The words of Winston:
How a 79-year-old’s vocabulary shows a political shift
New Zealand’s oldest politician – the only one remaining from the Silent Generation – has said the word “woke” in Parliament more than any other MP.
Charlie Mitchell examines how Winston Peters’ embrace of online colloquialisms reflects his appeal to a new coalition of supporters.
Apolitician’s word selection can sometimes tell us what they believe. More often, it tells us what they want the listener to hear – an important distinction. Whether it’s the corporate jargon used by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, or Jacinda Ardern’s pleas to “be kind”, a politician’s speech conveys more than just the meaning of the words. It projects a political identity.
It’s worth paying close attention to these word choices, particularly when they change. Set aside what the speaker actually believes: What do they want us to hear?
Since returning to the political arena in 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has given a masterclass in shifting one’s vocabulary to better communicate with potential voters.
The 79-year-old has enthusiastically adopted online colloquialisms into his speech, more so than almost all of his younger parliamentary colleagues.
Sometimes, these new words combine with favourites from yesteryear, resulting in a unique and sometimes disorienting vocabulary that allows him to speak to multiple audiences at once.
Consider this brief exchange in a recent interview on TVNZ’s Breakfast show.
Using the words “lefty” and “shill” – as Peters does multiple times in the interview – is straight from the modern internet. “Pinko” is an insult from the Cold War era. Both mean essentially the same thing – a generic insult for someone perceived to be left-wing – yet they are separated by decades.
Here’s another example, from a speech in Parliament in December.
“Gaslighting” means psychologically manipulating someone into self-doubt or paranoia, usually in the context of a relationship. You’ll hear it frequently on TikTok. Here, Peters deploys it alongside one of his favourite pop culture references, a song from 1993.
Someone who might attest to Peters’ time-warping vocabulary is journalist Jack Tame. In a combative interview last year, Peters called Tame both “woke” and a “Philadelphia lawyer” – an archaic term for a pedant.
Other journalists are regularly called “fifth columnists”, a play on the term “fifth column”, a World War II-era term for a group undermining society from within.
At the other end of the spectrum, Peters once claimed on Facebook “the woke” were trying to “cancel Shakespeare” and “get rid of words that might offend the snowflakes”.
The Press has processed and analysed hundreds of thousands of words spoken by Peters in recent years, including speeches, interviews, press releases and his Facebook page.
Much of this has come from the period between 2022 and the present day. It largely excludes his foreign policy commentary, which has changed little.
By picking out some of his new favourite words, we can see how Peters speaks to his diverse coalition of supporters, which includes seniors, online culture warriors, nationalists and others.
Nazis and communists
Let’s start with Peters’ State of the Union speech last month, which drew scrutiny for invoking Nazi Germany.
Many in the media heard it as a comment on co-governance, which Peters had cited earlier in the speech. He later said he was misinterpreted; he had been referring to “the Māori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi’s previous comments about Māori having ‘superior genetics’ ”.
(In truth, both the text and the delivery were unclear, and either interpretation is plausible. However, there was no explicit reference to Waititi, which might explain the confusion.)
This word choice was part of a pattern. Peters has increasingly invoked dictatorships or totalitarian regimes in reference to his political rivals.
Here he is in March last year, speaking to Reality Check Radio (RCR) after protesters shut down anti-trans campaigner Posie Parker’s New Zealand event that month.
And speaking on The Platform a few months later about work by the Department of Internal Affairs on a proposed media regulator.
Such comparisons have been flung from both the left and right of the political spectrum in New Zealand politics. But they were once rare, and often came with a backlash followed by a prompt apology.
Peters’ recent usage suggests changing norms, consistent with a support base that believes the last government over-reached during the Covid response.
For a sense of how broad these references can be, Peters said this about journalists in an August campaign speech last year.
Woke shills and virtue-signallers
“Woke” was popularised through the Black Lives Matter movement and means someone who is “awake” to injustice.
Now, it is more often used as an insult for someone who is over-eager or performative about social justice.
Peters has been an enthusiastic – if slightly late – adopter of the term “woke”.
He has used it dozens of times in speeches, interviews and online posts: In the short time he has been back in Parliament, Peters has said “woke” in the House more than any other MP in history.
Here is a typical example from the campaign trail last year, referring to sex education in schools.
In a practical sense, Peters has used woke to replace “political correctness” (or PC), using it as a punchy modifier thrown into a sentence for emphasis.
Some of the words Peters uses in conjunction with woke are worth analysing in their own right.
Here is one example, from the recent State of the Union speech.
Cultural Marxism originates – ironically – with the Nazis and “Cultural Bolshevism”, a term they used to describe artists and progressives. It was adapted to Cultural Marxism by the far-right, but has since become a mainstream term in conservative politics.
Peters first used it in a 2001 speech, drawing on a quote by the US politician Pat Buchanan about political correctness. That it reappeared two decades later, in the nearly identical context of woke, shows how closely the concepts are aligned.
To Peters, someone who is woke is also likely to be “virtue-signalling”, another recent term for describing someone who holds a position for performative reasons (it first appeared in New Zealand’s Parliament in late 2018).
There are many examples of Peters using this woke, virtue-signalling two-punch.
Peters’ growing affinity for woke became so apparent that he was asked for a definition, which he supplied on his Facebook page: One that, incidentally, combines political correctness, fascism and virtue-signalling. “At a public meeting yesterday a question was asked about what ‘woke’ means. Definition of woke: 1. A state of awareness only achieved by politically correct fascists dumb enough to find injustice in everything apart from their own behaviour and believe they have a right to dictate to others how to think. 2. An out of touch virtue-signaller who cannot define what a ‘woman’ is.”
“A gaslighting cancel culture …”
A year before Peters was born, a film depicted a man psychologically destroying his wife so he could steal her inheritance.
It inspired the term “gaslighting” which exploded in popularity in the late 2010s, particularly in liberal circles. The first to use it in New Zealand’s Parliament was Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March in 2021; the second was former Green MP Elizabeth Kerekere.
Its usage has since broadened across political lines.
Here is Peters using it for the first time in a 2022 speech.
In his useage, it is typically Peters – and, by extension, his supporters – who is being gaslit.
Yet gaslighting implies a power imbalance: Peters, notably, is a former and current deputy prime minister.
But like many of his word choices, it fits into his brand of populist politics – to be gaslit is to be manipulated by a powerful elite that does not have the ordinary person’s best interests at heart.
A culture that is increasingly woke, driven by virtue-signallers, is fundamentally out of touch with common people.
These vocabulary changes happened while Peters courted a new (overlapping) support base: Opponents of the pandemic response and those concerned about the perceived liberalisation of society, particularly around race and gender issues.
This became apparent in his campaign meetings, where Peters was regularly asked his thoughts on conspiratorial topics.
Here is his response to a question about 15-minute cities, the urban planning concept some believe is a sinister plan to confine people to small neighbourhoods.
In 20 seconds, he used the old-fashioned word “balderdash”; invoked a group most publicised in the 1970s; referenced a 1998 movie; and mentioned the World Economic Forum, the modern-day bogeyman for conspiracists.
This ability to glide between generations, absorbing new neologisms, has arguably allowed Peters to assemble a coalition few other politicians could hold together.
Whether you’re an older person who enjoys nostalgic references to historical figures and events, or a younger participant in online culture wars, Peters can speak to both simultaneously.
“I’m not backing down to your shill, lefty bias ... with the [inaudible], pinko view you’ve got that you can get away with this racism. I despise racism and have all my life.” “And my point is, why were they [the media] gaslighting us out of the campaign? This is not what a democracy looks like. Whether people agree or not, they’re entitled to hear, as Phil Collins sang, they’re entitled to hear both sides of the story.” “If you didn’t like what Posie Parker was saying, then don’t listen. But this cancel culture that says ‘if I don’t like what you say, I'm gonna shut you down ...’ That’s Hitlerism. That’s Nazi. And it needs to be opposed.” “Fundamentally, these are, sort of, developments which are so insidious in their purpose and, in the end, they don’t very much vary from the Nazi world, where people and thought control and attitude police were all in charge.” “So somebody, a politician, gives a speech, and they don’t bother to report what he's saying – no, what they think he said. And they welcome it in this country, and they call it modern journalism.” “This is not, you know, education. This is indoctrination. And New Zealand First is going to go back to education and stop this being sponsored by an inner cabal and their political and cultural fellow travellers.” “Instead, Labour now seem to care more about left-wing social justice issues, ideological crusades and woke Cultural Marxism.” “Ladies and gentlemen, this is woke, virtue-signalling madness again, all to make our climate activists feel good about themselves.’’ (2022) “They don’t want these naysaying do-gooders and woke virtue-signallers running the show any longer.’’ (September last year) “The gaslighting cancel culture is growing in New Zealand, and we need to stop it in its tracks, right here, and right now.”
And again a year later, in his 2023 State of the Union speech. “Anyone who questions them is gaslit or culturally cancelled or just shouted down. This gaslighting group was a small minority while the mass majority is meant to kowtow to them ...” “What’s our policy on the 15-minute city? It’s the kind of balderdash that the Club of Rome talked about 35 years ago, and now the World Economic Forum talks about. It is designed to keep you in one space, like The Truman Show. Remember The Truman Show? That’s what they’re talking about.’’