No Right Turn: A vast left-wing conspiracy

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

A vast left-wing conspiracy

New Zealand's right-wing blogs usually have a tongue-in-cheek reference to membership in the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy", or VRWC, as part of their banner. Now, via Joe Hendren, I find that there is an international counter-conspiracy, the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, to match them. Naturally, I've joined, and I look forward to learning the secret handshake.

5 comments:

I don't think I would join a conspiracy that would have me.

Posted by Hans Versluys : 5/03/2006 03:25:00 PM

I have been in email contact with "1337hax0r", who is the VLWC lead operative. He asked me what political parties are considered left wing and got 3% of the vote in NZ. At first I asked if I could be cheeky and say none!

Then my reply got a little longer.

I said it was important to distingush between wider 'centre left' and 'left wing' especially as I would think both Labour and the Greens would prefer to be refered to as 'centre-left' rather than 'left wing'. On some days Labour even struggles to make centre-left....

He includes the UK Labour party, so my impression is that it is a pretty broad based conspiracy!

"1337hax0r" told me he will be updating the top of the site to include links to NZ Labour and the Greens.

I am glad you joined the VLWC Idiot - I was happy to endorse your membership of the conspriacy :)

Posted by Joe Hendren : 5/03/2006 11:54:00 PM

Nice to see the left starting to get a sense of humour - of course an idea stolen from the right.

Posted by Anonymous : 5/04/2006 12:16:00 PM

"He includes the UK Labour party, so my impression is that it is a pretty broad based conspiracy!"

The decidedly "business liberal" Canadian Liberals are also included, together with Australian Labor.

Left is all relative I guess.

Re: the NZLP's status. During the hey-day of the Alliance in the early-mid 90s, the NZLP was continually panned as a bunch of right wing stooges by would-be hard core lefties. Some of them are still around, espousing a boring "anything short of total Revolution is right wing" ideology.

The always seemed to forget the Alliance was an alliance of 5 parties, two of which had rightish origins: the Liberals and the Democrats (i.e., Social Credit)

Posted by dc_red : 5/04/2006 12:32:00 PM

The NZLP's status. During the hey-day of the Alliance in the early-mid 90s, the NZLP was continually panned as a bunch of right wing stooges"

Led by Mike Moore and with Richard Prebble and other Rogernomes still in the caucus - what else could you describe it as but "a bunch of right wing stooges" - 84-90 was strong evidence of this, or do you like to forget who sold telecom?

"Some of them are still around, espousing a boring "anything short of total Revolution is right wing" ideology."

Ahh here we have the old trick of using the leninists and the trots to create a straw man argument to defend the labour party.

"anything short to total social democracy is right wing" would be a much more accurate description of the position of many lefties, including many in the Alliance at the time.

"The (sic) always seemed to forget the Alliance was an alliance of 5 parties, two of which had rightish origins: the Liberals and the Democrats (i.e., Social Credit)"

While this might be true this only demonstrates how far to the right Labour had moved. It also should be noted that some ideas from the social credit movement were promoted by proninment members of the first Labour govt such as John A. Lee.

Posted by Joe Hendren : 5/04/2006 10:00:00 PM