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Cake day: December 9th, 2023

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  • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.mlto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneMāorule
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    4 days ago

    ACT will never be as popular as AfD, they are simply not relatable to normal people on that way. They would have to dramatically overhaul their image, not saying it’s impossible, but definitely not happening in two elections. They have been treated as clowns by the media and they occupy a particularly niche spot in politics. To relate it to German politics, they are actually more like the FDP, and their role has been to work together with the CDU who promotes them for Wahlkreis votes in the areas with the richest people, to make sure they take a few extra seats in case they come in under the threshold, which happens regularly. So they are seen as the party of the financial elite, and they often do the dirty work of the centre right party when they don’t want to smear their own image. Historically their brand of extremism has been financial, not openly racial, and it would take a huge PR operation to get poor people to vote for them, even if they bait them with racism.

    NZ First, the centre populist party is much more likely to take that role of the and shift to the right, but they are hugely centred around the cult of personality of their leader, who is 80 years old now. They are pretty likely to fall apart when he retires or dies since nobody knows who any of the other.

    Additionally, poor White New Zealanders are simply not quite as racist towards Māori as White Germans are towards Muslim immigrants. They live closely together in the same communities and always have, and that makes a difference.

    A truly popular right extreme party emerging in Aotearoa is absolutely a threat that I am taking seriously, but I think due to the specific conditions it would have to be a fresh young party like the AfD that captures the imagination of the youth. It will probably be an American style illiberal conspiracy troll fascist type movement, not European style fascism, we are simply too removed from that cultural context. It would probably have to include Māori to some degree, and play on anti immigrant / China sentiment. We saw that in our anti-covid-restrictions protests, a certain branch of Māori nationalism was very involved in that, and it was very important for their “legitimacy” even when the protests included hardcore racists too.