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  "description": "Precision in language is important. Calling anyone slightly right of the moderate left - 'far right' - while rarely challenging those clearly on the far-left, is degrading our democracy.",
  "path": "/where-has-the-far-left-gone/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-13T21:30:26.000Z",
  "site": "https://goodoil.news",
  "tags": [
    "Simon O’Connor",
    "On Point",
    "@SwipeWright"
  ],
  "textContent": "Simon O’Connor\n_Husband, step-father, foster dad, and longtime student of philosophy and history. Also happen to be a former politician, including chairing New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Committee._\n\nDo you believe in law and order? Believe that being proud of your country is a good thing, and that managing who migrates here is prudent? Think children having a mum and dad is preferable? Can you define what a woman is? Are you perhaps skeptical of climate change alarmism or believe in free speech?\n\nWell, congratulations, you are officially far right according to various media commentators. Some would even term you ‘right right’, which is a rather odd expression, but this was literally the term a political commentator from Australia used when being interviewed on One News.\n\nThis has all come about after the recent by-election in Australia, which saw a safe Liberal seat (in fact, held by the former leader of the Liberal Party, Sussan Ley) switch decisively to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party.\n\nSimultaneously, in the United Kingdom, the Reform Party led by Nigel Farage has wiped the floor of the two major political parties – Labour and Conservatives – during the recent council elections. To use just one statistic from England, Reform had only two council seats prior to the election: they now have 1,423 – almost a third of the total number of council seats in the country.\n\nFinal results of the local council results in England, via the BBC.\n\nThese two wins have the commentariat warning people of the rise of the far right, with some suggesting the likes of New Zealand First is the equivalent here.\n\nYou do not need to agree or like Pauline Hanson or Nigel Farage, but their positions are demonstrably not ‘far-right’. To the extent anyone suggests they are, then it is more a reflection on that commentator’s preference for the extreme left. As variants of the Overton Window illustrate, many on the left have gone so far off-piste, that any position right of the moderate left is now deemed ‘far right’.\n\nBut what is most striking to me is these same commentators rarely, if ever, labelling anything on the left of politics as ‘far-left’.\n\nA political cartoon from the United States (X user @SwipeWright), expressing an aspect of the Overton Window concept.\n\nI would suggest we have some obvious examples of far left expressions here in New Zealand, notably from the Green Party and the likes of the Māori Party.\n\nIn a recent _Q+A_ interview, a Green Party candidate, Tania Waikato, was given a free hand to talk about her views around the Treaty of Waitangi. These views included that Māori never ceded sovereignty to the Crown, that the Treaty should become the highest constitutional law of the land, and that, in effect, the entire democratic system of New Zealand needs to be dismantled. Now, you may or may not agree with her – but these beliefs are radical and clearly far left. They are far more ‘extreme’ than a person who believes it is OK to be proud of one’s country. Despite this, the term far left is never used of her or the Green Party.\n\nTo further illustrate the issue, we can look at the host of other Green policies which accord with the far left, notably their call for a host of new taxes – a wealth tax, inheritance tax, and even a tax on private jets. Again, you may think these are great policies but the point is that they classically far left positions and yet they are never termed as such by commentators.\n\nHowever, suggest that free speech is a key democratic value or that we need to control the border, then the commentariat will swiftly label you as far right and dangerous.\n\nThe inconsistency and double standard are galling.\n\nI’m not arguing that everything should be framed as far left or far right. In fact, use of these terms is not overly helpful in modern discourse. They once had meaning and purpose, but with far right in particular being thrown around with liberal abandon, it no longer has the accurate value it once did.\n\nIt is the same with words such _racist_ , _bigot_ , _genocide_ and more. By inaccurately overusing these terms, we lose the ability to properly identify and critique situations and viewpoints. Modern discourse is making terms like _far right_ meaningless and as a consequence we are losing a means to purposefully identify the extremes.\n\nTo paraphrase: if everything is far right, then nothing is.\n\nIt is not just the left and right dichotomy though. I recall during my political years that often stories involving me would include the prefix _conservative_ or sometimes _former trainee Catholic priest_. Now, neither was incorrect, but what was striking is that such labels were rarely applied to others. I struggle to recall prefixes such as _communist_ , _Marxist_ , _anarchist_ , or _libertarian_ being applied by media to other MPs. Alongside this, as Newstalk ZB host, Heather du Plessis-Allan, has noted is the framing of some stories as “ _controversial_ ” – a deliberate signal that whatever or whoever is about to be reported on has failed an unspoken ideological test.\n\nPrecision in language is important in a democracy. Despite the language manipulations in play by many in media and various activists, we must aspire to be clear, precise, and consistent in our choice of words.\n\nAs another old adage notes: if you never say what you mean, you will never mean what you say.\n\nThis article was originally published by On Point.",
  "title": "Where Has the Far Left Gone?",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-13T21:30:25.731Z"
}