The Narrative Is Shifting

Songs: Ohia - All Pass, Easts Last Heart

Laboring, I first chose you for my all-star team

And you have been advised

Where power and rich kids find ways to unite

It is virtue who's sitting the bench

By not talking, I shouldn't have to say it

I said get out, I mean get out this minute

I don't trust you more than

The weight of your shadow

Rich kid, I'm talking to you

Rich kid, I'm talking to you

Rich kid, I'm talking to you

"Freedom Gas" Media Lies About Ukraine/Russia DEBUNKED!

It doesn’t matter what side of politics you’re on, everyone should be concerned and have conversations about the origins of the virus.

What's been shocking to me is the ease of the erection of the good guy bad guy narrative, to justify action either way. Or in this case good guy good guy bad guy narrative. It's like the steps have been washed away...

 

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - The Power Of Love - 1985

My recent Facebook Trial

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…A working class revolution came to Wellington and it was the middle class marxists who were revolted!

 

Wellington Middle Class Woke gloriously cancel Mayor AND Human Rights Commission???

By

Martyn Bradbury

-

February 23, 2022

21

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The Wellington Middle Class Woke are now cancelling their own Mayor for meeting with the protestors…

‘Dangerous’ and ‘appalling’: Fury after Wellington mayor meets protesters

Some Wellington City councillors have sharply criticised mayor Andy Foster for meeting with occupation influencers as “extremely dangerous” and an “embarrassment” to the capital.

…and hilariously they want to cancel Human Rights Commission for doing the same…

…A working class revolution came to Wellington and it was the middle class marxists who were revolted!

The Middle Class Marxists want a revolution that knows its pronouns! It doesn’t want the smelly lumpenproletariat spoiling the aesthetics of their dinner party activism!

The Woke must paint out any disagreement as persecution and the winner of Woke Olympics is the one who can be the most offended by the worst monster.

The woke’s argument is, “Nazi! I win!”

How can you negotiate with Nazi monsters?

This is the terrible blind spot in woke culture. If you exist to cancel the other, how can you walk that back intellectually when you actually have to engage?

The Woke Left have to paint these protestors out to be Nazi monsters to justify extreme State force in their removal, negotiating with those Nazi monsters would be worse than bashing them off Parliament’s lawns.

There are no adults left to de-escalate this, the woke have too much social capital and likes on Twitter at stake to do anything other than denounce Nazi monsters and claim anyone not denouncing the protestors as Nazi monsters are themselves Nazi monsters.

The modern left are middle class, they have benefitted from work from home because they have nice homes. The perverse outcome of Government Covid support has made the rich far far far richer while those on Parliament’s lawns have suffered.

The way many middle class NZ twitter cry out for military intervention in this protest is extraordinary and I don’t think they appreciate how this will stain them or the wider Left forever.

" The difficulty of contemporary communication' An Joe, Alex and Eddie Moment - JRE Toons

How Did They Cover This Up?!

For the Labour-aligned left the real difficulty that this occupation represents is its political independence. The protesters are not going to be told by a ragtag collection of politicians, trade union officials and bloggers/spin doctors about what they can and cannot do when these very same people have consistently betrayed them in the past.

FEAR AND LOATHING

The Wellington occupation is both  feared and loathed by those who claim 'progressive' and 'left wing' credentials.

WHILE THE OCCUPATION OF Parliament grounds and the protests that have emerged in other parts of the country are driven by opposition to vaccination mandates they have also been the catalyst for wider community opposition to the political and economic status quo. The fact that a new poll has revealed that, already, a third of the country supports the Wellington occupation suggests that, despite what the Government claims, this protest is not the work of a 'fringe minority'.

Widespread and significant change is often sparked by opposition to a more limited and localised issue. So the nationwide opposition that emerged in Chile to the neoliberal status quo was sparked by opposition to the rise in bus fares in the capital Santiago in 2019. 

Those protests ultimately led to the election of a left wing president in 2021 with a mandate to topple the political and economic neoliberal order. This came nearly fifty years after Salvador Allende, the world’s first democratically elected socialist president, was overthrown in a military coup backed by the CIA in 1973. Allende’s successor, General Augusto Pinochet, embraced neoliberal policies and allowed Chile to become a laboratory for neoliberalism.

In New Zealand the imposition of neoliberalism was achieved rather more peaceably through the election of the fourth Labour Government in 1984. The fact that it was a Labour Government that ruthlessly pursued policies such as the stripping back of the welfare state and the privatisation of major state assets completely disarmed the left which never quite managed to draw a line in the sand and defend the gains of post-war social democracy. In the end, it had nothing left to defend and it has largely become a defender of the neoliberal status quo. 

Despite the fact that poverty and inequality have remained blights on New Zealand society for the past three decades, ordinary New Zealanders have effectively been left without a voice. It is little wonder some 700,000 New Zealanders no longer vote when the 'choice' they are presented with is more of the same.

Its not a coincidence that the most vociferous - and hysterical - critics of the Wellington occupation are largely the same people who vociferously defend this Labour Government in 'calmer times'. There has been a complete refusal to acknowledge that protesters have genuine grievances and instead its establishment opponents have embarked on what is becoming an increasingly desperate attempt to discredit the protest as the work of 'extremists' and 'neo-nazis'. 

Or, in the absurd argument being promoted by Chris Trotter and no-one else, its all the work of 'lumpenproletarians'. Trotter wants to appear as if he's being 'progressive' when he's actually an outright reactionary in the service of his beloved leader Jacinda Ardern. He is one of these types who thinks working people can't operate without approved politicians and trade union officials and...people like him. In the view of Chris Trotter the working class is little better, to paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg, than a 'sack of potatoes'.

This outbreak in spontaneous militancy - because that it was it is - has not been embraced by organisations that claim they champion the interests of the working class. Instead organisations like the Council of Trade Unions and the Public Service Association have reacted in fear. That this growing protest may have something to do with something called class struggle seems to beyond the comprehension of our professional 'friends' of the working class. They much prefer to believe the occupation is neo-fascism in action and is being manipulated by shadowy figures in the background. Yet it is the protesters who are being accused of being conspiracy theorists!

Even at time when the pandemic has marked a vast transfer of wealth to the already wealthy, the left remains far less concerned about the plight of people struggling to survive in tough economic times and far more concerned about the electoral interests of the Labour Government.

For the Labour-aligned left the real difficulty that this occupation represents is its political independence. The protesters are not going to be told by a ragtag collection of politicians, trade union officials and bloggers/spin doctors about what they can and cannot do when these very same people have consistently betrayed them in the past.

The loathing of the political elite for the protesters has quickly turned into fear and outright hatred. Suddenly, the days when working class militancy could be safely regarded as a quaint and antiquated notion are receding into the past. The political establishment has discovered, to its horror, that working class folk are not interested in being its compliant foot soldiers who quietly turn up to vote every three years. Unfortunately for those who continue to benefit from the neoliberal order, the 'have nots' have decided that they too aspire to 'having'. 

 

Freer

If there's been one positive of the Parliament protests for me personally, is being de friended by the perpetual identity crisis of the Woke left. It's like having all the parasitic capitalists who wished they were you (as in actual Public Welfare Socialist) suddenly leave and attach themselves and their cognitive dissonance to some other poor sucker. Blessings to the Capitalists and wage slaves who know it, hate it, say it and still want Socialism! This platform has it's benefits. See you next time (not if I see you first)

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Lindsay Fog
I didn't realise how many rednecks I knew till now.
they should all be driving 4x4s with confederate flags

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Wells Tao
Money is such a charm

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Dibid Babid
I've unfriended a few lately el oh el

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Kerry Grimshaw
They are basically centre right Liberals. Not Left in any shape or form.

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Wells Tao
I realise now, that a lot of these people, who I'd sense on the fringes of my awareness were actually guards of some sort. When they were gone ( and there's plenty more, we'll meet soon) I felt freer to speak. I feel freer to speak. The Fucking Hippi Nasis's and their Freedom Caravan have helped me to speak. Exist. Breathe. I realise now that I was valueing the feeling of belonging to this group, this imagined collective group that had real privilege, they had wealth and postions in capitalist society and I wanted their acceptance. The safety of their engagement, their acknowledgement that I existed. But the price was I couldn't disagree with them. I couldn't articulate what it was that I disagreed with, with out needing to download the entire history of Socialist thought. Too much. I'm trying to do something new. And they were holding me back. With their commitment to capitalist economics and their outings of Socialist fantasies dominating the response, the field. There will be more. But I've at least started to move away, forward. Feels like progress. Towards the unknown. Into the too complicated and forbidden by soft political dogma.
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Alan Francais Stuart
Good for you Tao. I've had that severing experience also. It brought to mind a quote from 'I Claudius': When Caligula attended the chariot racing at the Coliseum, he was roundly heckled and booed by the crowd. Furious with rage and pointing at the crowd, he hissed, 'Oh, but they only had one neck'. Contacts beware.

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Wells Tao
I just feel like I was stopped doing what I wanted to do cause I thought I'd lose the audience I had. I can see now that the audience I had (some) are not who I am interested in. That I need to do and find those I'm actually interested in.

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Wells Tao
were'nt the races part of the buying the crowd?
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Alan Francais Stuart
Wells Tao For sure. Bread and circuses is the pejorative my father used.

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Wells Tao
Alan Francais Stuart always found that term too abstract in a way that I could never translate quickly enough to resemble a rhetorical right hook. But ya.
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Alan Francais Stuart
Wells Tao Yeah. Bill was an old-fashioned socialist who went from Fabian to Stalin and then back into Labour activism. He was literary and overloaded on working class optimism. So pithy metaphors were in his quiver. And, yes, it's where I get it from.

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Wells Tao
Alan Francais Stuart Who's Bill. Bill Sutch?
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Alan Francais Stuart
Wells Tao No, sorry. Bill was my father.

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Wells Tao
I miss my Dad. He's still alive, but he thinks I'm a Dole bludger, my art cute, so I've had to cut all ties. He was a professional town planner in developing countries working for the IMF but subversively specialising in the application of consensus democracy in indigenous consultation. A great artist, unfortunately also a narcissist and extremely threatened by me, and driven to compete at all levels.


• Alan Francais Stuart

  Wells Tao I'm moved by that. You should write it all down - maybe publish.

  

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Wells Tao
https://taowells.blogspot.com/2022/02/freer.html

TAOWELLS.BLOGSPOT.COM
Freer
Freer
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Wells Tao
Thanks Alan. Feels good to say that out loud.
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Wells Tao
Never done that before.