ANDREA VANCE : IN DEFENCE OF WOKENESS

Journalist Andrea Vance may of declared an opposition to cancel culture but not because she thinks its wrong. She just wants to see its opponents recognise the error of their politically incorrect ways.
 

ANDREA VANCE is one of the country's better mainstream journalists. Before the last election she wrote an opinion piece that put some of our so-called Labour-friendly 'progressive' bloggers to shame, declaring that she was not going to vote as personal protest about the lack of political choice on offer.  Perhaps better late than never, Vance joined the some three quarter of million New Zealanders who no longer vote because the political establishment always wins and nothing ever changes. And, in her most recent column, she launched a critical salvo at the Labour Government for its lack of transparency and accountability. Careful now Andrea, a couple of my Labour friendly 'socialist' Facebook friends will be labelling you a 'leftist' if you are not careful.

However her attempt to come to grips with the Labour Government's political agenda, revolving around the He Paupau report, is rather less successful and reveals Vance's liberal limitations. While she is to be credited for broaching the topic of a backlash against the Government's agenda, a topic other journalists would prefer to sweep under the carpet, she doesn't go as far as saying that maybe, just maybe, the Labour Government has got it wrong.

While Vance comes out in opposition to 'cancel culture' because 'shutting down people ultimately doesn't work' she's only arguing from the position that if folk are allowed to let off steam they might calm down and see the error of their ways, before 'they open their minds to other points of view'. There's a grotesque paternalism at work here but at least Vance doesn't describe folk as 'deplorables'.

Vance is a lot cleverer than some of our politicians and journalists who shout 'racist' everytime they are confronted with something they don't like. But she never acknowledges that its the growing inequality of an economic system that exists to serve the interests of the one percent that is leaving many people feeling scared and vulnerable. Instead, having taking the economy off the table and rendered the working class invisible, Vance locates the 'bitterness, resentment and brittle  superiority' in 'undiluted racism' and 'a fear of being demonised. It often dovetails with panic about free speech, cancel culture, and wokeness'.

This can be only be the view of the rarified middle class liberalism that dominates the newsrooms of media organisations like Stuff (where Vance works) and RNZ. It has neither the political will or guts to take on the actual centre of political and economic power in this country: the capitalist ruling class and its political representatives in Parliament. Instead, we'll just engage in lop-sided 'culture wars' and not talk about the fact that one in five New Zealand families - Maori and Pakeha -  now live in poverty.

It is a middle class liberalism - a woke liberalism that Vance seems to think working class people are irrationally obsessed about - that is failing to combat the political and social injustice of an economic system that is actually defended by the Maori caucus in the Labour Government. It is a middle class liberalism that refuses to battle the political and social injustice of an economic system that benefits the few at the expense of the many. Instead it prefers to suggest that the victims of this very political and social injustice are actually at fault because they are motivated by 'undiluted racism'.

While liberal politicians like Green co-leader Marama Davidson hail the use of te reo by capitalism, they turn a blind eye to the fact that capitalism is sacrificing both the planet and its people, all in the name of profit. That's of so much more concern than any so-called 'panic' about free speech or 'wokeness'.