New Zealand shifts right as voters punish ruling party | CNN
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New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has conceded his Labour party lost Saturday’s election, as voters punished the government and took the country rightwards nine months after his predecessor Jacinda Ardern suddenly resigned.

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has conceded his Labour party lost Saturday’s election, as voters punished the government and took the country rightwards nine months after his predecessor Jacinda Ardern suddenly resigned.

The rising cost of living dominated campaigning with voters New Zealanders ending six years of Labour Party rule, the latter half of which was dominated by the country’s strict response to the coronavirus pandemic that successfully kept infections low but battered the economy.

With 90% of votes counted on Saturday evening, the center-right National Party, led by former airline executive Christopher Luxon, had amassed around 40% of ballots, CNN affiliates RNZ and Newshub reported.

  • ChetzemokaEnglish
    8•1 year ago

    Ah yes, those famously conservative Communist Party academics who were targeted during the Cultural Revolution.

    I have no idea what you’ve been reading. Mao was unhappy that the existing Communist Party was doing things differently from the way he thought they should be done. He was a pure authoritarian dictator, not a social progressive, no matter what propaganda he used as an excuse for his egotism.

    “The Cultural Revolution began as a struggle between Mao Zedong and other top party leaders for dominance of the Chinese Communist Party.”

    https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/introduction_to_the_cultural_revolution

    • @Occamsrazer@lemdro.idEnglish
      -1•1 year ago

      Eradication of the “4 olds” was a deliberate effort by the communist party to destroy old culture, in order to replace it with something new. Since when do conservatives strive to destroy and overturn existing, established culture? That literally the opposite of conservative. Or is your argument that it isn’t necessarily conservatives, but it’s not progressives either?

      • ChetzemokaEnglish
        6•1 year ago

        Authoritarians exist without respect to any political beliefs. They exist to aggrandize themselves.

        • @Occamsrazer@lemdro.idEnglish
          -1•1 year ago

          Mao may not have been progressive, I don’t need to argue that point. But he definitely tapped into a progressive spirit driven by progressive youths and the result was a tragedy.

          • ChetzemokaEnglish
            1•1 year ago

            He definitely did not. He tapped into populist grievance from rural farmers and used them to violently target academics and authorities in cities. Funny how that sounds real familiar, doesn’t it?

              • ChetzemokaEnglish
                1•1 year ago

                Are you saying you think a populist authoritarian movement was really communism?

                • @Occamsrazer@lemdro.idEnglish
                  0•1 year ago

                  My whole point was that the cultural revolution was a disaster because of unchecked progressivism, and that more conservative voices could have averted the disaster. This was in response to an unhinged rant about conservatives being good for nothing and how they should be silenced. Not sure why I engaged in that insane premise to begin with, but anyway that’s how we got here.

                  • ChetzemokaEnglish
                    1•1 year ago

                    And my whole point was that you’re wrong in your assessment of why the cultural revolution was a disaster. It was a disaster because it was a populist authoritarian movement. Had nothing to do with progressive or conservative no matter what propaganda they used to dress it up.