Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Isaiah 5:20
A commenter wrote of my previous article on the influence of Marxism – cultural, academic and otherwise – on New Zealand society that, of all the academics he or she knows, “only one is a Marxist” and “the vast majority” are “progressive globalist neoliberals”. The commenter further asserted that “Ardern, Robertson and Co” are mainly motivated by progressive liberalism.
This is an interesting point which, while superficially correct, is, at a deeper level, also profoundly flawed. To understand why, we would have to first look at what comprises a ‘cultural Marxist’, compare this with the make-up of a ‘progressive liberal’, and then look at the two in light of the composition of our current parliament.
A modern-day Marxist is not, as Chris Trotter would have it, a physically violent revolutionary who wishes his enemies – the ‘capitalists’ – to be physically vanquished. Rather, cultural Marxists have determined that the ‘social struggle’ – which all Marxists see as being between an ‘oppressor class’ and the ‘oppressed’ – is to be resolved by interventions which, when introduced incrementally, will result in the eventual demise of Western society and, in its place, a socialist dawn.
Now that cultural Marxism is ascendant and has become the established hegemony – that is, the power structures, institutions of state and a large percentage of the population accept its central premise – its violence is internalised, played out through a form of dispute resolution which asserts ‘minority rights’ as the principal determinant. The trigger word which Jacinda Ardern repeatedly uses to manufacture consent for this process in the minds of her constituents is ‘kindness’.
The BFD. Photoshopped image credit Luke
In making decisions for us via their own prescribed form of centralised planning – otherwise known as personal identity politics – Marxists are essentially against freedom and choice. The behind-closed-doors Ihumatao settlement is therefore Marxist. The unilateral closure (by ‘captain’s call’) of Taranaki’s oil and gas industry to meet ‘targets’ set by the exponents of a globalised climate rort (which in itself is Marxist) is Marxist. The plastic bag ban of the last parliamentary term, which saw unpopular plastic bags outlawed rather than gradually supplanted through the action of markets, was Marxist.
The COVID response, which curtailed movement, closed whole industries, and paid most workers out of a central government fund, was radically Marxist. As is holding New Zealanders captive in a literal prison which they are not allowed to leave. Government control of labour markets via increased sick leave, public holidays and the minimum wage is surely a sign of things to come. This government despises personal autonomy and its actions are, almost without exception, Marxist; cementing in place a chilling ‘new normal’ which has emerged from the ashes of COVID and the corresponding rise of Xi Jinping’s China.
Standing in what ought to be stark contrast to Jacinda Ardern’s smug ‘woke’ fascism, classical liberals espouse personal freedom and liberty, which manifest in public policy terms as personal choice. ‘Progressive’ liberals extend the personal choice mantra further, and somewhat dangerously, into the realm of what used to be known as the social taboo. Their libertarian approach stretches even into areas which were once traditionally sacrosanct, and perhaps even considered incontestable by those of us who value our culture.
The reason why social policy areas which were once incontestable are now regularly contested is not due to the liberals themselves, but because cultural Marxists have beaten them to their position, having established a fortress on the present-day moral high ground. From that position they have already routed our heritage, ransacked our interdictions and driven out all contradictory views – usually through the shaming of opponents. The outcome of their activity is reflected in the composition of New Zealand’s parliament, which has no conservative parties, and virtually no conservative individuals in it.
Marxists have, for some time, controlled the orthodoxy by prioritising what used to be personal and private matters, such as sexual orientation, ethnicity and personal identity, redefining them in terms of ‘struggle’. Our recent – and tragic – abortion reform was framed in exactly these terms by a Prime Minister who claimed that it ‘isn’t fair’ to ‘criminalise’ women for having abortions. She did this by misrepresenting the control of abortion under the Crimes Act as the reason for the social stigma surrounding it, rather than admitting that the reason for the stigma is because abortion is, to all intents and purposes, still culturally taboo.
Progressive liberals have arrived at this same position, but for opposite reasons. Taking an expansive, or ‘positive’ perspective of society (as opposed to the ‘negative’ or reductive view of the Marxists) they seek to ‘liberate’ by extending the Rights of Man, espoused in terms of the individual, to cover the ‘rights’ of different groups. This extends to the ‘right’ of a woman to abortion, while leaving unresolved the conflicting rights of the child being dispatched.
There are many such areas where competing ‘rights’ come into conflict. In respect of the recent beheadings and shootings by Muslims of the citizenry of Europe, President Macron – the occasional liberal – has leapt (at least for now) to the defence of the Republic. Whereas Sadiq Khan – the Marxist – considers spontaneous public executions to be ‘part and parcel of life in a big city’. Biden – the ‘liberal’ – is seeking to ‘unite America’, while the Marxist left of his party wants unilateral action on health care, gun control, climate change and taxation – which is anything but uniting.
What the progressive liberals in our own parliament – and by this, I clearly mean the ACT party – may not have realised, is that their own unhealthy passion for killing off the elderly neatly book-ends with Ardern’s infanticide-enabling legislation, establishing New Zealand’s body politic as a ruthless, state-sponsored killing machine.
Through their terrible, physical enactments, infanticide and geronticide hardly lead us to a liberating position. And this points to the reason why the ACT party is both an unwitting bedfellow as well as a useful idiot for the Marxist left. It also highlights the level of deception Marxists are prepared to employ to achieve the appearance of ‘consensus’ between themselves and progressive liberals to further their own ends.
If you enjoyed this BFD article please share it.