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If New Zealand had a giant monument at the entrance to Auckland or Wellington harbour it would be a Statue of Equality not liberty, or so said visiting American political scientist Leslie Lipson who wrote a book about our politics in the 1940s.

New Zealanders have long held dear the notion of fairness, and Lipsons reflection remains true today. Our love of fairness extends even to one of our longest-running and most popular TV shows, Fair Go, which goes into bat for ripped-off consumers.

In the US all politicians have to at least pay lip service to defending liberty and freedom, but here politicians of all stripes have to show concern for equality. They must take care to present their policies and beliefs in a way that suggests they will promote fairness. This will be the case again in 2020.

Some say the New Zealand insistence on fairness goes back to our colonial history. Many escapees of industrial Britain embraced a life in a less class-ridden country. Of course the idea that New Zealand is an equal and classless society was always a myth, but this egalitarian ethos endures.

It creates a particular problem for politicians of the right. As a former prime minister, John Key, told US diplomats in a private briefing, New Zealands socialist streak means it can be difficult to push rightwing policies. Key later elaborated: New Zealand is a very caring country. I think New Zealanders do have a heart.

This egalitarian ethos has been particularly resurgent in recent years. The financial crisis a decade ago the biggest since the depression of the 1930s transformed politics and values around the world, fuelling anger and rebellion about inequality.

In 2017 this helped the election of Jacinda Arderns government, made up of parties that channelled concerns about the lack of fairness under the then National-led government. The new government promised to be transformative, rolling out a fairness agenda in programs from KiwiBuild to child poverty reduction targets.

This all presents the National party with a dilemma. There are few votes in criticising the governments fairness agenda in fact the opposition is reduced to complaining that the government has not delivered on its left-leaning program. The two parties are effectively strategically deadlocked, and National lacks any convincing rightwing policies that would address major election issues of housing affordability, infrastructure deficits, and poverty. Even on climate change it has signed up to much of the governments agenda.

As the election nears, National will try to paint itself as better economic managers and Grant Robertson as an irresponsible and incompetent finance minister, but this is unlikely to cut it with many voters.

Nor is the government likely to push any significant new leftwing economic reforms, or even tax hikes, giving National little to scare swing voters with. And theres no way that National can hope to best Ardern in terms of a campaign based on leadership and personality.

So where can it differentiate? National increasingly relies on stoking culture wars and law and order. It is these fertile new hunting grounds that give Simon Bridges his best chance of painting Ardern and her colleagues as out of touch with mainstream New Zealand.

Culture wars are concerned with debates relating to ethnicity, gender, sexuality, human rights, discrimination, free speech and civil liberties. Elements of the political left especially in the Labour and Green parties are increasingly associated with campaigns in these areas, and often their stances are not shared by many mainstream voters.

So far Ardern has navigated her government clear of such debates, knowing such an association could be fatal. For example she still refuses to visit Ihumtao, the site of an important struggle over Mori land rights because of her fear of the association with radicals.

Ardern knows very well to keep her government as clear as possible of contentious social issues. Instead, if Labour and its coalition partners can keep public debate around traditional egalitarian concerns about inequality, housing, health and education, the New Zealand notion of fairness will probably also ensure her government will get another chance.

Nationals best bet might be to provoke an ugly culture war. Expect to see Bridges attempt to start debates on these issues and paint Labour and the Greens as woke elitists, or just soft on law and order. This might be desperate and opportunistic National MPs genuinely dont care that much about many of these issues. But National knows that they are the sort of emotive and divisive concerns that might change votes.

Theres a cultural backlash ready to be fostered as Donald Trump, Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson have found to their benefit. Such debates, whether over identity politics, hate speech, minority rights or gender can be explosively divisive. That could end up being the ugly story of the 2020 general election.

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New Zealand voters must prepare for an ugly culture war this election - The Guardian

Is cultural appropriation the new black? It certainly seems to be the hottest trend in the fashion industry: every other week there is a row over the subject.

The latest offender is the Japanese fashion house Comme des Garons, which has been criticised for putting white models in cornrow wigs. In an apology, the stylist, Julien dYs, seemed to suggest that the wigs werent meant to be cornrows a traditionally black hairstyle but a nod to Egyptian pharaoh hair, to which the internet replied: why not use Egyptian models?

Is it problematic for white models to wear cornrows or wigs like an Egyptian? The answer is: Sometimes; maybe; it depends. What constitutes cultural appropriation is complex and nuanced. Alas, the conversation around the subject is frequently anything but.

On one hand, you have a small group of vocal people who enjoy taking offence at everything remember when Lena Dunham suggested that bad cafeteria sushi was cultural appropriation? On the other hand, you have bigots who seem to think it is clever to say things such as: Non-white people wearing suits is cultural appropriation. The concept has lost all meaning and become a straw man to be kicked around in the culture wars.

Comme des Garons doesnt have the most politically correct history. In 2018, the fashion website Heroine noted that the brand hadnt used a black model in a womens presentation for 24 years (although it started using them again soon after).

Parading white models with black hairstyles down the catwalk was spectacularly thoughtless. Or perhaps it wasnt. The frequency of cultural appropriation controversies makes me suspect that some brands are deploying them as a PR tool. After all, no publicity is bad publicity comme les Kardashians are well aware.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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Are rows over cultural appropriation a dastardly PR ploy? - The Guardian

The New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, says she is committed to making the coming general election campaign positive, factual and robust and has pledged to fight the online spread of misinformation.

The general election is scheduled for September and political analysts are already warning that New Zealand needs to be vigilant to protect itself against the kind of culture wars and fake news campaigns seen in the recent US and UK elections, among others.

Addressing her colleagues at a Labour party caucus meeting, Ardern said she intended the tone and values of the coming campaign to be positive and factual.

New Zealanders deserve a factual campaign, one that is free from misinformation, where people can make honest reflections for themselves about what they want for the future of New Zealand, Ardern said.

We want it to be robust, where there is a good exchange between us and other parties, but it is incredibly important for us as the Labour party that New Zealand does not fall prey to what weve seen happen in other jurisdictions.

Domestic media reported that the Labour party intended to sign up to Facebooks transparency tool, the Facebook Ad Library Report, which allows users to view how a political party is spending its advertising dollars on the platform. The Guardian could not immediately confirm this.

In a recent Q&A session with Guardian readers, Ardern said New Zealanders had a low threshold for the so-called culture wars seen around the election of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, and even coming referendums on legalising marijuana and euthanasia should not divide the country.

I agree no one wants to see division, but I do think New Zealanders have shown they can live happily side by side while holding strong and varying views, Ardern said.

Yes these [coming referendums] can be emotional decisions but I trust that New Zealanders will have the debates while remaining respectful of one another and of differing views. In fact I think thats one of the things that sets us apart.

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Jacinda Ardern calls for 'factual and positive' New Zealand election campaign - The Guardian

A resurgent Bernie Sanders is terrifying the Democratic establishment and has seen Warren lash out and attempt to smear Bernie as a sexist.

This sexism smear is as outrageous as it is desperate, because Bernie was a feminist well before Warren was a Republican.

Sanders vs Warren represents the great Class vs Identity Politics schism on the Left and those woke Identity Politics activists wont tolerate the patriarchy robbing them of another female candidate for President so expect the name calling and tribal social media lynch mobs that make them about as a popular as Donald Trump at a Queer Intersectionist Feminist Folk Festival to erupt if Bernie wins.

These woke Identity Politics dynamics have managed to alienate working class voters on social media to such an extent that they were major factors in the Trump win, the Brexit win, the Scott Morrison win and the Corbyn loss so if Sanders can beat Warren and then beat Trump, Class Left solidarity will have retaken the philosophical high ground on the Left.

This dynamic of woke Identity Politics activism alienating working class voters is one Bryce Edwards notes in his latest Guardian column, where he highlights that because there is so little in way of real policy difference between National and Labour, National will fight the next election using culture wars instead

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So where can it differentiate? National increasingly relies on stoking culture wars and law and order. It is these fertile new hunting grounds that give Simon Bridges his best chance of painting Ardern and her colleagues as out of touch with mainstream New Zealand.

Culture wars are concerned with debates relating to ethnicity, gender, sexuality, human rights, discrimination, free speech and civil liberties. Elements of the political left especially in the Labour and Green parties are increasingly associated with campaigns in these areas, and often their stances are not shared by many mainstream voters.

hilariously for daring to point out that many woke Identity Politics activists are alienating more voters than they are winning over, Bryce has been immediately decried on Twitter by those very same alienating woke Identity Politics activists.

You cant make this shit up.

I think the identity politics left in NZ are more focused on cancelling voters than recruiting them.

If your starting point as a woke Identity Politics activist is that all men are rapists, all white people racist, Trans Rights over all other rights always, if a woman says it then it must be true and anyone standing up for free speech is a Nazi, then you might want to sit this next election out because that message is pushing people away from our progressive cause, not towards it, as this excellent piece in The Atlantic points out

The Twitter Electorate Isnt the Real Electorate

Social media is distorting our sense of mainstream opinion.

Does Twitter matter? The temptation is to say no. Its user base is small compared with Facebook321 million monthly active users versus more than 2 billionand a quick glance at the trending topics reveals its fractious, claustrophobic atmosphere. Yet as one dead fox proves, it does matter: On December 26, a single tweet by a British lawyer with 178,000 followers, announcing that he had killed a fox with a baseball bat, made the front pages of two major newspapers.

Yes, it was a quiet news day. But Twitter has become journalists easiest and most reliable source of cor-blimey (or OMG, to American readers) stories, because all of human life is there, and its searchable. It is also the worlds wire service: Just look at Donald Trump, who drops his unfiltered thoughts straight onto Twitter, confident that they will be picked up by journalists. For anyone interested in politics, it is the closest thing to a global community center, or a small-ads sectionthe virtual room where it happens.

All of this gives the social networkand its most active usersoutsize power to shape the political conversation. Its influence can be seen in contests currently under way in the United States and Britain: the race to become the Democrats presidential nominee, and the struggle to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party. Both risk being distorted by what we might call the Twitter Primary.

British tweeters skew left and toward remaining in the European Union, which reflects their demographic makeup. On average social media users are younger and better educated than non-users, wrote the researchers Jonathan Mellon and Christopher Prosser in 2017. Users were also more likely to live in cities, particularly wealthier areas with younger populations. This phenomenon has been more thoroughly studied in the U.S., where The New York Times has reported that the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate. Active political tweeters in America were whiter, more left wing, more likely to be college educated, and less likely to say that political correctness was a problem than primary voters as a whole. Given the faux-democratic promise of social media, it is ironic that it has created a new establishment with roughly the same tight demographic boundaries as the old one.

The real danger of identity politics over class politics, as we have seen in the UK election and with Trump, is that when white poor men start seeing themselves not as a class but as an identity, the Right win.

In the NZ context that means 500 retweets by Wellington Twitteratti = alienation not winning. If its popular on The Spinoff, its poison at the ballot box and if Action Station have a petition on it, avoid it like the fucking plague.

The woke wont change their rage politics of alienation, they cant. Social media has given them a sense of power theyve never held before, an ocean of the bullied who can now bully will never hand over their weapons, so the Left need to ignore the Woke, stop alienating white working class men and actually try to win them over.

Take white male privilege. Why would men want to be told they have it (when their suicide rates, mental health issues, low life expectancy, violence and murder rate is so high) and why would they willingly hand it over if they did have it?

Isnt white male privilege being treated with respect? Not getting hassled by the cops? Getting paid properly?

The Woke scream for white men to hand over that privilege, but why would any white male look at the list and agree to be paid less, be treated poorly by the cops or accept sub-standard service?

Wouldnt it be better to say that we want to expand white male privilege to everyone? Instead of attacking those Men, hold up their agency as the right every citizen should enjoy.

Expanding the franchise of democratic agency is something everyone can get behind including those it currently benefits because removing my agency so people who despise me can have more isnt an easy political sale.

Fellow citizens shouldnt fear the Left, the 1% should.

If Sanders can re-establish Class as the foundation for the Left, we can pull back working class voters from realigning with the Right and there might be a chance to avoid the madness of right wing Demagogues.

If Sanders loses, we are doomed to right wing populism. Theres more at stake this election than America gaining its first woman president, it could lose its soul.

See more here:
Bryce Edward's Guardian Column, Culture Wars and why Sanders vs Warren is the Class vs Identity Politics schism on the Left - thedailyblog.co.nz

Nancy Pelosi speaking at the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention (photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.), said in a televised town hall meeting on December 5 that she thinks the arts will help heal an America profoundly fractured by the divisive political and cultural realities of life in the Trump era. When asked how the Speaker planned on unifying the country during impeachment, Pelosi answered, I myself think thatone of the ways that America will heal is through the arts. I truly believe thats something where we find our common ground. You enjoy music together, you see a play or movie, youlaugh, you cry, youre inspired, you laugh, you cry

But the arts are more divided than ever. Schismatic tribal factions generate and consume art and media thats increasingly characterized by blatant political partisanship, and overt contempt for ideological dissidents.

Two paintings of presidents completed in 2018 perfectly exemplify the opposing camps. The first, a portrait of Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley, was widely celebrated as a presidential portrait for progressives who, until that point, mostly rejected presidential portraiture as corny establishmentarianism. Its unveiling at the National Portrait Gallery became an artistic gathering as much as a political event, which the right interpreted as a clear declaration of the art worlds majority support for Obama. The painting drew near-unanimous disdain in conservative media which referenced Wileys earlier work: Judith and Holofernes in which a black woman beheads a white woman as a way to condemn Obamas portrait as radically progressive and maybe even racist. For Trumps 2020 reelection campaign, his action committee appropriated the image for satirical merchandise.

The other work by outsider artist Jon McNaughton is a camo-hued campy adaption of George Binghams painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, replaced with Trump and his cabinet entitled Crossing the Swamp. The painting received over 20,000 likes on Twitter and was featured on Fox News, ABC News, and USA Today as an example of trending contemporary conservative art. (I reached out to McNaughton, and his assistant declined to provide an image or more information about the work. She stated the artist didnt want the painting to be used for political purposes. Which is supremely ironic considering the subject matter.)

Old debates about the role of government in the arts are re-emerging, and once more a presidential administration is looking to put politics upstream of culture. Republican officials have been threatening to cut funding for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) for decades in part as a way to censor work the NEA funds, like the famously graphic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serranos Piss Christ. The Trump presidency has perpetuated this legacy by threatening to cut $126 million of NEA funding three years in a row.

This socio-political factionalism isnt exclusive to Washington partisan posturing though. The art world is itself experiencing divisive convulsions between conservative institutional policymakers and their progressive workers. Last year the Marciano Brothers promptly shuttered the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles and fired all of its staff after workers tried to unionize. Similarly, in the events leading up to the resignation of Warren Kanders from the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the power players at the institution seemed at ideological odds with staff that produce some of the most progressive exhibitions in the world.

The so-called right has been eagerly constructing a conservative popular culture that counterbalances an arts establishment it sees as dominated by leftists and progressive values (despite evidence to the contrary mentioned above). But the left is also suspicious of the overbearing influence of conservatism in the arts. This impasse of perceptions precludes the possibility of Pelosis prognostication ever coming true.

If you do a quick Google search for articles related to conservative art you get things like The Rise of Conservative Art and Poetry on theepochtimes.com, or Conservatives Need to Start Taking Art Seriously on quillete.com, the first paragraph of which reads:

Conservatives, crack open some champagne and celebrate. A remarkable renewal of traditional painting and sculpture has taken place in the American art scene over the past 10 years. At last, a cultural movement has emerged that builds upon time-honored practices instead of deconstructing them.

Both authors identify an urgent need for conservatives to create an alternative to progressive culture with their own celebrities, writers, and artists, but also to define spaces where the right can share art.

This isnt the first time Americans have gone through culture wars, and perhaps todays iteration is just a continuation of the tumult experienced in the 60s and 80s. Theres always been a traditional ideological rift between urban progressives and rural conservatives in this country, but unlike past struggles, social media and search engine algorithms have intensified insular bubbles and soothing echo chambers.

Increasingly, people from both sides only see content with appealing values that are reflexively organized by convenient left and right-wing polarities. If you couple this with block, ban, unfriend culture, the effect is people are finding fewer opportunities to find common ground through art. As long as the arts continue this trend of inspiring parallel but opposite cultures, art will exacerbate our divisions, not heal them.

President Trumps recent tweet threatening strikes on Iranian cultural sites is a scarily literal expansion of the culture wars. Although Trump walked his statement back in a later press conference saying he would respect international law it seems thats the only thing stopping him. His tweet set an unretractable presidential precedent that arts institutions across the country unanimously condemn. We must, of course, unequivocally oppose virulent partisans from either faction weaponizing art for short-term political advantage, especially in exchange for the destruction of cultural heritage sites millenia old.

As this sort of discordant rhetoric intensifies, we must do more than just find commonality through shared culture, as Speaker Pelosi suggests. We must also recognize and resist self-serving politicians who use art to divide us.

Go here to see the original:
Nancy Pelosi Says the Arts Will Help Heal America, but They Can't - Hyperallergic