It’s no great piece of political analysis to say that for those of us on the Left, 2025 is shaping up to be a bad year. Donald Trump’s second term begins in a little over a week, governments are being shaken up in Europe and here in New Zealand we have entered the second year of the most right-wing government this country has seen since 1991.
It’s not a good time. But I do have some hope.
First here in New Zealand we see it in how opposition to David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill has coalesced. Not only in terms of last year’s hīkoi, but also in how many submissions have been made on the bill. Over 300,000. And from my impression of social media, most objectors are not making duplicate submissions, which is indicative of the intensity of opposition. It is not mere slacktivisim where submitters simply fill out a mass-submission.
Another point of protest emerged last year over the government’s proposed cuts to the Dunedin Hospital build, with 35,000 angry southerners – myself amongst them – marching against the government’s broken promise.
My point is citizens opposed to this government are engaged, active and organised. Which I think is rare for a first term government, at least in my experience.
Turning to the broader international context, there really is very little that someone like me in New Zealand could do to impact the American government. Online life in the English speaking world is heavily weighed towards American defaultism. So we tend to pick up American attitudes and points of view even just by osmosis.
The techbro culture that has arisen in support of Trump makes easy targets for me to express my disapproval. And at the same time it offers a way to protect myself from the pessimistic doom-scrolling that I engaged in from 2016-2021. I already ejected Twitter/X from my digital ecosystem some time ago. My final post was in mid 2023 and I finally deleted my account in November.
Facebook is a tougher nut to crack – mainly due to Messenger – but I have deactivated Instagram, cancelled push notifications and removed the Facebook app from my homescreen on my phone.
Amazon is probably the hardest of all, and a complete boycott is likely impossible – consider how many sites use AWS, for example – but I can at least dial back on what I spend there. Instead of making number go up, do my bit to make number go down.
On the whole, though, I intend to stick to my knitting and worry about what I can change here in New Zealand. I’ve always resisted the idea that New Zealanders are insular hobbits with a Shire mentality, but I think it’s time to embrace it.