open.substack.com/pub/joehendr...
Hipkins won't reverse National’s plan to stop 18- and 19-year-olds from accessing the unemployment benefit when out of work.

Do ya see why we call Labour (especially under Hipkins) National lite? #nzpol

That is being far too charitable to the same guy who literally reversed lots of Labour’s progressive policies. That's his history of commitment of policies, repealing the progressive ones. Not to mention how he literally argues with people at Young Labour, call Greens MPs stupid and so on.

For fucks sakes Labour members…. Are you seriously going to go into one of the most crucial elections with CH & his vision, or lack thereof, leading the party? He offered nothing inspiring last time & lost…. If Labour loses again, the material harm to people & environment will be horrific. #nzpol

#NZPol Get all these fucking useless Chrises out of parliament!

Luxon, Bishop, Hipkins can all fuck off.

Spineless fundy, amoral tobacco lobbyist, Temu Starmer.

Jesus. This election should be so bloody easy. The CoC are objectively the worst government this country has ever experienced.

If you promise to repeal every single policy this government has put into place and reintroduce worthy policy they tried to destroy...

Labour would win.

But nah.

#nzpol

Fuck Labour for being part of the rachet effect. If they pulled policy back to the left to undo the harms of National, we might see a stalemate, but instead they are spineless and stand still, allowing all of us to be dragged toward fascism.

This is why I vote green or TPM

open.substack.com/pub/joehendr...
Hipkins won't reverse National’s plan to stop 18- and 19-year-olds from accessing the unemployment benefit when out of work.

Do ya see why we call Labour (especially under Hipkins) National lite? #nzpol

This sounds like our current problem with Labour in Aotearoa. We know that National are terrible economically for the majority and BRILLIANT for the tiny minority…labour are bland at best for the majority and still the fuck owned by donors.
Greens at least have real tax and equality policies.

🧵 That puts them in the same structural role fascists play, embracing capitalism’s naked form, without the liberal contradictions that once softened it.

In other words they are no doubt evil, however they are not insane, they are essentially capitalists without the contradictions.
#socialist

I think it's a mistake to think that Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin are insane.

Yarvin and Thiel are lucid reactionaries rather than deluded idealists.

They accept capitalism’s trajectory toward hierarchy instead of trying to reconcile it with equality or democracy.
🧵

There are MPs in parliament who have the personal lived experience of being part of the John Key administration that combined the sickness and jobseeker benefits. It ain't ignorance. Even if they aren't listening to advice, they were there on the day in the past.

I remember when a protester punched the co-leader of the Greens in the face.

Hana Maipi-Clarke had her home broken into by a political stalker.

I recall VFF protesting outside Clarke's parents' home while Jacinda was on holiday.

I dont remember hearing about National's concerns back then??

I don't remember seeing wall to wall coverage of (false, escalatory) statements by the victims either, nor of businesses going out of their way to vice signal and target citizens at the behest of the state.

Important point by Pearse in the Herald here - identifying that NZF et al don't REALLY care about what happened except as something to be weaponised. Would be great if a few more in the media/pol class were able to reflect on this BEFORE they spent the last 2 days escalating in their own right

Labour's falling into the fascist line as well:

"Labour’s broadcasting and media spokesperson Reuben Davidson says it “has the potential to be a bad look” for One NZ.

“They're a commercial company and it's up to them to decide who they want in their campaigns and how they manage that,” he says."

The way media and business have IMMEDIATELY escalated and wrapped around to attack activists smacks of the same tacit coordination that we saw in the US when the far right weaponised Charlie Kirk’s death. This is being led by government ministers & is a massive attack on free speech & protest rights

The rightwing government are coordinating their message to escalate political tensions by openly lying about their political opponents and the media is amplifying and aiding that message.

This is a political strategy and is only different from current US fascist strategy as a matter of intensity.

Being a moderate is like claiming you don't have an accent — everyone has one, but only people who've never had their accent challenged think they speak "normally."

All the people, intentionally or otherwise, misreading criticism of media and Peters as “condoning” political violence REALLY need to check their precursors and consider why they’re kneejerk making such a bad faith reading

Neither criticism NOR pointing out the timeline of violence is doing that

This was from way back in 2023, the same year David Seymour said someone should blow up the Ministry of Pacific Peoples

Media in those cases NEVER showed a united front to hold either man accountable.Yet they are in lockstep at the moment to spread Peters’ risible attack on the left

Why is that?

How Peters and Seymour react when they incite political violence, btw. And there are numerous examples of them doing this.

The fact that this dichotomy exists, and that media and some politicians are buying into it, is a signal of increasing fascism, for whatever that’s worth.

The liberal class once hailed Greta Thunberg's values. But Thunberg stepped outside of her lane and transgressed against the only true values the liberal class understands: imperial values. For this they abandoned her open.substack.com/pub/donotpan...