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Summarised by Centrist
The New Zealand Listener devoted a sprawling feature to warning readers about a global “right turn,” framing conservative politics as a rising threat.
Bob McCoskrie of Family First offered his analysis of what he calls the magazine’s “accidental truths,” moments where the Listener appears to concede the very reasons voters are abandoning the liberal establishment.
Early in the feature, the Listener offers an unintentional diagnosis of the political mood: “Voters aren’t choosing it because they’re evil or stupid. They’re looking at the failures of conventional politicians and parties, the insincerity, the inability to solve hard problems.”
McCoskrie says this line undermines the entire premise of the feature. “It’s almost as though the Listener has actually figured out the solution to themselves why countries are heading to the right… because they’re sick of the left-wing nonsense,” he says.
The feature goes on to describe the consequences of modern liberalism: “Liberalism replaces families, neighbourhoods, civil society, and religious faith with consumerism, indebtedness, alienation, and bureaucratic regulation. The consequence is a society of loneliness, failed marriages, endemic mental illness, addiction, overflowing prisons, depths of despair, and declining fertility.” McCoskrie’s reaction is blunt, “Wow, they’ve just described New Zealand there.”
Notably, the Listener quotes the NZSIS saying, “No one ideology currently stands out as presenting a greater threat.” McCoskrie counters, “Maybe we just get rid of the extremist stuff that comes from both sides.”
