts the struggle into other spheres.

The environment is also subject to various international commitments and is an obvious global crisis. The Republican debate had all candidates as climate deniers, thankfully, this is not the case with National or ACT policy, but has been expressed by some individuals. No nation can not address the environmental crisis, it was not created by the Labour or Green Party - this issue is the extent of the political commitment and which sectors will have to adjust. The impact of the rural sector does not go away if ignored.

The cause of women's pay equity is an issue because of current and historical inequity, not because a government decided to address this. Issues of sexual identity or practice has not come about because of books in school libraries or rainbow flags, this is something anthropologists would say is intrinsic to all societies. It is a matter of repression, expression or naturalization.

Social scientist would say similar to liminality in gendered identity. I cannot imagine anyone altering their personal gender because Chris Hipkins has a view either to support or reject. The question is what are the rights and how are they socially and legally accommodated. I have previously written that this is a far wider issue than bathrooms, changing rooms or sports teams. Indeed, it goes past those that identify as a different gender than that assigned at birth. It is one which must incorporate all issues of non-binary identity, this includes those that view themselves on a spectrum, have a cultural identity and those born intersex. India has legally recognized Hijra as a separate gender, while NZ has an exegetical crisis over toilets. The issue of a scope of gendered identity and how to incorporate safely into a society is an issue that is a natural development. The question is not whether to engage, but whether that engagement is delaying inevitable social change or oppressing that change and people for the longest time.

Politicians on the left can sometimes be myopic because they are surrounded by activists. This could result in being ahead of the voting public in understanding and embracing social change. This can be a criticism reasonably aimed at the government over the last 6 years. The counter is that if aware of the requirement s for the rights of others, should the politician avoid those rights for expediency?

John Hurley said...

This explains Donald Trump's popularity, (Winston by comparison is toothless).
He said what others were afraid to say; he defended the nation and the border.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/08/am-host-ryan-bridge-grills-chris-hipkins-on-working-with-winston-peters-in-2017-after-ruling-new-zealand-first-out-for-2023.html

It is the intractable problem that besets all populist movements, be they of the Left or the Right. Who is, and who is not, to be counted among “the people”?

a perfectly reasonably response to that is "allies". This is from evolutionary psychologies alliance theory of racism. But how can the large inflows of people from different ethnic groups be seen as allies (unless you're Bob Jones, Max Key and various National donors, or on the Labour side - I forget the term Danyl MacLauchlan's guest used)?

It is just as easy to conclude that "The high rate of immigration is a national disaster. It is lowering the present and future living standards of New Zealanders by serious adverse economic, social and environmental consequences."
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/82115/kerry-mcdonald-analyses-many-challenges-country-faces-and-concludes-we-need-effective

But what concerns "Chippy" and Ryan Bridges most is that we aren't "raaaaacsist!"

David George said...

Thank you Chris, sad but true.
How the hell did we get to this, this "unity through division" nonsense?

A just released documentary looks at a very similar story: Canada's woke nightmare: A warning to the West.

Excerpts from the intro:

" Under Justin Trudeau, Canada has sought to position itself as the global bastion of progressive politics. In my latest Telegraph documentary, seen above, I went to the former British colony to find out how Canadians are dealing with Trudeau’s radical reforms; from the promotion of gender ideology in schools and the mass legalisation of drugs, to his extreme new suicide laws and clamp downs on freedom of speech."

"During my travels I found ordinary people appalled at Canada’s surrender to drug dealers, its contempt for freedom of speech, its enforcement of gender ideology on children and a breezy willingness to terminate the lives of its own citizens. However, for all the depressing stories of people losing their jobs, or being hounded by the government, these cases were equally inspirational. Whilst Canada is a warning to the West, there are also individual messages of hope from those brave individuals fighting for their freedom."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt2AuVQKpq0 38 minutes

David George said...

Yes, perhaps the introduction of race into our democratic, public and legal structures or the promotion of gender ideology to our children will bring unity. Just not how woke want it.

"A fight over a school curriculum has made strange bedfellows of Muslims, Christians, and Latter-Day Saints"

https://www.thefp.com/p/revolt-religious-parents-montgomery-county

Anonymous said...

With regards to TPM, apparently they have removed the reference to Maori DNA being stronger than others and changed their policy on housing from "indigenous first before immigrants and refugees" to "everyone's welcome on the marae." What other policies are being watered down....

Guerilla Surgeon said...

From the Conservative dictionary:
Socialism: Anything the government does that I don't like.
CRT: Anything taught about race that I don't like.
Woke: Anything ANYONE does that I don't like.

See also: PC. (archaic)

Delia said...

This is great Chris. As a woman born in the fifties with all that implies for women and clearly Chris Hipkins never saw it..our lack of equal rights with men. Our limited job options, reproductive rights. The struggle to be heard by parliament which was 99% men when I was growing up. I am glad men like you have kept the faith and stayed true to women. Thank you.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"He said what others were afraid to say; he defended the nation and the border."

In other words, the racist president said the quiet part out loud, and build a useless fence. Encounters of migrants at the Mexican border actually went up on his watch. They also went up on Biden's watch, but they now seem to be going down. And Biden is sending them back. From what I can gather, apart from refugees most illegal migrants simply fly to the US and overstay their visas. While Trump trumpets about the Mexican border. He did nothing about that either.
He never realised that building a wall along the whole of Mexican border is pretty much impossible due to the impassable terrain in certain parts, and the necessity to cross private property on others. Most Texans are pretty hot on private property. When I was there years ago only for 6 weeks or so, at least 2 people were shot for "trespassing". If my memory serves one of them at least was a foreign student asking for directions. So they're not going to be very happy about someone building a great big wall across their land.
Not to mention Mexico paying for it – had to laugh at that one.
I would have thought by now that most people would have realised that Trump is a cult. Not a great deal different to Brian Tamaki.

He should have put paid to the idea that a businessman in charge of the country is a good thing. But too many people have too much of their self-worth tied up in that belief. You only have to listen to – Jordan Klepper among others – interviewing them to realise that many of them are not only deplorable, but as dumb as a box of rocks.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

And – I just remembered this.
"I don’t like the term ‘woke’ because I hear ‘woke woke woke.’ It’s just a term they use, half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is,” Donald Trump.

The Barron said...

"...the introduction of race..."
That brings with it an assumption that current institutions are race neutral, or more correctly have no disproportionate input or advantage to any ethnic or cultural group or identity. It is a illogical denial that the institutions have a history and a colonial origin.
This denies Aglo-celtic settler society an identity and a history. Surely, if that origin is acknowledged, then those institutions are not race neutral. As such, your argument is not against "race" or ethnicity being introduced, but that the dominance of the founding racial or ethnic basis of the institutions is challenged.
Similar with gender ideology. NZ has arguably been on of the most gendered settler societies. Social historians such as Jock Phillips confirm this. School systems have developed in this largely monoculture view of gender and gendered rights. I think what you are suggesting is that acknowledging gender diversity threatens your view of societal unity and control by the denial of the needs and identity of others

sumsuch said...

I'm sure you're right. And quite right about anyone with arrows in their quiver doing the positive uniting things that really matter.

Just starting to enjoy how your comments section jumps down to 'your comment'. Took the whole avalanche of social media's 'everyone can talk' to bring me to it.

Yeah, my first sentence was sarcastic double-entendre. 'Toilets' confirms my view. Do you want a lesbian in a female toilet or a gay guy in a male toilet? This Right wedge issue suits you, sir? Inclusive but exclusive, doesn't work for the people's, thus idealistic, cause.


Zombi said...

Great reading Chris, I agree 100%. To me, a united future is one where we work on our social and economic issues holistically with a long term focus. For issues of rights, we should have a media supported information campaign on the issues ( balanced) and then put it to bed with a referendum in much the same way JK did with the flag debate but the information discussed must be clear on the threats and opportunities arising from different decisions. WE have to stop dividing social policy from economic policy because to be sustainable, NZ needs to understand the intrinsic links before making emotional decisions on cultural issues.

Let NZers speak and sort out the issues themselves, government must provide and encourages an environment where this can happen, rather than taking a stance and barraging us with propaganda and gaslighting as has been the case for several years. They should facilitate a solution not control which decision is reached.




David George said...

Thanks Barron, though I think you've missed the point.

It's pretty obvious that these ideologies (gender theory, critical race theory etc.) are anything but grounded, grass roots movements. You can call it being "ahead of the voting public in understanding and embracing social change" all you like but it's certainly not such a smart idea if you want to get yourself elected.

I don't think that Hipkins genuinely believes this BS either. I think he's just a coward.

John Hurley said...

I think what you are suggesting is that acknowledging gender diversity threatens your view of societal unity and control by the denial of the needs and identity of others
........................
"those who dismiss anti-immigrant sentiment as mere racism have missed several important aspects of moral psychology related to the general human need to live in a stable and coherent moral order.
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/10/when-and-why-nationalism-beats-globalism/
............

Dear Editor,
Samuel Zetlter, doesn’t get the objections to “taller buildings and density improvements”.

[ ]
As for climate change, so what? The dinosaurs lived here for 60 million years. If the masses are to be trapped in an urban nightmare we are a failed experiment, don’t worry, something will evolve to take our place.
.......
I've struggled as to what Haidt meant, but George Megalogenis: those people don't see their children as having a place in the "Asian Century".

Paul Spoonley: "our research shows those Asians have different expectations. We are right in the middle of significant change and it will affect the flag the anthem"

We forget we are just animals. The cognitive elite are farming us; what people want is a story to live their lives in: the King, the Queen; his knights; the connections with the past and a place in the future (that isn't jammed into monster cities).

Follow the NGO's the activists are the cognitive elite from privileged homes. They/thems who live on the internet hunting "white supremacists" (essentially disrupting what glued us together)

I hope I make sense

new view said...

Chris Hipkins may become increasingly isolated in his own party as he will be seen as not woke enough by some and too woke by others. Apart from Winstons toilet titter National and act don't care. They will relish Labour ,the greens and the Maori party competing for the most woke award. Live by gender and racial ideology and die by gender and racial ideology.

David George said...

I came across this essay by feminist Ani OBrien which chimes quite nicely with Chris's essay above.

Excerpts:

"Over the weekend, Hipkins’ sneering virtue signals and belittling of (what his advisors consider) the unpalatable concerns of many New Zealanders, signalled what we can expect from Labour in the coming weeks. He has clearly made the same calculation that his party made during COVID-19 when they isolated and derided those who opposed mandates and questioned the Pfizer vaccine. Make one group the ‘bad guys’, ‘morons’, the ‘dangerous’ ones and encourage hostility toward them.

This calculation was as unethical then and as it is now. They are actively seeking to divide an already fraught and fractious population."

"Unless our Prime Minister has had a rapid conversion to queer theory and transgenderism, he is pretending to be outraged about that too. He is rolling his eyes at ‘toilet talk’ knowing full well that the issue goes far beyond the bathroom debate. It is a convenient narrative. His globally viral stumble over the question ‘What is a woman?’ earlier this year was not because he holds views that there are not two sexes and that people can switch between the genders anyway. It was because he was afraid of the braying media in front of him.

I have always been discreet about the conversations I have had with MPs and those around them. I will not destroy a career by outing them as ‘terfs’, even though it is frustrating that they won’t use their influence to help resolve the matter. However, after this weekend, I am filled with nothing but disgust for our Prime Minister. He is using the so-called Culture Wars to beat down on people when he agrees with them."

The Barron said...

Cheers David. First point is CRT is not a movement but a tertiary legal analysis tool. The hysteria opposing this and the misreprentation of what it is, has been manipulated by right wing svengali to a grass roots opposition.
In regard to gender liminality, it has always bin every society. It has been a matter of the level of understanding and acceptance. I think that support is very grass roots and has evolved into the cause de jour for many progressives. The level of youth support on issues of gendered identity is almost universal. One of my points is that there are wider issues of gendered spectrum which have been overlooked and will return to consciousness one day.
David, it is clear that in 20 years, factoring cultural history and needs within be entwined with institutional and legal analysis. Gendered liminality will be naturalised in society.
The question is whether the inevitable is opposed and delayed causing social harm, or we engage to help social transition helping minimalise harm.

David George said...

Sorry, I left off the link to the Ani O'Brien essay;
https://plainsight.nz/dont-be-fooled-hipkins-is-a-terf/

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"critical race theory ... are anything but grounded, grass roots movements."

No one's ever said that critical race theory is a grounded grassroots movement except for conservatives. Everyone who knows anything about it knows that it is only taught in postgraduate law courses in certain US universities. It's pretty damn rarefied.
But you people see it as indoctrination of primary school students, because you have been taken in by Christopher Rufo's promotion of a moral panic about the whole thing – by redefining critical race has anything taught about race he didn't like. This was a deliberate attempt at social division, by creating a bogeyman that doesn't exist and setting parents (among others) against each other.
Sort of tripped over your own tongue there didn't you?

John Hurley said...

GS
In other words, the racist president said the quiet part out loud, and build a useless fence. Encounters of migrants at the Mexican border actually went up on his watch.
.......
People pile into a "shrinking pool of prime destination countries. Many of which are small European countries"
Apart from other factors such as culture, numbers are an issue.

The counter arguments on the left are rather broad and creative.

John Hurley said...

This is my take on Hipkin's speech
(I noticed a fault in the first one)
https://youtu.be/TYha7T-1V_E

Guerilla Surgeon said...

John Hurley. I have no idea what you mean by that comment addressed to me. It's quite possible you've misread what I meant.

You seem to think that I am in favour of unlimited immigration – I am not.

You also seem to be still relying on a journal article that suggested that diversity destroys trust – something that's long been debunked. And if I remember correctly, said that new vectors of trust arise anyway after migration. Whatever, most people use a right-wing summary of the article rather than read it themselves – perhaps you are one. Whatever – it's not really worth my time to look it up again.

Really the only point I was making was that Trump is a proven racist, who talks a lot but does nothing. That's something that pretty much everyone should be able to agree on by now surely?

Politically Homeless Commie Weirdo said...

DS says: "Transwomen in sports and the labelling of toilets is esoteric culture war silliness that no-one outside nutters actually cares about."
Let me reword that a little DS. Men pretending to be women cheating by playing women's sports, and men with sexual fetishes jerking off in women's toilets and watching little girls get undressed in public changing rooms is something that everyone who cares about the rights and wellbeing of women and girls cares about.
Why do you prioritize the feelings of male fantasists and fetishists over the rights and safety of women and girls, DS?

A lot of your readers, Chris, appear to be very clear about what the right side of history is. They appear to have forgotten that regimes which sterilize children, deny peoples' rights to bodily autonomy, perform medical experiments on children, denying their population the right to speak, propagandize, and demonize and physically attack dissenters aren't remembered kindly.

Anonymous said...

You are being too kind to our local parade of autogynephiles. The honest ones like Caitlin Jenner and Andrea Long Chu confess to their dismal longings.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Chris, absolutely on the money. I care very much about the gender issues you raise. No woman should ever vote for a man who cannot answer “what is a woman?” Chippie blatantly is violating women’s rights by his pathetic non response. As a woman, a mother, a daughter I care very much that there should be no men in women’s spaces, women’s sports, prisons etc etc. the desires of a man who likes being dressed as a woman doesn’t trump a woman’s right to safe spaces. Nor are we to be dehumanized by being referred to as a “person with ovaries”. Trans fascist activists will not win - women have been subjugated for 1000s of years. We won’t let a bunch of men tell us what we are allowed to say or do.

Tom Hunter said...

Gaslighting Critical Race Theory (CRT).

As I said at the time the gaslighting consists of four "arguments":
- Nobody really understands CRT. It’s just an academic theory.
- If bad things are happening it’s because “fringe groups” and “some individuals” are twisting the theory to their own purposes.
- It’s only about “racial justice” and “anti-racism” – and who could be opposed to such good things.
- It’s not about hating on White People. That’s just crazy talk.

You can also check the link for three videos of American Blacks who very much don't buy the gaslighting, especially the nonsense about how it's only restricted to academic law discussions. That's certainly where it started, but as those three people explain (two of them in front of their school boards), it's very much in the younger age schools, and they're pissed off about it.

Still, if it reduces the systemic racism in cities run by the Democrat Party for decades of one-party rule it might serve some purpose.

The Barron said...

Tom, you have the ability to follow a discourse. It is therefore reasonable to view your post as disingenuous. You are well aware that the origin of CRT is in legal academia as a process for deconstruction of the development of legal institutions and practice in relation to American race relations.
You are well read enough to have followed the American right repurposing the term to be an ill defined criticism of any historical inclusion of racial history within the education system of the USA.
You are also enough of an educationalist to understand that history, law, education and institutions do not develop in a cultural vacuum but are a reflection on the establishment and the hegemony. In the case of the United States, it is reasonably clear that their founding fathers reduced some people to three-fifths of personhood with few rights. CRT factors this and the societal impact in the evolution of law.
As I am sure you know these things, I can only conclude you have contempt for the intelligence of those reading your comments who you wish to mislead.

John Hurley said...

GS
"You also seem to be still relying on a journal article that suggested that diversity destroys trust – something that's long been debunked. And if I remember correctly, said that new vectors of trust arise anyway after migration. Whatever, most people use a right-wing summary of the article rather than read it themselves – perhaps you are one. Whatever – it's not really worth my time to look it up again."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3602498

Evolutionary psychology has the explanations and solutions (must be seen as ally).

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Let me reword that a little DS. Men pretending to be women cheating by playing women's sports, and men with sexual fetishes jerking off in women's toilets and watching little girls get undressed in public changing rooms is something that everyone who cares about the rights and wellbeing of women and girls cares about."

The number of men "cheating by playing women's sports" can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand.* The sporting bodies are well aware of this and will regulate if there is any advantage.

Men have always jerked off in women's toilets. They are not trans people. So if you care about this you are caring about the wrong people. If you knew some trans people you might be better informed.

*That's exaggeration for effect – just to avoid being provided with a list of every trans-sporting person.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Gaslighting Critical Race Theory (CRT). – Nut picking.

As I said at the time – CRT = anything taught about race that I don't like. You can pretty much make anything sound like CRT if you want to. Doesn't make it CRT though.

John Hurley said...

GS
in the 1960's our neighbor was from Manchestor. His wife used to say "don't watch it Bob", because it made him weepy.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/924369711362969/permalink/1693717021094897/

What's going on there, I wonder?

Tom Hunter said...

https://i.imgflip.com/7y15o4.jpg

All available at Amazon:

- Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education
- Critical Race Theory in Teacher Education
- Critical Race Theory in Education

Plus many, many more aimed at schooling many levels below and far removed from law schools.

My personal favorite given the mush of ...history, law, education and institutions do not develop in a cultural vacuum but are a reflection on the establishment and the hegemony is:

- Critical Race Theory in Mathematics Education

Yes! Really.

The Barron said...

Clearly I overestimated your perception.
My bad.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

John. I love the way you post links without any context at all. This seems to be a link to some school collecting pine cones? Not wasting any more time on it.

Tom. I fail to see why the fact that textbooks on CRT exist means that they are teaching it to primary school kids. Even the maths one simply seems to explain how critical theory applies to black kids experience of mathematics. Not wasting any more time on this either.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

PS Tom. Even if they were teaching it to primary school kids – it would be a good thing.

John Hurley said...

"our Maori people"
Ethnic groups can be formed of other ethnic groups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYha7T-1V_E&t=820s

The ethnic group surrounds itself in myths and symbols and is much like a family and their behavior when they have the new neighbors over. Everyone holds their tongue until the footsteps can be heard vanishing down the driveway. Ethnic groups self organise into mutually trusting bodies with a sense of self-interest over a territory.

Now we have Meng Foon's "this is a Maori country".
We have knew myths and symbols but firstly Old NZ has to be killed off (discredited), (and you need the economic justification).

Watching the Ilam debate.
When I think of Ilam (University aside - try to demolish the old institution?), I think of the gardens we used to stop at on Ilam Road (with Japanese tourists).

National: he's very well qualified
Green: spoke Maori.
Labour: we are diverse.
Raf Manji: we need investment in technology and business and density.

I'm reminded of RNZ A Slice of Heaven
Roseanne's father settled in Christchurch. He was taking photo's of a garden and the people came out. He thought he was going to be "chased away like a dog" but instead they invited him in.
But then (RNZ interpretation): the politicians stirred the people up with "too many".
Eric Kaufmann says if majority ethnic groups are confident they welcome newcomers but when "governed by a self-abnegating elite" it leads to existential angst.

Meanwhile Bomber nods his head as the Labour candidate proclaims the highest ever state house building. The elephant in the room is that immigration is so sacred it isn't part of the argument. So while we have the largest number of people in construction any where we just can't keep up.

The new model of NZ society is one where it is just soooo obvious that exclusivity "white NZ" is wrong and openness is good that we can't even go there.

Mai Chen came to Christchurch and had a dreadful time.
I had a dreadful time also when I was in my teens (I used to wish WW3 would break out). Mai's solution is diversity: "NZ's future is multi-ethnic; it's indigenous". That is the model. But who is in control? Surely the people behind Arthur Grimes and Paula Bennet (on the one hand) and you could weld the educated elite on to that and (ironically) the Maori elite as the princess on the Christmas tree.
On the other ethnic factions but a tendency for the working classes not to believe the trope that NZ benefits from a continuous immigration. The (call it) property sector is a cancer as it serves it's own interests not the citizen.