Historical epics are a way in which societies reinforce their identity, often nurturing nationalism through a semi-mythological retelling of history which typically reflects the time these films were made as much as the time they are about. The United States has its Westerns, movies about the conquest of the frontier- manifest destiny for the drive in. Yugoslavia had its Partisan films, glorifying the heroes who fought the axis during the second world war.

As far-right narratives become more influential it’s unsurprising that a small collection of historical films that dramatise a ‘clash of civilisations’ between the Islamic world and the West is starting to gain recognition among adherents of the movement. Despite increasing electoral success and the backing of the world’s richest man the western far-right has not yet created its own significant cultural canon, instead appropriating existing works. For example, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s appreciation for the Lord of the Rings.

Films for the alt-right canon have to be recontextualised from their original purpose. El Cid (1961) which tells the (largely fictionalised) story of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (c. 1043–1099) better known as ‘El Cid’ (derived from the Arabic ‘sayyid’, or ‘lord’) who was a mercenary and warrior who fought on behalf of both Muslims and Christians in the Iberian peninsula, but is today associated with fighting against Muslim ‘invaders’ is a clear candidate. Yusuf ibn Tashufin, the Muslim antagonist of the film, asserts that the prophet has ordered them to rule the world and declares that to achieve that aim, they will first sweep across Spain, then Europe. It’s a narrative that certainly suits today’s far-right, though the film was made (with the support of Francisco Franco) in an era where this was used more as a metaphor for the threat of communism spreading across Europe. Not to mention that the film’s communist screenwriter may have intended it to be a civil rights allegory.

The Battle of Kosovo (1989) was created explicitly to promote the clash of civilisations narrative, with director Zdravko Šotra stating that he wanted his film to highlight the importance of the Serbs as a bulwark to protect Europe against the Ottoman Turks. The film was originally made primarily for a Serbian audience, but with the goal of reaching a wider European one—a goal that has only been achieved in more recent years. I suspect that the film’s revival online reflects the incorporation of the Serbian propaganda, which led to the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Bosnia and Kosovo in 1990s, into contemporary far-right discourses.

Historian Radina Vučetić writes that what she has termed “the Kosovo myth” of which the 1989 film is a key part, “is always present and may be “reactivated” for political purposes at any time”. The film was rebroadcast at the very beginning of the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo (24 March 1999) and again as recently as 2020 following the announcement of a state of emergency in Serbia due to the coronavirus pandemic. She describes this use of nationalist myth to fight a virus as “really the peak of absurdity” but this recent broadcast demonstrates the film’s contemporary relevance to nationalist narratives in Serbia.

Day of the Siege (2012), a dramatisation of the 1683 Battle of Vienna, is an Italian and Polish co-production but was shot in English to appeal to a broad audience. 10,000 extras and 3,000 horses were used for battle scenes. It’s a satisfactory enough movie (even if the visual effects look like a video game cutscene) but its political ideology is clear. To give one example, Abu’l, a muslim character living in Austria (played by Greek actor Yorgo Voyagis) ultimately betrays his wife and his country for his religion- a not so subtle suggestion that muslims living in the west will never truly be part of it.

The film does not have a mainstream distributor and instead was distributed in North America by the Catholic publishing house Ignatius Press, under the alternative title The Siege of Vienna: September 11, 1683. The distributor describes it as an epic that “tells the powerful true story of one of the most important military battles in history, recounting the Ottoman Turks massive invasion of Vienna, the gateway to the West, on September 11, 1683, a moment when Christendom and Western civilization truly hung in the balance.” The battle of Vienna has been described as “central to the far-right historical imaginary”.

The historical events depicted in the film (not the film itself, which was released a year later) inspired Norwegian terrorist Anders Brevik, who titled his manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, referencing what will be the 400th anniversary of the Ottoman defeat at Vienna. Şener Aktürk, a scholar of comparative politics with a particular focus on ethnicity, religion, and nationalism, describes the idea of a specifically Christian European civilisation as “a malicious and mythical claim that has been calamitously employed throughout history in most episodes of ethnic cleansing against non-Christians in Europe, from the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain in 1492 to the genocidal campaign against Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s”. This provides an important context for examining the 2012 film. Citing research from historian Timothy Snyder, Aktürk goes on to say “One would think this episode could be easily characterised as a clash between Muslims and Christians, but in fact it cannot.”

Aktürk recounts his own encounter with the siege of Vienna, when as a student at the University of Chicago he participated in a study abroad program on “Western Civilization” in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

“Our tour guide was an Austrian monk who spoke impeccable American English, since he was also a graduate of a leading American university. In the middle of the tour, he stopped in front of a cracked wall and told us that the wall crack was the result of the siege of Vienna by the “Turks” in 1683: A catapulted stone cracked the wall, and a frame was put around the crack as a constant “reminder to us,” he said, “of who the enemy of the Church is.” From the tone of his voice though, it did not sound as if he needed a reminder. He then dramatically concluded: “And this is the struggle we are still fighting today, with the September 11 attacks in New York.””

The 1683 siege of Vienna and 2001 terror attacks both occurring on September 11 is no coincidence. The date of the latter was chosen to reference the former. There is a commonality between the narratives of both Islamic extremists and the far-right, as Julia Ebner writes in her 2017 book The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism

“Extremists have been good at delivering consistent narratives – simplicity of their story forms helps. In fact, their stories do not just make sense in themselves; they are also consistent with the other extreme’s worldview. There is therefore an intra-extremist narrative compatibility that creates a bizarre symbiosis between opposing extremes. Whether you are on the side of the light or the dark side in Star Wars does not really change the story; the only thing that does change is the perspective. The same is true for the far-right and Islamist extremists – they are in the same movie, reinforcing the same story and thus helping each other as storytellers. While Islamist extremists tell us that the ‘West is at war with Islam’, the far right tells us ‘Islam is at War with the West’. While far-right groups tend to see Islam as the only problem, Islamist extremists view Islam as the only solution. One only needs to reverse protagonist and antagonist or exchange problem and solution to see that their narratives are perfectly complementary, if not identical”

Ebner terms this the Star Wars effect, noting that this black-and-white way of seeing the world is common across popular cinema. “A look at the most popular movies in history is enough to see that we love binary worldviews: for example, the Star Wars cosmos divides the world into the light and the dark side of the force. James Bond, Indiana Jones, American Sniper, and even Kung Fu Panda, do nothing else. In a way they all tell the same story based on different characters and embedded in different contexts.”

Real history of course is never this simple. The reasons Şener Aktürk rejects the idea that the Siege of Vienna was a clash between Christendom; The battle was the culmination of events that began when Imre Thököly, a Hungarian Protestant statesman called on his allies, the Ottomans, to organise a campaign against the Catholic Habsburgs. Thököly’s kingdom of upper Hungary (today, mostly Slovakia) became an Ottoman vassal state, with the sultan granting a degree of religious freedom for the Protestants that the Papal states would not. “The Protestant countries would have gladly seen the Holy Roman Empire fall to the Ottomans” writes historian Dag Herbjørnsrud.

Seeing the war as one fought between Protestants and their Muslim allies against Catholic powers is however also an oversimplification. Louis XIV, the Roman Catholic king of France, wanting to become the most powerful Christian monarch in Europe, was allied with the Ottomans, and sent troops to the western front as the Ottoman army closed in around Vienna. His enemies referred to him as “the most Christian Turk”. And when the Catholic Polish king John III Sobieski came to the aid of the Habsburg monarchy, he did so with the help of Sunni Muslim Tatars, a Turkic ethnic group who resided in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Sobieski later ensured construction of several mosques in the region, which still stand. Historian Boguslaw R Zagórski credits Sobieski with securing “the only example of a lasting Muslim community in a non-Islamic European country”. For centuries the Lipka Tatars were a vital part of Polish battles. As late as 1939, the 1st Tatar Squadron was among the last Polish army units fighting invading infantry of Nazi Germany. When a monument to the Tartars was dedicated in 2010, Polish president Bronisław Komorowski declared “There was no enemy of Poland against whom they did not draw their weapons for the good of their motherland. They fought and forced out Russians, Swedes and even Turks despite their common religion – Islam.”

The Tatars are absent from the film, and under-recognised in other modern media that tells stories of the siege. The 2018 song ‘Winged Hussars’ by Swedish power metal band Sabaton celebrates the role of the Polish heavy cavalry, but the episode of their Sabaton History YouTube channel that talks about the battle of Vienna only mentions the Tatars in the context of “invasions from the east”, not as a group who fought alongside the hussars. On the trailer for Day of the Siege among the most highly upvoted comments are the phrases “Then the winged hussars arrived!” and “We Remember! In September! When the winged hussars arrived!”, lyrics from the song.

The perpetrator of the Poway, USA synagogue shooting in April 2019 had a playlist (allegedly made for the occasion) which included the Wings Hussars. According to Phillip Stenmann Baun, a research fellow at Aarhus University, in the shooter’s use of this song “we see fragments of the same historiographic consciousness that [Brenton] Tarrant espoused”. While their lyrics glorify the military might of the Polish Hussars, Sabaton would likely not endorse the appropriation of their lyrics for these ends- singer Joakim Brodén has previously described the band as “fucking pissed off” when a Polish far-right party used their music for an election campaign.

It’s possible that as the far-right gains more power and influence throughout Europe we will start to see more cinematic retellings of history that portray history in a way that serves the interests of the powerful- as we’re already seeing in India. Historians have an important role to play in raising awareness of the real history of Islam and the west.

Before the war, I had a beautiful home where I lived with my wife and my son Ali. Our life was peaceful and stable, and we had access to comfort and a dignified living. I used to go to work, my wife took care of our child, and Ali grew up in a calm, clean, and stable environment—like any child who deserves a safe childhood.

We had a simple life, but it was full of safety and dreams. I would return from work to my home, find my wife and my son, and we would live our days normally. We did not ask for much in life; we had a home, a job, food, water, and electricity, and we lived with dignity.

A Joy That Was Never Completed

Two months before the war, I received beautiful news that changed my life. I learned that my wife was pregnant with our second child, and she was in her first month. I was overjoyed and began preparing for the baby’s arrival. I started buying her necessities, building beautiful dreams for her in my imagination, and picturing her growing up among us in our home, surrounded by love and safety.

I believed we still had time to properly live this joy.

But the war came before our dreams could be completed.

When the War Began, Everything Was Lost

Suddenly, and without any warning, the war began.

In the first days, we were forced to leave our home for fear of our lives, and for the safety of my pregnant wife and my son. We left our beautiful house and went searching for a safer place.

We were displaced from our home to a shelter center, then from one shelter to another, then to a hospital, from the hospital to a tent, and from the tent to another shelter center—all because of the bombing, destruction, and fear that surrounded us from every direction.

We lived through hunger, famine, thirst, cold, and fear. There was no longer any stable life, and no place where we could feel safe.

My wife’s suffering was the hardest of all.

She was pregnant, and her body needed rest, food, and safety, but she was living amid displacement, fear, bombing, and destruction. Her life and the life of the unborn baby were both at risk, and she was trying to complete her pregnancy under extremely harsh conditions that are not fit for normal life—so how much more difficult for a pregnant woman?

My Home That Became Rubble

I did not only lose my house; I lost the place where I built my most beautiful memories with my wife and my son.

My home today has become rubble.

And what is even more painful is that my home is located in the yellow zone, which means I cannot even go to see what remains of it. I cannot stand in front of the place that used to be our home, cannot see our memories, and cannot retrieve anything that was part of our life.

There was our room.

There was where Ali spent his childhood.

And there was where I was preparing to welcome my new daughter before the war began.

There were the details of our life and our dreams.

Today, even visiting the ruins of my home has become an unattainable dream.

The war did not only take our house—it took the place that held our memories, our life, and our dreams.

A Birth Amid War and Famine

After my wife completed nine months of pregnancy, the time of delivery arrived.

But her birth was not easy at all.

She underwent a cesarean section under war conditions, amid a shortage of medical equipment, anesthesia, beds, hygiene, and essential supplies. Those were difficult and frightening days, and everything around us increased our anxiety and fear.

By the grace of God, my daughter came into this world safely.

I named her Wateen.

Her birth was a moment of joy I will never forget, but it was a joy mixed with fear and pain—because she came into a world that was not ready to receive her as I had hoped.

[Place for image of Wateen after birth]

Wateen was not born in the beautiful home where I had dreamed of welcoming her.

She was born in a time of war, famine, and displacement, under extremely harsh conditions, inside a tent surrounded by insects and mice, without enough clothes, diapers, or milk.

She was an innocent little child who had done nothing wrong, yet she began her life deprived of her most basic rights.

I suffered as I watched her needing milk, diapers, clothes, and water, and I was not always able to provide what she needed.

Just Ten Days Later… Another Displacement

The suffering did not end after her birth.

Just ten days after my daughter was born, we were forced to flee again.

My wife was still exhausted from the cesarean section and needed rest and care, but the war did not give us that chance.

We had to carry what we could, leave where we were, and once again search for another place where we could try to survive.

[Place for image of tent or displacement]

The war took everything from us.

It took our home, our work, our stability, our safety, our dreams, and even the simplest things we once considered normal.

Three Years of War… My Children Growing Up in Deprivation

Three years of war have passed.

My son Ali, who was about one year old at the beginning of the war, is now four years old.

And my daughter Wateen, who was born in the midst of war and famine, has now completed her second year.

My children have grown, but not in the life I dreamed for them.

They do not know what it means to have fruit on the table whenever they want it.

They do not know what meat means like other children do.

They do not know what toys are, nor do they live a normal childhood filled with play, laughter, and safety.

My children have been deprived of many rights simply because they were born in a place at war.

Today, we live in a worn-out tent that does not protect us from the cold of winter or the heat of summer.

We suffer greatly in obtaining water, food, medical care, and basic necessities for my children.

My children live among insects and mice, in conditions whose harshness I cannot even describe.

And sometimes I ask myself:

What is my son Ali’s fault? And what is my daughter Wateen’s fault?

What did they do to be deprived of the simplest things other children enjoy?

What is their fault for being born into war?

Even Education Has Become a Dream

My son Ali is very smart, and he is now preparing to go to kindergarten.

I want to see him learn, play, and go to kindergarten like other children.

I want to be able to provide the monthly kindergarten fees, school uniform, and school supplies.

I do not want the war to deprive him of his right to education as well.

I do not want my son to grow up knowing only tents, hunger, fear, and displacement.

I want him to know school.

I want him to know books.

I want him to know games.

I want him to know life.

My Message to the World

I am Muhammad Abu Zaid.

I do not want anything big from the world.

I only want to be able to help my children obtain their basic rights.

I want to be able to provide them with food, water, medicine, clothes, diapers, and milk, to help Ali go to kindergarten, and to give Wateen the simplest necessities of life that she has been deprived of since birth.

I want my voice to reach the world.

I want people to see Gaza, to hear about Gaza, and to understand that behind every image there is a family, behind every number there is a child, and behind every news story there is a father and a mother trying to protect their children.

We are human beings.

We once had a beautiful home.

I had a job.

We had a stable life.

We had dreams for the future.

You can help Muhammed via Chuffed.

Long time readers of this newsletter will know I’m a big fan of the movies. Over the years I’ve seen plenty of non-English language films. Owing to his 2006 monster movie The Host, I was already a fan of Bong Joon Ho long before he encouraged audiences to “overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles”, but despite that, I’d for a long time been sleeping on the movies of the country with the largest film industry. I’ve rectified that in recent years. Anubhav Sinha’s Mulk (2018), about the innocent family members of a man involved in a terrorist attack, is one of the best courtroom dramas I’ve seen, and I’m glad that the city I live in has become cosmopolitan enough that I was able to see Nag Ashwin’s Kalki 2898 AD (2024) at the local multiplex. I’m anticipating the sequel to this massive sci-fi epic as much, if not more than, the next Dune installment. But I feel like in many ways I’ve come into the world of Indian cinema at a bad time, as the movies coming out of the country increasingly reflect the politics of the Modi regime, particularly the historical epics.

Padmaavat (2018) is one of the most expensive Indian films ever made. Based on a 1540 epic poem, it tells the story of a mythical fourteenth-century Hindu queen named Padmavati, who is lionised for burning herself alive in the face of a Muslim invasion. The film upset both Muslim and Hindu audiences, with protests turned to riots taking place in several parts of India in the days leading up to its release. Karni Sena, a Hindu nationalist group, claimed that the film (which at that point no one had seen) showed the Hindu queen dancing and romancing the film’s Muslim villain. Following its release, the negative portrayal of a Muslim ruler led to the film being banned in Malaysia.

Muhammed Shah Shajahan, writing in the journal National Identities, notes that the portrayal of the Muslim ruler Alauddin Khalji in the film as “a heinous, savage, and lascivious king” has drawn much criticism from scholars who have argued that the depiction of Khalji is driven by the contemporary propaganda concept of ‘love Jihad’, a term popularised by Hindu nationalist organisations implying “the fear of Hindu community about their women being lured, wooed, and trapped by Muslim men.”

Mohimarnab Biswas, in the chapter he contributed to Historicizing Myths in Contemporary India compares this portrayal of Khalji in Padmaavat with the portrayal of Udaybhan Singh Rathore in Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior (2020). According to Biswas, the “barbaric” Muslim stereotype used in Padmaavat is reproduced in Tanhaji. Udaybhan is shown roasting a crocodile, then eating it in a manner that “has an uncanny similarity with the way the character of Alauddin Khilji eats in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2018 blockbuster Padmaavat.” The framing of Muslim characters as lecherous predators is also similar in both films:

“In Padmaavat, Khilji sprinkles the perfume on the body of a woman and rubs her against himself to acquire the scent. In Tanhaji, Udaybhan is shown going very close to Kamal and smelling her. In another scene, he voyeuristically looks at Kamal while she bathes. The so-called “sexual perversion” of the “barbaric Muslim” is ingrained in Udaybhan’s characterisation.”

Biswas notes that in contemporary Indian cinema, historical epics are “invariably made following the Brahmanical mode of historiography” —that is, through a high-caste Hindu lens. He compares the portrayal of barbarous Muslims with the “attempt at glorification of hegemonic Hindu masculinity” present in Tanhaji which tells the story of a warrior recapturing the fortress of Kondana in Pune from the Mughal empire in 1664, wiping out most of the Mughal soldiers in the process. The Mughal empire was an Islamic empire that ruled the subcontinent from the early sixteenth century until the establishment of the British Raj.

Biwas also took an aesthetic studies approach to examining the film, writing that the colours used for Tanhaji, a mixture of yellow and orange, “symbolise his courage, warmth, hope, and enthusiasm” while Udaybhan by contrast is represented through shades of black and blue “to externalise the “evil” and “manipulative” traits in him.” He describes these contrasting colours as a “fire and ice sort of binary.”

Baijayanti Roy writes of the use of colour to make political statements in Padmaavat as well as Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s earlier film Bajirao Mastani (2015). In Padmaavat, Alauddin and his implicitly all Muslim soldiers are always depicted in black, “while the Rajput army, apparently comprising only Hindus, turn out as a sea of saffron.”

If you know a little about Indian politics, you’ll know the significance of the colour saffron. In Dev Patal’s 2024 Film Monkey Man (made by North American studios but set in India) the banners of a fictional political party were digitally changed in post production from saffron to red likely to avoid being seen as commenting on the BJP government when the film was released in India. The 2019 film Kesari (which literally translates as Saffron) is about the soldiers of the 36th Sikh Regiment of the British Indian Army at the Battle of Saragarhi on 12 September 1897, fighting off 10,000 Pashtun tribesmen in what is today Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa district. In the late nineteenth century, Gulistan Fort, the setting for most of the film, was the border between British-held territory and Afghanistan.

Silvia Tieri points out that while saffron has a symbolic meaning in different Indian religious traditions, most commonly today, “Saffron’s association with Hinduism and more recently political Hinduism remains the strongest”—so much so that adjectivising something as ‘saffron’ as in the case of Kesari “provides it with a Hindu nationalist connotation.” The protagonist Singh-Kumar’s saffron turban is “creative licence” that is not historically accurate. The symbolism of the saffron colour is stressed in a line of dramatic Punjabi dialogue, featured in the trailer for the film; “Ajj meri pagri vi kesari! Jo bahega mera lahu vi kesari! Aur mera jawab bhi kesari!” (Today the turban I wear is SAFFRON. I will bleed SAFFRON and my comeback will also be SAFFRON!)

Numerous other examples of creative licence are identified by Tieri. Appearing briefly in the film’s trailer, an official looking table appears on a blackboard, titled Sikh Regiment: Saragarhi Sanketan Choki (Sikh Regiment: Saragarhi Guard Post) in Devanagari script. At the time the film is set, Punjab had been under British colonial rule for approximately 50 years, and the language used by the British Army was Urdu, written in Nastaliq or Latin script. Using the more historically accurate Nastaliq script would cause viewers to associate it with the Urdu language, and thus Islam, complicating a simple clash of civilisations narrative, while using Latin characters would “emphasise that the trailer’s brave soldiers were serving as the armed arm of a foreign project of domination: frictions that the trailer wants to conceal and de-problematise instead.”

According to Tieri, this de-problematised depiction of Sikh soldiers fighting for the British colonial regime reinforces a “Raj nostalgia” popular in Britain in the era of Brexit. British historians writing on the history of Islam in the subcontinent portrayed Muslims as invaders, and Hindu nationalist historians have taken their cue from these colonial British histories. The British in India portrayed themselves as ‘liberators’ from centuries of Muslim rule. Prafulla Kelkar, editor of The Organiser, the magazine of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has argued that the periods of rule by both Muslim dynasties and the British are “identical” in their aims but different in their methods. ‘Decolonisation’ in the modern Hindutva understanding of the term is, in the words of journalist Sanya Dhingra, “as much about erasing the legacies of the “Islamic conquests” of India as it is about erasing those of the British Empire.” This provides context for the somewhat sympathetic portrayal of the British Raj in Kerasi. This historiography which divides Indian history into an ancient Hindu period, the mediaeval Muslim period, and the modern British period also allows us to place the historical epics Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior and Padmaavat in the wider historical narrative they exist in.

2022’s RRR (Rise Roar Revolt) which is one of the few Indian films to gain a wide audience among foreign English speakers, having become one of the most watched movies on Netflix, also has its own “seriously troubling politics” which are easy to miss if you’re not familiar with today’s India and the way history is being framed in contemporary cinema. Watching films from other countries is a great way to become more knowledgeable about the world, but as cinema can be a vector for propaganda- even if the movies themselves are entertaining and perhaps otherwise praiseworthy- watching these films should only be a part of your exploration of the world, and not a substitute for learning more from non-fictionalised history.

In recent days, Gaza has witnessed continued military escalation amid allegations of violations of the ceasefire agreement. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, since military operations resumed, more than 1,000 people have been killed and over 3,750 people have been injured.

A few days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in a public speech that the military campaign in Gaza is not over and said that there are approximately 2,000 targets that still need to be struck in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military has also announced an expansion of its ground operations in the Zeitoun neighborhood, while issuing evacuation orders for residents in parts of Deir al-Balah, directing them toward central Gaza. This has triggered another wave of displacement affecting thousands of civilians. At the same time, areas considered relatively safe have become extremely limited as military operations continue and movement remains heavily restricted.

On the humanitarian front, concerns are growing over worsening shortages of food, clean water, and other essential supplies. Humanitarian organizations report that restrictions on the entry of aid and commercial goods have significantly affected their ability to continue providing assistance.

In recent days, several humanitarian and healthcare organizations have also reduced or suspended parts of their operations due to the deteriorating conditions. Reports indicate that the number of meals distributed daily by some aid organizations has dropped dramatically compared with previous levels.

The humanitarian outlook continues to deteriorate, with ongoing displacement, increasing food insecurity, and growing concerns about civilians’ access to food, clean water, and medical care.

These are the latest developments in the Gaza Strip as experienced by people on the ground, where the humanitarian situation continues to worsen and uncertainty grows with the ongoing escalation

You can support Mohammed via Chuffed

Beginning on March 19, the Feast of Saint Joseph, parishioners of churches affiliated with the Society of Saint Pius the 10th (SSPXX) began the Rosary Crusade for the Episcopal Consecrations, organised by the Legion of Mary Australia and New Zealand, to pray for the consecrations of new SSPX bishops. The consecrations were to take place on July 1, the feast of the precious blood, a feast day that the majority of Catholics stopped observing in 1969. “Please email ASAP the total number of 5-Decade Rosaries you said during the Crusade” the parish newsletter of Saint Anthony’s in Whanganui reminded readers, after promoting the upcoming fundraising jogathon and a farewell lunch for a departing priest (“Please bring a plate to share.”) Behind these provincial niceties however, the SSPX was gearing up to commit what Pope Leo XIV called “a sin of extreme gravity”. I’ll get to that, but first a little history:

The SSPX was founded by Marcel-François Lefebvre, a French Arch-Bishop who had supported the pro-Nazi Vichy regime during the second world war and described France’s liberation from the Nazis as ‘the victory of Freemasonry against the Catholic order of Pétain’. He remained a supporter of far-right parties until his death in 1991, advocating for the French to vote for the Front Nationale, describing Jean-Marie Le Pen’s ideal as “a government that applies real Catholic principles, like Franco and Salazar did.” (Referring to the fascist leaders of Spain and Portugal).

He is perhaps best known though for his opposition to the Vatican II reforms that modernised the Church in the early 1960s. In 1974, he publicly denounced the reforms as heretical. The Vatican suspended his right to perform priestly functions after he refused orders from Pope Paul VI to shut down his seminary in Écône, Switzerland. Then in 1988, when Lefebvre defied the Vatican again by consecrating new bishops, Pope John Paul II excommunicated him and all SSPX priests, declaring the society in formal schism with the church.

In 2008, a splinter from the SSPX, the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer (FSSR, from the Latin Filii Sanctissimi Redemptoris) reconciled with the Vatican. FSSR has a priory in Christchurch, and a monastery on the island of Papa Stronsay in Scotland (where a 24 year old monk from New Zealand went missing earlier this year.) The Christchurch based priests meanwhile, were stripped of priestly authority by the local bishop in 2024 for performing unauthorised exorcisms. In May this year, the FSSR decided to go full sedevacantist- another Latin term translating to “the seat is vacant” the seat in this case referring to the Holy See. Catholics see the Pope as infallible, but if you’re offside with the Pope, you can resort to the nuclear option and declare the Pope illegitimate. “We are living in the most catastrophic period the Church has ever endured” claimed the FSSR, seemingly minimising historical events like the reformation and the thirty years war. But back to the SSPX:

Pope Benedict XVI reversed the 1988 excommunications of SSPX priests in 2009, in an attempt at a reconciliation with the order. One of those priests, Richard Williamson, was soon excommunicated again following his conviction for Holocaust denial in a German court. Williamson, who had been consecrated by Lefebvre, later led his own split from the SSPX- the SSPX Resistance- basing himself near Cork in Ireland where he gave sermons blaming Jewish people for the COVID-19 pandemic and encouraged followers to read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Interestingly (horrifyingly), two New Zealanders had travelled to Ireland to be part of Williamson’s group. He died last year.

Dying bishops have been a problem for the SSPX, when you can’t consecrate new ones, after nearly four decades you start to run out. When on July 1 a new crop of SSPX bishops were consecrated in Ecône (Lefebvre’s seminary never did close down) the excommunication was instant, not just of Bishops and priests but also of lay people who “formally adhere” to the group, leading to Catholics who had attended the occasional Latin mass now asking “Am I in schism?”, “Am I excommunicated?”. The short answer is, no, and in fact, Bishops have been inviting attendees of SSPX services to now join with more mainstream parishes.

In our modern, secular society, this whole saga could be little more than an intellectual curiosity, but Catholicism has emerged as a battle ground in the culture wars. “The populists and nationalists were looking for some kind of soul for their politics,’ Christopher Lamb, the author of The Outsider: Pope Francis and His Battle to Reform the Church, told Vanity Fair back in 2020, regarding the rise of a MAGA affiliated Catholic right. Now the US has a vice president from that milieu, a politically hard right convert to the faith who, should he succeed Trump in the presidency, will be the nation’s third Catholic president, but in a rather different mold than the first two (Irish-American Democrats John F Kennedy and Joseph Biden).

In New Zealand, one of the world’s most secular countries, Catholicism is experiencing a “quiet revival” in Christchurch, attracting young men who might otherwise (or simultaneously) be sucked into the world of manosphere influencers. University of Canterbury sociologist Michael Grimshaw, who has been tracking Gen Z’s return to religion globally and locally, sees this revival as part of a wider swing back towards a masculine-focused society and traditional gender roles, a reactionary turn that also includes tradwives.

The Catholic Church, in its ‘moderate’ mainstream, arguably still has a lot of progress to make on issues of gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights (The German Synodal Way gives a glimpse of what future progress might look like) but in Pope Leo XIV we have examples of practicing the faith that’s counter to that “traditional” Catholicism of J.D. Vance and the schismatic sects with their historical ties to fascism. Leo has called Trump’s immigration crackdown “inhumane” and, significantly, the first US-American Pope chose to spend the day of the United States 250th celebration not in his home country but on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a gateway for migrants crossing the Mediterranean into Europe.

A certain type of person will always gravitate toward groups like the SSPX and FSSR, but with those sects now more marginal than before, people looking for a spiritual home in the Church may be more likely to end up on a more Christ-like path, perhaps moved to action not by a “rosary crusade” for the would-be bishops of an order started by a Nazi collaborator, but instead by the images of rosary beads confiscated from undocumented migrants crossing the US border.

I am a woman from Gaza, and I am writing this as a testimony of a life that has been torn apart by war. I once lived a simple but stable life. I worked as a computer engineer, building my future step by step, and carrying hopes for a better tomorrow.

Everything changed when the war began. I lost my job, and with it the stability and identity I had worked so hard to build. What once felt like safety turned into constant fear and uncertainty.

I have survived death many times. There were moments when I did not think I would make it through, yet I am still here

Then came the deepest losses. I lost my home, the place that held my memories and dreams, and it was reduced to ruins. I also lost my mother and my brother, which is a pain that words cannot fully describe.

And even today, the bombing and destruction have not stopped, and our struggle to survive continues every day

Now I am pregnant, carrying a new life in the middle of all this pain and uncertainty. This child is my only hope, the reason I continue to hold on even when everything feels unbearable. I do not write this to ask for pity, but so you can understand what life here truly looks like. Food, drinking water, and medicine have become unbearably expensive in Gaza. We can barely afford the basic necessities. My little son keeps asking for fruit, eggs, and meat, but I can’t provide them because they are simply too expensive. It breaks my heart every time.

We are still here, still trying to survive, and still holding on to what remains of our humanity.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story.

You can help Manar via Chuffed.

New Zealand is a remote island nation, but will soon be one that utilises seafaring trade without a domestic merchant fleet. The last remaining New Zealand Flagged Container Ship, the MV Moana Chief, is being withdrawn from domestic coastal services, in a move that the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) says represents a catastrophic milestone for the country’s economic resilience.

MUNZ National Secretary Carl Findlay described the decision as a direct consequence of decades of short-sighted transport deregulation and government indifference to the country’s strategic infrastructure.

“The withdrawal of the MV Moana Chief is a devastating blow, not just to the skilled Kiwi seafarers who face redundancy, but to our entire island nation,” says Mr Findlay.

“We have allowed our last domestic container link to be broken. Our absolute reliance on foreign-flagged, foreign-crewed vessels means that decisions about New Zealand’s supply chain security are now made entirely in overseas boardrooms with zero loyalty to our country.”

Mr Findlay says this development underscores a desperate need for immediate government support, intervention, and a long-term, cohesive strategy for domestic coastal shipping.

“New Zealand is an island nation that relies on sea transport to move freight, yet our ‘blue highway’ has been left to rot. Leaving our coastal lanes open to international operators running flag-of-convenience vessels with sub-standard wages is an act of economic sabotage. We need a real plan to back our domestic fleet, protect local jobs, and build maritime resilience before the next major disaster or global shock cuts us off completely.”

MUNZ is advocating for immediate legislative reforms to amend Section 198 of the Maritime Transport Act 1994, which currently allows international ships to carry domestic cargo as a matter of right. MUNZ also demands a return to rules that prioritize New Zealand-flagged and New Zealand-crewed vessels for domestic port-to-port trade.

The union criticised State-Owned Enterprise KiwiRail for what it described as complicity in undermining local maritime infrastructure through its freight aggregation models.

“It is a disgrace that KiwiRail, a taxpayer-owned entity, has chosen to outsource domestic freight movement to foreign vessels operated by international lines like CMA CGM and ANL,” says Mr Findlay.

“As a State-Owned Enterprise, KiwiRail’s primary obligation should be supporting New Zealand infrastructure, New Zealand workers, and New Zealand capabilities. Instead, they are bypassing local crews and local shipping in favour of foreign operators who pay a fraction of local wages. KiwiRail should be leading the charge to use New Zealand flagged and crewed ships, not helping to dismantle them.”

“We won’t rebuild our domestic maritime capability overnight, but we must draw a line in the sand today. Re-establishing a secure, low-emission, locally operated coastal fleet is a matter of basic national security. It is time for the Government to step up, close the loopholes in the Maritime Transport Act, and invest in our own people and our own shores.”

Coastal shipping could be a valuable part of decarbonisation. While at present 80% of heavy goods transport is done via trucking, studies have shown coastal shipping produces a fifth of the carbon emissions of trucking. Findlay says the loss of the MV Moana Chief underscores a desperate need for immediate government support, intervention, and a long-term, cohesive strategy for domestic coastal shipping.

“New Zealand is an island nation that relies on sea transport to move freight, yet our ‘blue highway’ has been left to rot. Leaving our coastal lanes open to international operators running flag-of-convenience vessels with sub-standard wages is an act of economic sabotage. We need a real plan to back our domestic fleet, protect local jobs, and build maritime resilience before the next major disaster or global shock cuts us off completely.”

Security, work, happiness, and peace vanished. The sounds of explosions and indiscriminate shelling began everywhere. The first truly difficult experience of my life was when my house was shelled while we were inside. My apartment was on the fourth floor. The feeling was indescribable—the sheer terror, fear, and helplessness in front of my family. We chose the western side of the house, as the shells were coming from the east. I was injured in my hand and face, and my daughter breathed her last in my arms. My wife's feet were covered in blood from the rubble, and the sound of our children crying was louder than the explosions. We were trapped until the shelling stopped for a moment, and we went downstairs where there were no ambulances or hospitals to treat us. We went to a nearby medical point on a cart. A donkey pulled her along, and we sought refuge in a relative's house. We went to bury the infant girl; she was only 33 days old. She was born in the war and died in the war.

After that, we began to flee from street to street, then to a burnt-out bus where I lived for three months. We returned to our home during the war and cleared the rubble after the army withdrew. But soon, a missile struck my brother's bedroom on the second floor, killing him, his wife, and their young son, Baraa, instantly. He left behind four orphaned children, leaving immense pain within us. The army returned, and we were displaced again, this time to the south, living in a tattered tent. As for the famine, imagine, dear reader, three months of surviving on mallow leaves without bread. The hunger gnawed at us for two years. We didn't eat vegetables, fruits, meat, eggs, or cheese; only lentils and herbs. We ran after food morning and night, and the sounds of my children's fear and hunger still echo in my ears. I could hear their moans. We found no one to help us or comfort us.

On May 18, 2024, we woke up to the news of a bombing of a large residential area in the neighborhood where my wife's family lives, near Kamal Adwan Hospital. We were devastated to learn that her entire family had been killed. It was a massacre in every sense of the word. They bombed the area with missiles weighing more than a ton, leaving more than 50 martyrs. My wife's family numbered 20 martyrs. They weren't just numbers; they were people with dreams and lives. We loved them dearly; they were a source of happiness for us. We ask God to have mercy on them.

Half my family was killed, and we were displaced more than 15 times, each time with new suffering. Now I live in a small storage room that isn't big enough for one person. We eat, drink, and sleep in the same room, which is no more than 3 by 4 meters. Inside, we have the kitchen, clothes, bedding, and everything else. I went to see my house, which is near the yellow line, but I found nothing but desert. All the houses were destroyed, the streets were washed away, and the landscape of life changed.

I launched a fundraising campaign to restore some hope to my children, to find some clean food and clothes, and to improve our lives. No words can describe the suffering we have endured. An entire people was wiped out, and although the number of dead and wounded has decreased, the war is still ongoing.

You can donate to support Mohammad and his family via Chuffed.

My name is Mohammed Dawood. I am 20 years old, and I am from Gaza.

In June 2023, I graduated from high school with distinction. A few months later, in September 2023, I joined the Faculty of Engineering at university. I was full of hope and dreams for my future. I believed that my life was finally beginning, and that after years of hard work, I would be able to build a better future for myself and my family.

But I did not wait long before everything changed.

On October 7, 2023, the war began. For us in Gaza, that date became a nightmare that we will never forget. It was the beginning of hell. The bombing, fear, destruction, and loss changed every detail of our lives. Until today, this date still haunts us and remains one of the hardest memories we carry.

As the attacks intensified, my family was forced to move to the south of Gaza after evacuation orders were issued by the Israeli army. They lived in tents under extremely difficult conditions. Meanwhile, I remained alone in the besieged north of Gaza.

Life in the north was unbearable. We suffered from severe famine, lack of medical care, and endless dangers. One of the worst moments was the famine at the beginning of 2024. Food became scarce, prices rose dramatically, and people struggled every day just to survive.

Education also completely collapsed. Universities and schools stopped functioning. Many educational buildings were bombed or turned into shelters for displaced families. My university life, which had only just begun, suddenly disappeared.

Then, in the middle of 2024, I lost my brother. This was one of the hardest moments of my life and a major turning point for me. After his death, I became the only person responsible for taking care of my family. I had to carry the burden of supporting them alone while also trying to continue my education and pay university expenses.

At the beginning of 2025, universities attempted to return through online learning. However, even this became another challenge because of the constant electricity cuts and weak internet connection. Studying under these conditions felt almost impossible.

Until today, the suffering in Gaza continues. Despite agreements that were supposed to end the war, the bombing has resumed again. Just yesterday, a kitchen that distributed food to displaced families in southern Gaza was bombed.

In addition, humanitarian aid and essential supplies are still being restricted. Many humanitarian organizations have stopped operating because they no longer receive enough supplies to continue their work.

One of the most painful examples is the World Central Kitchen operation in Gaza. Previously, it prepared nearly one million meals every day. Today, it produces only around 200,000 meals daily and has terminated the contracts of nearly 500 employees due to the lack of supplies entering Gaza.

Many people ask me: where did the idea of starting a donation campaign come from?

At the beginning of the war, my family owned small businesses and shops. However, they were destroyed along with our home during the bombing. After losing my father, we lost all sources of income.

A friend of mine from Italy suggested that I start an online donation campaign. At first, I completely refused because I felt ashamed to ask people for help. I never imagined that one day I would be forced to do this.

But with the support and donations we received, I was able to provide food, water, clothes, and basic necessities for my family. I was also able to pay part of my university fees and continue trying to pursue my education despite everything.

For me, these donations are not only financial support. They represent something much bigger: human solidarity. Every donation and every message of support sends us a reminder that the people of Gaza are not alone.

And perhaps this is the most important thing we still hold onto — the feeling that somewhere in this world, there are still people who care.

You can donate to help Mohammed via Chuffed.

Since 1989, broadcasting in Aotearoa New Zealand has been subject to the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) who enforce the standards outlined in the Broadcasting Standards Act 1989. These standards covered radio and television, including pay TV (a difference from the United States where the equivalent body doesn’t have jurisdiction over cable). The first group of standards covered protecting children’s interest from content that may adversely affect them, offensive and disturbing content, promotion of illegal activity, discrimination and denigration. The second, which applied only to factual content such as news, covered balance and accuracy, while the third covered the right to privacy and fair treatment.

The first set of standards hardly acted as censorship. Plenty of movies containing nudity or horror scenes would air on New Zealand television, at times when children had typically gone to bed, with a clear rating and sometimes a warning beforehand. Broadcasts that dealt with topics like domestic violence, drug addiction, or suicide often were followed by a brief clip advertising a helpline. Few would see these warnings and ratings as an egregious imposition on their liberty. When an irreverent student radio station satirised the concept of broadcasting standards by including the phrase “fuck-knuckles, cock and piss. Balls” in their on-air announcement that complaints could be made if listeners thought standards had been breached, only one person did complain, and their complaint wasn’t upheld. The authority ruled that the station’s target audience was likely to appreciate the satire.

Even the standards for factual programming were somewhat relaxed. A complaint about a caller to a talkback radio show spreading false information on the airwaves would not be upheld (a complaint about a host might) and international channels carried by local TV providers that didn’t have editorial control were for all intents and purposes exempt- you couldn’t successfully complain Fox News had a lack of balance or accuracy in a segment just because it was broadcast by Sky. In recent years, the BSA only held up 7% of complaints.

Read more

In the past, I’ve written and published ‘part 2’ of these articles shortly after publishing part 1. This one I held off for several reasons. Firstly, I’m still commissioning people in Gaza to write about their stories, and last month published Hannen’s. As an aside, due to the the cost of living crisis I haven’t been asking for paid subscriptions often, but with lapsed subscriptions it’s looking likely I won’t make enough to continue doing this without also using my ‘day job’ income, which I’m happy to do so long as it’s feasible. This means if you become a paying subscriber you’ll be financing this ongoing mutual aid project to assist people in Gaza financially while providing them another platform to share their stories.

Then the death of actor Chuck Norris presented an opportunity to write about the intersection of film, internet subcultures, and the geopolitics of my formative years, so I wrote that piece first. I also wanted to wait and see the outcome of the Hungarian election. In the final chapter of Fear I had quoted (now former) Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán who after winning his fourth term in power stated ‘We are sending Europe a message that this is not the past – this is the future.’ And speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the USA 2022 had told the audience, with reference to upcoming congressional elections in the US and parliamentary elections in the European Union, he stated that ‘they will define the two fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilisation. Today, we hold neither of them. Yet we need both’.

Orbán’s regime collapsed at the April 12 election. The opposition Tisza Party won in a landslide, securing a super-majority that will allow them to overturn constitutional changes made in the Orbán era. Prime Minister elect Péter Magyar is no leftist, he is a centre-right conservative who a few years ago was in the same party or Orbán, nonetheless the victory of Tisza is significant. A €90 billion loan to Ukraine that Hungary had been blocking is now likely to go ahead. Hungary had also been vetoing EU sanctions on Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump have lost their closest ally in Europe, and the global far-right have lost their north star.

In 2021 Hungary introduced legislation banning the “promotion” of homosexuality or gender diversity to those under 18 on “child protection” grounds. Films and television shows that featured LGBT+ characters or themes were given the same age restrictions as horror, drugs, violence and other adult themes, and in 2025 a ban on Pride marches was introduced. While Peter Maygar has been quiet on the topic of LGBT+ rights, the change in government is likely to lead to progress in this area.

Another country to keep an eye on is the UK. In Part 1 I mentioned, without naming them, the meteoric growth of the Reform Party. Founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party, they received 14.7% of the vote in the 2024 election. Since then, Reform has risen in the polls to become the most popular party in the country. Every poll for the past year, with one notable exception, has them in the lead. I’d promised in Part 1 that Part 2 would include some hope, and in the UK the hope seems to be the Green Party.

In February, the Green candidate won a by-election in the north west of England, and while a more recent by-election in the area was won by the Reform candidate, the Green Party is climbing in the polls, and support for Reform, while still historically high, is falling.

It’s a situation that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago; when the UK goes to vote in 2029 the outcome may not be a Conservative or a Labour-led government, but a Reform or Green-led one. Of course, the UK still uses First Past the Post (FPP) for elections, meaning a party can win a majority of seats in parliament with a minority of the popular vote, so the outcome is difficult to predict.

Back home in Aotearoa New Zealand, we’re seeing a worrying trend. New Zealand First got back into parliament in 2023 by courting the “freedom movement” and cannibalising the vote of other extra-parliamentary parties. They were likely the reason for the collapse in support for the New Conservatives (NZ First had adopted many of their core policies). It’s possible that some of those former New Conservative voters switched their vote to the overtly Christian Nationalist New Zeal. Now, New Zeal has deregistered with the electoral commission, and their former leader is standing for New Zealand First. The party has built a coalition of anti-vaxxers, transphobes, and Christian nationalists (admittedly, that’s an overlapping Venn diagram) and they are ‘surging’ in the polls, recently surpassing the Greens as the third most popular party. This trend mirrors not just Reform in the UK, but also One Nation in Australia.

NZ First’s latest shot in the culture wars is a bill to define men and women in law, something leader Winson Peters says will “ensure our country moves away from the woke ideology that has crept in over the last few years, undermining the protection, progression and safety of women,”. The bill was influenced largely by a petition from conservative Christian advocacy group Family First.

In Chapter 22 of Fear, I wrote “An attempt at electoral gains through imported American culture wars is not a possibility we should be ruling out” It was in reference to the New Conservatives, but I feel like we’re there now with NZ First.

Polling shows the upcoming election as too-close-to-call, with the difference between who is in government and who is in opposition being within the margin of error. The result will come down to a very small percentage of voters, a situation that could allow that coalition of anti-vaxxers, transphobes, and Christian nationalists to have influence much greater than their actual levels of support.

Hungary defeated Orbán thanks to record voter turnout. For Aotearoa New Zealand to avoid a government where politicians promoting xenophobia, transphobia, Christian nationalism, and conspiracy theories are members of the government- possibly even ministers, we need to do the same.

Voter turnout is lower than average amongst young people, Māori, Pasifika, immigrants, and New Zealanders working overseas. There are many reasons for not voting, the voter and non-voter survey conducted after the 2023 election is informative. For a quarter of non-voters, their reasons were categorised as “Voting process” such as not being enrolled, not knowing how to vote, or not getting to a polling place on time. Changes made to electoral law by the current government, such as reducing the period you’ll be able to enroll, make that process more difficult. When other countries do things like this, we call it voter suppression.

It’s nothing on the scale of what Orbán did to try and remain in power, but that doesn’t mean we can be complacent. While I’m not endorsing a particular party, I’m very much endorsing helping your friends and whanau enroll to vote, offering them rides to polling booths during the advance voting period, and helping them become informed enough about the options on offer to feel confident in voting. If enough people do that, we can avoid falling to right-wing populism.

Chuck Norris, the action movie and later television star has died. He was 86. If you’re of a certain age, you knew Norris less as an actor and more as a meme. Chuck Norris counted to infinity--twice. Chuck Norris once won a game of Connect Four in 3 moves. Once a cobra bit Chuck Norris’ leg. After five days of excruciating pain, the cobra died.

‘Chuck Norris Facts’ which exaggerated the actors abilities to the point of absurdity, are the kind of ‘random’ internet humour that dominated the 2000s. KnowYourMeme credits the Something Awful forums with its origin (interestingly, it was originally Vin Diesel was credited with these amazing abilities) and dates it to 2005. It was that same year that the (now defunct) website chucknorrisfacts.com was launched, and Newgrounds released ‘The Ultimate Showdown’ an animated music video about a glorious battle fought by various pop culture characters, where at one point the high tempo music slows as Norris descends from the heavens accompanied by an ‘immaculate chorus’ of Angels before crushing the skull of Batman with his thighs. Random.

The internet at that time was, largely, a place populated by nerds, still transitioning into something mainstream. ‘Chuck Norris Facts’ was a meme that spread largely offline, in a warzone. In 2008 a Reuters journalist wrote “comments lauding the manliness and virility of the actor have been left on toilet walls across Iraq and even in neighbouring Kuwait, soldiers say.” A U.S. military helicopter hub in Baghdad featured a cardboard ‘shrine’ to the actor. In Falluja, soldiers would ask for photos with the ‘Iraqi Chuck Norris’, police trainer Mohammed Rasheed, whose moustache made him something of a Norris lookalike. “Truthfully, I didn’t know who he was.” Rasheed told Reuters. “I asked the Americans, and they said he was a great fighter, and that’s why they named me after him. They showed me a video, and it’s true, he’s a great fighter”

Another police trainer, Khaled Hussein, was more familiar with him “I’ve seen his videos, he’s a hero. He saves the city, he protects women and children and he fights crime wherever it is. We should all be like Chuck Norris,” Those videos were of course, works of fiction. Norris was however a martial arts expert off screen, and a former member of the US air force who had served in Korea. This, along with his Christian faith and his support for Republican party politicians, also made him popular with American servicemen, as did the model of masculinity he portrayed, an “antidote to the preening and moisturised metrosexual male” according to Reuters.

The characters Norris played were very deliberate. “I wanted to project a certain image on the screen of a hero.” He said in 1982. “I had seen a lot of anti-hero movies in which the lead was neither good nor bad. There was no one to root for,”. When he began acting, movies were already different from when he was a kid. Born in 1940, Norris’ childhood was an era of cinema shaped by the Hayes Code and the Hollywood blacklist, a time when—at least on screen— right and wrong was a simple binary, and the good guys always won. He had described western screen legend John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart (the first American movie star to enlist to fight in World War 2) as “surrogate fathers.”

Norris’ early films came out during the Vietnam War, a time when in contrast to WW2 American military adventures overseas were questioned as much—if not more— than they were praised. Norris, whose military service ended in 1962, would never have the impact on the armed forces that Jimmy Stewart did with his role in the allied propaganda film ‘Winning Your Wings’ which is credited with bringing 150,000 new recruits to the air force, but his action films appealed, according to his obituary in the New York Times, to “millions who enjoyed seeing America win — for a change, some would say — whether that meant rescuing captive G.I.s in Vietnam, saving the country from terrorists in “Invasion U.S.A.” or defeating skyjackers and drug kingpins in the “Delta Force” series.”

In his late 60s, he was lending his celebrity to the war on terror, at a time when others in entertainment were speaking out. In a famous (or infamous) 2003 Oscars speech, documentary film maker Michael Moore invited other documentary directors on stage with him. “They are here in solidarity because we like non-fiction.” He told the audience “We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where fictitious election results give us a fictitious president. We are now fighting a war for fictitious reasons.”

In 2005, a System of a Down track that screamed “why don’t presidents fight the war, why do they always send the poor?” and satirised the American adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq with the lyrics “dancing in the desert, blowing up the sunshine” topped the charts, enjoyed no doubt by many of the same young people laughing at ‘Chuck Norris Facts’ and the animated Norris in that ridiculous Newgrounds Flash cartoon.

The real Chuck Norris toured Iraq on multiple occasions, a visitor from a different, and, some would argue, better, time. A time before Oscars were given out to liberal documentary directors, before anti-war Nu-Metal bands and “preening metrosexuals”. The official website of the United States marines describes Norris’ appearance at Fallujah Surgical, where he gave a Marine Corps Martial Arts Program demonstration at the chapel alongside fellow actor Marshall Teague, with over the top reverence.

“The service members who attended the assembly at the chapel looked ecstatic when Norris and Teague arrived there, chanting “Chuck, Chuck, Chuck …” and the troops broke into an uproar when the living-legends entered the building.”

The military publication Stars and Stripes headlined a 2007 article with ‘Chuck Norris Fact: He’s in Iraq’ noting that he drew a bigger crowd of soldiers than a troop of professional cheerleaders. “I came over to let the troops know that the folks back home appreciate and love them and pray for them every day to come home safe,” Norris said. While there was no doubt truth to this statement, the war was by that time increasingly unpopular. A poll published just a few months prior had found 61% of Americans believed the country “should have stayed out” of Iraq.

Despite jokes that now Norris was in the country they could stop fighting, the aging actor was never going to roundhouse kick Saddam Hussein and end the quagmire that saw the deaths of thousands of American soldiers (and countless more Iraqis). No soldier ever really believed that was the case, just as they didn’t really believe he could do a wheelie on a unicycle, but it provided something of a morale boost to turn this man into a meme about strength and power, at a time when those qualities were fleeting. With Chuck Norris departing this world just weeks into the latest American excursion into the middle east, perhaps the world is going to have to find a new meme.

I have four children: Hazem, Hamza, Waseem, and Mohammed. Hazem is six years old and has a disability. Our life was simple but beautiful before the war. Although we faced many difficulties, we overcame them. My husband worked in agriculture, and we lived in safety. We had schools and universities, but unfortunately, the war has destroyed life in Gaza.

Before the war I used to take Hazem to a specialized physical therapy center so he could walk. After two years of treatment, he was almost able to walk, but unfortunately, the war came and the center was bombed, depriving him of the ability to walk. Now he is in a wheelchair and needs special care.

Hamza is five years old and has lived his childhood amidst the war. My twins, Waseem and Mohammed were born during the war, amidst fear, hunger, and bombing. They are seven months old and, unfortunately, have not been breastfed; they need formula. We also face difficulty providing for our needs due to the high cost of living. We light a fire every day to cook because there is no gas. We also travel long distances to get drinking water. All I want is to provide for our needs and give my children a better life.

We want to stay in Gaza, in order to rebuild homes, hospitals, and schools, and everything that the occupation destroyed. So that life can return once again and we can provide our children with a decent life and education in schools. We want everyone to know that we love life.

You can support Haneen and her family via GoFundMe

Planning this article I kept thinking of the first words in the famous monologue from the 1976 film Network. “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad.” Unlike Peter Finch’s Howard Beale, I’m not going to exhort you to go to your window and yell about how you’re mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore. Speakers with a media platform encouraging their audiences to anger is, after all, a big part of how we got into this mess.

Writing Fear I was watching places that few others were (not no others- and the journalists I list in the acknowledgements deserve a lot of credit for their work.) I’d long been watching fringe online spaces and media, weird fascistic sects, and those oddball political parties that barely registered in polls, when suddenly the moment came where a book about those things was something people felt was important to read after people from that milieu occupied parliament grounds in opposition to vaccine mandates and a grab bag of other grievances.

I had, of course, plenty of critics. Among some audiences, I was seen as a paranoid conspiracy theorist seeing fascists around every corner. Some people felt that by writing about these groups I was giving them attention, when if I ignored them they would be no threat. I always pushed back on that one, as for one thing, far-right influencers on platforms like YouTube had much larger audiences than I did, and for another, ignoring the growth of the far-right online in the 2010s didn’t stop a radicalised terrorist from murdering 51 people in my home town.

That terrorist has been in the news lately as he tries to appeal his conviction, in what will almost certainly be a futile effort. In his high security prison cell, he receives little information about the outside world. I wonder sometimes, does he know that in the USA, a masked paramilitary force is arresting, detaining, and deporting non-white immigrants? Does he know that in the UK, polls suggest the next government will likely be led a party who plans to build “removal centres” in remote areas of the country in order to detain up to 24,000 people as they carry out the mass deportation of 600,000 people? (while promising to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, which would otherwise offer those people some protection)

Has he become aware, from the small amount of news material he is permitted to see, that far-right parties are surging across continental Europe. Does he have any inkling that the beliefs he outlined in his manifesto are no longer confined to seediest parts of the web but are now openly discussed and algorithmically promoted on a social media platform owned by the world’s richest man, fueling anti-migrant and anti-Muslim violence? Or that New Zealand politicians have begun dogwhistling to believers in the “great replacement” conspiracy theory from which his manifesto took its name?

In my ‘one year on’ and ‘two years on’ articles I went through chapter-by-chapter, condensing a few chapters in the ‘two years on’ article. This year I’ll instead group chapters thematically. I’m not updating anything on Action Zealandia (chapter 3) as the organisation appears to be moribund. The former branches are operating autonomously with names like ‘Canterbury Legion’ and while their [ex]members are unpleasant people (one former AZ member recently assaulted two people with his car) they’re not having any significant impact on the nation’s body politic.

I also feel there isn’t much I could add to what I think of as ‘the history chapters’ (18 and 19) looking at colonisation, the white New Zealand policy, and nostalgia for Rhodesia and apartheid era South Africa. All I’d say regarding the role of women in the modern far-right (chapter 20) is that the podcast series ‘Truely, Tradly, Deeply’ makes a subscription to Cursed Media worth the price.

#Gamergate, Qanon, Disinformation and online hate

(chapters 1,2,4,5, and 9)

I’ve, on numerous occasions now, spoken of a ‘perpetual gamergate’ the original campaign is gone, but the methods and tactics- harassing a critic until you push them out of public life- have become normalised. The same is increasingly true of Qanon. While the largely online movement associated with the initial ‘Q’ conspiracy theory scene seems dated, if ‘Qanon’ has disappeared it’s because, like gamergate before it, it’s become how politics is done. Last October, Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Dayton, wrote:

“Over time, what started as a baseless conspiracy on obscure platforms has migrated into the mainstream. It has influenced rhetoric and policy debates, and even reshaped the American political landscape.”

In Aotearoa New Zealand last year we saw the influence of the methods and discourses of both gamergate and qanon in the campaign to destroy the political career of Benjamin Doyle, the country’s first openly non-binary member of parliament.

Disinformation and hate moving from the fringes to being promoted by those in power isn’t new. In Fear I used the campaign against the UN global compact on safe, regular and orderly migration as a case study. This sort of thing is happening writ large in the United States. As a recent New York Times article put it

“The influencers behind some of the most pernicious digital lies, who once toiled in the dark corners of the internet, are now emboldened, promoted on major platforms and even mimicked by some of the most powerful people in the country.”

Local examples continue to be seen. The campaign against Doyle may have remained confined to the hateful nooks of X if not for the involvement of NZ First leader Winson Peters.

The religious right

(chapters 6,7, and 17)

In 2024 the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, the fringe Catholic sect whose Latin mass I attended while researching the book, were ordered by the bishop (on Vatican advice) to leave the Christchurch Catholic diocese. That order was later rescinded, but the Sons were forbidden from celebrating Mass or conducting any other “priestly ministry” for anyone outside their religious community. They refused to leave the city, and described the actions of Church leaders, including the late Pope Francis, a critic of the traditionalists in the Church, as “evil”. The Vatican is still keeping an eye on the group.

The latest front group for the overtly Christian Nationalist Destiny Church is called ‘True Patriots of NZ’. On Facebook, where they have nine thousand followers, they describe themselves as “Guardians of the Kiwi Way of Life.” and “Defenders of Faith, Flag & Family.” Encouraging followers to “Join the movement standing against globalism, mass immigration, and woke ideology.” The group has taken particular aim at Auckland’s sikh community, disrupting religious processions carrying a banner proclaiming “This is New Zealand not India”.

Indian New Zealanders now make up the country’s third largest ethnic group. While this makes them a target of xenophobia from groups like the True Patriots, there are various Indian diaspora organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand (namely, Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh New Zealand, the Hindu Council of New Zealand and Overseas Friends of BJP New Zealand) which operate to propagate the Hindutva project, a form of nationalism which has seen violence against Muslims, Christians and other minority groups in India.

There is, of course, an anti-Hindutva current among the diaspora here. Sneha Singh at the University of Auckland has been researching that movement. One prominent anti-Hindutva activist was stripped of her Overseas Citizen of India status last year, suggesting goings on in this part of the world are not unnoticed by the Modi regime.

Fringe parties

(chapters 8, 10, and 12)

Following the True Patriots protest Brian Tamaki urged followers to withhold their votes in this year’s election. Although at the time of writing, the Destiny Church affiliated Vision New Zealand Party is still registered to be on the ballot. The party formerly known as the New Conservatives, who saw their vote collapse in 2023 (likely because NZ First took on a number of their policies, candidates, and members) has dropped the ‘new’ prefix and will contest this year’s election as The Conservatives, giving an option to those who think NZ First is still just a bit too woke.

New Zeal, who probably contributed to the New Conservative collapse by appealing to the explicitly Christian Nationalist section of their supporters, appears to be standing again this year. As is the Outdoors and Freedom Party, giving an option for those still casting their vote based on misinformation about fifth generation mobile networks.

Alt-Media

(chapters 11, 13, and 14)

Earlier this year The Guardian published a three part series from Robert Topinka, a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London. The final part, which is titled ‘How the left can win back the internet – and rise again’ includes this valuable insight into the situation we face

“The right has established its own parallel media universe. It eschews most real news and instead tells convincing tales about how the shadowy functionaries of the Cathedral, or the matrix, or cultural Marxism lie to you in the media and try to control your every action. The reactionary right is not just xenophobia, racism and misogyny. This online subculture also offers camaraderie, new diets, natural medicine, exercise regimes, all of which arrive in new communicative forms such as memes and live streams.”

The New Zealand based ‘Reality Check Radio’ (RCR), launched by Voices for Freedom in 2023, is a microcosm of that new global media environment. With a budget for extensive billboard advertising around the country. It was on RCR that New Zealand First launched their 2023 election campaign, and various MPs including government ministers appear as guests, now that association with a platform where the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory is discussed as fact is no longer something that harms one’s political career.

Talanoa Sa’o, the Pacifika orientated show that switched to online only after accuracy complaints (one of them from myself) to the Broadcasting Standards Authority saw them lose their spot on broadcast television channel Apna TV, appears to be defunct. Although their Facebook page is active, sharing short form videos mostly from American sources with no obvious connection to Pacific Island related issues. Counterspin Media is still around, but a shadow of what it was during the pandemic.

Sovereign Citizens

(chapter 15)

In writing this article I’d almost forgotten about the sovereign citizens, but we shouldn’t forget them. Lets not forget for instance that last year in Australia two police officers were allegedly killed and another injured by a man who identified himself as a sovereign citizen. Just this week Macquarie University criminologist and former police officer Vincent Hurley was quoted on news.com.au saying “What started as a fringe annoyance has turned into a real national security problem in countries around the world,”. While thankfully we haven’t seen that kind of violence from sovereign citizens on this side of the Tasman, the movement that blossomed during the COVID-19 pandemic is still with us. Stephen Young wrote in a piece published in Newsroom last August:

“While we had hoped this movement would gradually lose steam when restrictions and mandates were lifted, it does not appear to have slackened as anticipated.

While precise figures are difficult to determine, researchers, lawyers, judges, Members of Parliament, local government and security agencies have noted an increase in pseudolegal activity.”

Rural Rebellion

(chapter 16)

My current research, for both the upcoming ‘Quit Paris?’ podcast and my masters thesis is looking at climate change disinformation. This means I could probably write at length about the ‘rural rebellion’ topic. The Agriculture Action Group (AAG) who were the basis for much of this chapter in Fear disappeared almost as quickly as they began, but the farmer group Groundswell, who had in the past distanced themselves from AAG and also from Voices for Freedom, has since become enmeshed with the same milieu, attempting to discredit the science on climate change and get New Zealand out of the Paris Climate Accords with more than a little assistance from RCR Media.

While when I began this research I’d envisioned it as moving on from the far-right to another topic, but looking overseas it’s clear that far-right parties in Europe have made common cause with protesting farmers across the continent. Those European protests were a massive influence on the protests organised by Groundswell, with slogans and talking points lifted directly from protests in France and The Netherlands in particular. So I haven’t quite pulled myself away, and this historian in me is increasingly thinking that when we look back at this decade with hindsight the farmer protests against climate policy will be seen as more significant than the protests against public health measures we saw during the pandemic.

The final three chapters of the book looked toward the future. I’ll make that the topic for part two of this article, and try to also include a bit of hope, because we all need it.

Today, I suffer from severe pain, inflammation, and strain in my lower vertebrae due to the pregnancy and fetching water from a distant source. I also need a corneal transplant, and the operation costs $3,000, which would cripple my life. I can barely afford food, let alone the surgery. My husband lost his job at the beginning of the war. You are the only ones who can help me. If I lose my sight, I will lose the last thing connecting me to my children’s lives. I write these words with a broken heart, asking for a chance at treatment just so I can still hold and care for them.

My eldest son, Muhammad, is 11 years old. He lost his entire childhood in the war and is still unable to access online schools because he doesn’t have a phone to study with his brother, Yassin. My son Yassin has been deprived of everything, even a peaceful night’s sleep. He suffers from mental health issues as a result of the continuous bombing.

And poor Ghaith cries whenever he sees anything, and I can’t provide for him. My children have gone days without eating. Sometimes they drink water and salt.

You can donate to support Noreen and her family here.

Gaza — a small strip of land that has grown unbearably narrow for its people — continues to produce human stories whose cruelty surpasses any political or military description. Among these stories is that of a young married couple, Ahmad and Samar, who find themselves surrounded on all sides: an ongoing Israeli war, a fragile and dangerous security reality, and a suffocating siege that deprives them of the most basic rights to life.

Only a few weeks ago, Ahmad and Samar decided to get married. The timing was far from ideal — it was harsh beyond measure. No stability, no safety, and no clear future. Yet they chose life. They chose to say “yes” amid the rubble, because in Gaza, love is not a luxury — it is a form of resistance.

Marriage Under Fire, Life Without Guarantees

Their wedding was not a traditional celebration, but a declaration of defiance against a reality that relentlessly tries to break the human spirit. They married despite power outages, fear, and an unknown tomorrow. They married because they believe that every human being deserves a chance at life, even in the harshest of places.

But what came after the wedding was even harder. Gaza today is not only a war zone; it is an open-air prison. The siege restricts movement, seals borders, and strangles dreams. Adding to this is the presence of local militias linked to Israel, further complicating and endangering daily life, tightening the grip around civilians and turning ordinary existence into a daily struggle for survival.

Their Dream Is Not a Luxury — It Is a Right

Ahmad and Samar are not asking for the impossible. They are not seeking comfort or a lavish lifestyle. All they ask for is the chance to leave Gaza — an opportunity to travel and start a new life in a place that offers safety, security, and freedom, the most basic human rights.

The cost required for travel ranges between $6,000 and $7,000, a figure that may seem modest in many parts of the world, but is nearly impossible to obtain in Gaza amid economic collapse and the absence of stable income.

Home Is Not Geography — It Is Safety

For Ahmad and Samar, a homeland is not merely the place where one is born. It is where one feels safe, where tomorrow is not feared, and where the simple desire to live is not punished. Home is dignity, freedom, and peace.

Their wish in life is painfully simple:

To live in peace. To sleep without fear. To plan for the future without the constant question: Will we survive?

Your Support — A Wedding Gift and a Lifeline

In a world that often turns its back on Gaza, humanity remains the last hope. Supporting Ahmad and Samar is not charity — it is a human stand. It is a true wedding gift, offered to a couple who chose to begin their life together despite everything.

Your support could be the difference between a life trapped under siege and a new life built on safety and peace. You could be the bridge that carries this couple from fear to life.

In Gaza, dreams do not die — they simply wait for someone to listen.

You can donate to support Ahmad and Samar here.

Kia ora kautau. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to speak to this gathering of faith leaders about the topic of Christian Nationalism. I’m going to begin by talking about another gathering of faith leaders that took place about a year and a half ago.

In June 2023, Pastor Peter Morlock of the City Impact Church, an evangelical congregation, held a ‘Christian Summit on the state of the nation’ to bring together the various Christian political parties, as well as a handful of current and former National Party MPs. In attendance were Brian and Hannah Tamaki, the leaders of Destiny Church and its political wing Vision New Zealand, former and current leaders of New Conservative Party, and the leaders of the overtly Christian ONE Party.

Following the summit, the ONE Party rebranded as NewZeal, with a new leader- former National Party MP (2011-2020) Alfred Ngaro. Speaking with John Cowan on Newstalk ZB following the announcement, Ngaro talked about how he believes the values of the National Party have moved away from the values he holds. He cites the ban on conversion therapy and “non-binary gender identity that came through the department of internal affairs” as examples. On ZB he described the NewZeal party as not just for Christians, but for all New Zealanders. Yet the way he speaks to audiences of evangelicals makes for a stark contrast.

“I’ll tell you this: We need to be a nation of believers that aren’t afraid” he told the crowd assembled at the Christian summit “are you willing to be broken and burnt? Because that’s the army that God is looking for.” He went on to speak about what is known as Seven Mountains Dominionism.

“You know we talk about seven mountains not as a theology, but as a strategy, but what are we doing there? How are we going to take those, right? It’s time now to preach that the space between the temple and the palace is not meant to be a divide. When Solomon was rebuilding it, he was doing it because God said, the place of governance, that Temple, is the place of worship, they’re not meant to be separated! So to the pastors and the Preachers and the theologians in our church, get your theology right!”

So what is seven mountains dominionism?

In 1975, Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth With a Mission, and Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, proclaimed that God had given them a revelation, telling both men that there were seven “spheres,” or mountains, that were the foundations of every society: religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business. Whoever could take those mountains could take a nation.

“God’s plan has always been for us to have kingdom dominion and rule over every part of the world, so that His kingdom might fully inhabit the earth” writes Tommi Femrite, founding ‘apostle’ of GateKeepers International and Apostolic Intercessors Network in Invading the Seven Mountains with Intercession: How to Reclaim Society Through Prayer, published in 2012. “Yet when we look at the various areas of American society today, we must ask ourselves, Who is ruling? Sadly, it’s not us.”

She goes on to say that “the Lord has given us the “Seven Mountain Mandate” to take dominion; this is our authoritative order from God.”

For adherents of Seven Mountains Dominionism, having dominion over religion, family, education and government is only half the picture, Christians must also have dominion over business, media, arts and entertainment- areas Femrite believes are currently controlled by Jews. “American Jews—numbering a mere 1.7 percent of the US population (5.2 million out of 304 million)—have ruled the mountains of arts and entertainment, business, and media., To this day, they continue to prove one of the fundamental truths of the Seven Mountains: it only takes one person to reach a mountain’s summit and claim it as his.” She places great emphasis on the importance of culture.

“Christians have been working in Hollywood for decades trying to make a difference. I believe it has taken this long for those believers not on the Arts and Entertainment Mountain to wake up and realize the significance of this cultural sphere. Culture is not only reflected by its arts and entertainment, it is shaped by them”

This way of thinking is not dissimilar to the Breitbart doctrine – the idea that politics is ‘downstream’ from culture, and therefore you can influence politics by first changing culture. This was the strategy of Breitbart News under the leadership of Steve Bannon (later an adviser to Donald Trump), and locally is the strategy of the group Voices for Freedom and their online media network, RCR Media (initially called Reality Check Radio). Voices for Freedom began as an anti-vaccine group but have broadened to cover other conspiracy theories, they have emerged from the secular wing of the anti-government movement that grew out of the COVID-19 pandemic, and represent the beginnings of an infrastructure that can exist to influence culture and politics.

The religious wing of the anti-government movement largely emerged from Pentecostal Christians who believed the government was overstepping its authority by obstructing their right to worship (though vaccine mandates and limitations on gathering sizes). That wing already has an infrastructure in place, incorporating churches, publications, and a homeschooling curriculum. Christian Nationalism- the belief that New Zealand should be Christian nation- has the potential to become the dominant strain of the anti-government movement in the future.

To quote Ngaro again:

“Jesus Christ is now being challenged: you could no longer hide [your faith] as a nice thing to have. Everywhere you are now it’s being challenged, and what is God wanting? He’s wanting to Wake. Us. Up.” he spoke those words at the Elim Christian Centre in Porirua in March of 2023.

NewZeal has had no real success in elections, but government is only one of the seven mountains he plans to summit, and in shaping society through culture NewZeal is joined by a number of other social actors who may have differing theologies, or not theology at all, but find common ground in attitudes toward immigration, Islam, and public health measures such as vaccines.

The immediate aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shooting in 2019 saw an outpouring of interfaith solidarity. Many of you in the audience will have been part of that solidarity in some form. But you may also recall not all New Zealand’s Christian churches were enamoured with the support for the country’s Muslim community that followed the atrocity. For many of them, it was the broadcast of the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, on RNZ that was the focal point of their anger.

Brain Tamaki, the self appointed Bishop of the evangelical Destiny Church tweeted “this is offensive to all true Christians ... our national identity is at stake”. In the aftermath of the shooting Facebook had removed a post from Tamaki that described Islam as a “fast creeping social invasion.” You may have seen that just recently, Tamaki travelled to the UK to speak at a rally organised by the British far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

“Those who drive Christianity out of society are paving the way for Islam,” Carl Bromley, pastor of the Christchurch based Life Connection Baptist Fellowship- which is not affiliated with New Zealand’s Baptist Association- wrote on Facebook after the Adhan broadcast. Bromley’s page was full of links to articles from what Stuff described “an anti-Muslim conspiracy blog” as well as distain for increased regulation of firearms, and opposition to calls to change the name of the Canterbury rugby team from ‘The Crusaders’ to something less invocative of a Christian holy war. Bromley believed that the government was using the tragedy to promote Islam.

Ross Smith, the founder of Jesus for NZ, a group advocating the restoration of Jesus to parliamentary prayer, was furious that Islamic prayers were now being said in parliament. “She’s already said there was no Christian foundation in this nation, which is rubbish” he said in reference to then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

New Zealand as a Christian country is a deeply held belief for many evangelical Christians. The book New Zealand’s Christian Heritage by Col Stringer, which was first published by his ministry in 2001, includes the words “It’s time to tell the world that this is a Christian country with a Christian heritage! This is not a Muslim country, it is not an atheistic, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist or New Age country- New Zealand is a Christian country founded on Christian principles and governed by national laws that are founded on Biblical principles!” Among a subset of evangelicals, the nation’s Christian heritage has long been perceived to be under threat- and not just from Islam. A 2002 editorial in the evangelical publication Evidence claimed that this threat came from “[T]he academic purveyors of political correctness, the literary elite, the environmentalists, the feminists, the appeasement lobby, and the neo-Marxists, all of whom want also want to create a New Zealand in their own image”

Another evangelical magazine, Above Rubies, which is published by Colin and Nancy Campbell, who now reside in the USA but are originally from New Zealand, has promoted a view that sounds frighteningly similar to what we now call The Great Replacement theory. To quote from in an article first published in 2010:

“The result of the Christian acceptance of birth control is now measurable. Because our love of small families has consumed all of Western society, Europe and to a lesser extent America, are running out of indigenous people. And in the “nature abhors a vacuum” way of things, others are flooding in to fill the void. Most notably, Muslims who have not generally been swept up in the birth control tsunami, are handily populating every land they enter.”

Another article spoke of a “demographic winter” claiming that society- the subtext being specifically Western, Christian society, would die out. The Campbells, who on occasion tour New Zealand promoting their world view, were also part of the insurrection on January 6, 2021 where supporters of ousted president Donald Trump stormed the capitol building in Washington DC. Following that event Nancy Campbell wrote on Facebook that the violence “was staged with Antifa to make it look bad for President Trump.”

In the lead up to the 2020 election, Hannah Tamaki, who served as leader of Vision New Zealand, called for a 97% cut to immigration numbers, and suggested that rather than accepting refugees for resettlement New Zealand should pay them not to come here. She vowed to ban the construction of new “mosques, temples and other foreign buildings of worship”. Her husband Brain made a Facebook post that was sponsored to increase its reach, stating “we can not accept the proliferation of Islam in our country”. ONE, the party that would later become NewZeal, also advocated slashing the annual refugee intake; from 1500 to just 350.

ONE also had a policy that New Zealand establish an embassy in Jerusalem and apologise to Israel for New Zealand’s sponsoring of UN Resolution 2334, which states that Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied territories constitutes a “flagrant violation” of international law. These views were shared by the New Conservative Party, who list New Zealand - Israel relations as one of their eight policy pillars. Presumably in both cases the policy, and the priority given to it, results from the influence of Christian Zionism, a belief held by some Christians that the existence of the state of Israel is the fulfilment of part of Biblical prophecy, heralding the second coming of Christ.

This ideology began with 17th century puritans in England who believed that for prophecy to be fulfilled Jewish people needed to return to historical Israel.

Israeli historian Anita Shapira has suggested that in the nineteenth century this idea was spread from evangelical protestants to Jewish circles, so what we now call Christian Zionism may have actually influenced Jewish Zionism. More recent polling and academic research however suggests widespread distrust among Jews towards the motives of Evangelical Protestants.

The Christian Zionist movement grew its influence in the USA in the later part of the 20th century, promoted by Evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who became prominent during the rise of the Christian right in the US in the 1980s and 1990s. In his 1981 book The Fundamentalist Phenomenon Falwell stated “To stand against Israel is to stand against God. We believe that history and scripture prove that God deals with nations in relation to how they deal with Israel.”

In Aotearoa, evangelical Christianity doesn’t play the outsize role in politics it does in the US, but we have seen in the two years since the Hamas terror attack on October 7 2023 and Israel’s genocidal response, Destiny Church emerge as possibly the largest faction of Israel supporters in this country. There are more Israel-supporting evangelical Christians than there are Jewish people in Aotearoa, and of course a significant proportion of the Jewish population, represented by groups like Dayenu and Alternative Jewish Voices, are opposed to the occupation of Palestine.

At a protest he held outside parliament in December 2023, Brian Tamaki described himself as a “spiritual Jew” and Destiny Church Pastor Nigel Woodley, speaking at the same rally stated that “Israel’s right to defend itself includes the right to wage war until there is an unconditional surrender.” This was not Tamaki’s first protest in support of Israel, following previous protests he had appeared on Israeli television, now describing himself as “a bit of a star over there”.

There is also the lobby group ‘The Israel Institute’ which is a private company with three directors, only one of whom is Jewish, while the other two are Christian Zionists. Marilyn Garson, author of the recently released book Jewish, not Zionist. Has written that “The IINZ is not a Jewish institution although it does reflect Israel’s increasing Christian Zionist support.” The IINZ is occasionally used as a source by the media to give “balance” to coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict and New Zealand’s response, without it being made clear that this is a predominantly evangelical Christian organisation. We see here an example of this sector of society having an outsize influence on the wider public conversation.

As I touched on earlier, we also saw evangelical Christians playing a large role in the opposition to public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. City Impact Pastor Peter Mortlock promoted an anti-lockdown protest organised by Destiny Church front group The Freedom and Rights Coalition during a sermon, telling his congregation that it was their choice whether to attend or not, but concluding “I think sooner or later we are going to have to make a stand – a stand for our rights, the way our freedoms are being stripped away.” In another sermon he parroted a number of talking points from the conspiratorial anti-vaccine movement. “I don’t believe in the government right now, I don’t believe the media right now, and I’m sorry but I don’t trust Big Pharma either! Why is that? Well, if I mention the name Bill Gates or George Soros or Anthony Fauci – and it’s not about conspiracy, it’s just about plain facts, right?!”

Globally, Pentacoastal Christians, who number around half a billion, were active in opposing restrictions on gatherings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it clear that they wouldn’t be closing their church doors for anything short of the second coming. Fraser MacDiononald, an anthropologist at the University of Waikato, sees the Pentecostal response to the pandemic as rooted in theology. Pentecostals more than any other denomination concern themselves with otherworldly power. The COVID-19 virus was demonised in a very literal sense of the word, but the protection against this evil is the power of the Holy Spirit, and any earthly rules that impeded a devout Pentecostal from having a life in the Spirit were considered suspect, and a government imposing lockdowns and vaccine mandates, was on the side of the devil.

The Pentecostal interpretation of the government as an entity carrying out an evil agenda, conspiring to suppress Christianity and open the doors for Islam, was an idea that dovetailed with the far right conspiracy theorists who had come to a similar conclusion by different means.

Dieuwe de Boer, previously the general secretary of the New Conservative Party and founder of the website Right Minds penned an article titled “Resistance to Tyranny”. With reference to the sixteenth century Presbyterian theologian John Knox, he claims that all authority is subservient to God, and tyranny is when an earthly authority rebels against God’s supreme authority, something he saw New Zealand’s government as doing. He claimed that the Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield was presiding “over a technocratic machine with nigh unlimited power, which he wields directly against the Church” and that two scientists who had become prominently featured in the media during the pandemic, Shawn Hendy and Siouxsie Wiles, were both “involved in overt anti-Christian activism through deconstructing God’s creation of sexual dimorphism and support the demonic system known as “transgenderism.”

For de Boer, the fact that Churches were not considered essential during the COVID-19 lockdowns was an affront to God, as were any limits on gathering numbers or the requirement to have vaccine pass to attend a church service “If you have to show ID at the door, you are not entering a church of Jesus Christ. If people will be turned away from worship due to an arbitrary number being met, you are not entering a church of Jesus Christ.”

When police spoke to pastor Carl Bromley regarding his hosting of a church service in his home during a level 4 lockdown, he told the officer that he would not “bow down to any legislation that deprives me of my God-given right to worship”. In footage he posted to social media, Bromley referred to the police as totalitarian foot soldiers and claimed that they and members of the New Zealand public, who “endorse and tolerate this tyranny” should be ashamed. “I will die on this hill if need be, by the grace and provision of God,” For these evangelicals, noncompliance with the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act wasn’t just a political protest, but a stand against a government who were defying God and taking the side of evil.

Today Diewue de Boer hosts a show on Reality Check Radio, where he and his co-host regularly promote anti-immigration and anti-Islam talking points, as well as the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which is spoken about as fact.

Concurrently with this rise in a particularly protestant form of Christian Nationalism, recent years have also seen a growth in a form of traditionalist Catholicism linked to the political right, with high profile converts such as the Dutch far-right activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek and US vice president J.D Vance.

Christopher Lamb, the author of The Outsider: Pope Francis and His Battle to Reform the Church told an interviewer that “The populists and nationalists were looking for some kind of soul for their politics and they found it in some symbols of the faith,” David W. Lafferty, who writes about conspiracy theories for the Catholic website Where is Peter, described this as “Catholic LARPing,” (LARPing referring to live action role-playing) adopting the trappings of Catholicism but not the actual tenets of the faith.

In my research on New Zealand far-right, I am aware of two young men who had been part of a white supremacist organisation who gravitated to Catholicism. One of them had traveled to Ireland to be under the tutelage of Father Richard Williamson.

Williamson, who died earlier this year [2025], had been ordained as a priest by the French archbishop Marcel-François Lefebvre. Lefebvre had supported the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. He described France’s liberation from the Nazis as “the victory of Freemasonry against the Catholic order of Petain”. In 1970 he founded The Society of Saint Pius X and in 1974 he publicly denounced the Vatican II reforms that modernised the Church as heretical. When in 1988 Lefebvre defied the Vatican by consecrating four bishops, Pope John Paul II excommunicated him and all SSPX priests, and declared SSPX in formal schism with the church.

In 1989, Richard Williamson, at that time the rector of the SSPX’s main North American seminary in Wisconsin, spoke at a Canadian event where he decried the alleged persecution of Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel by the Canadian government, telling his audience “There was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies”. This resulted in the Canadian government banning all SSPX publications.

In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI reversed the 1988 excommunications of SSPX priests, including Williamson, in an attempt at reconciliation with the order. Three days earlier in an interview with Swedish journalist Ali Fegan, Williamson had repeated his claim that no Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers. The Vatican claimed to be unaware of Williamson’s comments when the excommunication was reversed, but he was soon excommunicated again, following his conviction in a German court for Holocaust denial, making him a rare case of a priest excommunicated twice by two different Popes.

In 2012 Williamson was expelled from SSPX, allegedly for failing to show respect and obedience. He went on to found the breakaway SSPX Resistance. In 2020 he delivered a sermon where he blamed Jewish people for the COVID-19 pandemic and claimed they were manipulating the stock market in an effort to start a war, describing them as “master servants of the devil”.

The New Zealand man who was following Williamson took the name John Capistrano. Capistrano was a saint who led a crusade against Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Belgrade in 1456. Notable, as many on the far-right who adopt Catholicism do so at least in part because of a belief in a clash of civilisations between the Christian West and the Islamic East. Capistrano is also notable for sermons that motivated pogroms against European Jews.

The other New Zealander I’m aware of is the soldier recently sentenced for attempted espionage. He had been a founding member of the white supremacist group The Dominion Movement and later Action Zealandia. While his name is suppressed, researchers such as myself are aware of his identity, and a newsletter from the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit parish in Palmerston North lists him as receiving the sacrament of confirmation (the last stage of a conversion) a few months before he was arrested at Linton Military Camp.

I was previously a research associate of He Whenua Taurikura, the now disbanded centre for research excellence established after the royal commission inquiry into the 2019 Mosque shootings. At one of the organisation’s conferences, I spoke with an Iman who told me about how there are plans in place for de-radicalisation if someone who has been radicalised online starts attending a mosque. For radical Islamists, their extremism is negatively correlated with Mosque attendance, with radicalisation largely happening online.

We are beginning to see a phenomenon of radicalised Christians. I’ve spoken today largely about New Zealand but of course we live in a very globalised world when it comes to mass communication, and people are being influenced by ideas coming from Europe and North America. I ask you to consider, is there a de-radicialisation plan in place if someone joins your congregation expressing the idea that New Zealand is a Christian nation, and that justifies a hostility toward refugees and migrants of other faiths, or the LGBT community, or a view that the genocide in Gaza is not only justified but theologically necessary. Indeed, not just new arrivals but existing members of your congregations exposed to these ideas online may start expressing them.

Dear world,

Hello, my name is Stuart. I’m a Palestinian from Gaza, and I’m doing everything I can to get my family to safety.

My family includes:

• Kamal (my dad), 62 years old

• Summer (my mom), 51 years old

• Sahar, 24 years old

• Malak, 21 years old

• Mohammed, 8 years old

With a heart burdened by loss and pain, I reach out in desperate hope amid the unimaginable hardships we face in Gaza.

Our lives have been shattered—not just by the loss of our home, but by the very erosion of the security we once knew.

Every day, we grapple with the grim realities of displacement and constant danger.

My once cherished home, a sanctuary of warmth and safety, now lies in ruins under relentless destruction.

The bitter cold of winter and ceaseless rains have made our struggle even more unbearable, pushing us further into despair.

Basic necessities—food, clean water, and the simplest forms of shelter—have become distant dreams, out of reach in a world turned hostile.

My father, a man who has long battled high blood pressure and diabetes, and my beloved mother, whose frail health continues to deteriorate, now stand as symbols of our relentless suffering.

Without access to proper medical care or essential medicines, their fragile health hangs by a thread, echoing the collective pain of those who have lost everything. In these dire moments, I implore you to consider extending a lifeline.

Your generous support—whether through a donation or by simply sharing our story—has the power to bring us a glimmer of hope in this abyss of despair.

Every dollar raised through this campaign will go directly toward helping my displaced family in Gaza survive the harsh and deteriorating conditions they are facing. The funds will be used to secure essential needs such as food, clean water, medicine, and temporary shelter.

In addition, we will prioritize critical health support for my parents, whose medical conditions require constant attention and access to treatment.

Every contribution will be handled with transparency and care, ensuring that your support provides real, immediate relief—bringing us one step closer to safety, stability, and the hope of rebuilding what was lost. Your compassion, no matter how modest, is not just charity—it is a beacon of hope and a testament to our shared humanity.

In this battle for survival, every act of kindness brings us closer to reclaiming a sense of normalcy and hope for a better future.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to our plight and for considering any help you can provide during this darkest of times.

PAYPAL:

stuartgiddings@googlemail.com

SKRILL:

felg752@gmail.com

A nativity scene with baby Jesus among a large pile of rubble has been constructed outside Christchurch Transitional Cathedral, aiming to highlight the ongoing genocide of Palestinian communities in Gaza this Christmas.

The installation was placed there by Aotearoa Christians for Peace in Palestine (AC4PP), with the support of Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices NZ. It contains a ‘yahrtzeit’ memorial candle to mark the loss of loved ones, particularly following the recent terror attack on the Jewish community in Bondi, as well as a red candle as part of a global nonviolent movement for justice and peace in Palestine.

The scene mirrors an installation from December 2023 when Palestinian Pastor, Munther Isaac of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, laid baby Jesus in rubble – a pastoral act, declaring; “If Christ was born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza… Born among the occupied and oppressed as a sign of solidarity with those who are marginalised today.”

Dr Isaac, who this year published the book Christ in the Rubble, has been critical of Western churches for stopping short of condemning the ongoing genocide. “Calling for peace is a safe option. You don’t want to see people killed,” he told the Church Times in April. “You come across as holier-than-thou. War is wrong, and so on. Let’s love one another, and so on. But you’re not willing to call out war criminals and call for accountability, because that would create controversy, and you don’t want that.”

It’s a criticism shared by AC4PP “The display also acknowledges our own complicity” said Cole Martin, a Christchurch journalist who spend six months of this year living in Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, documenting setter violence against Palestinians.

“For decades our churches, institutions, and faith community have blindly supported Israel’s campaign of domination and destruction across the Holy Land; manufacturing warped biblical justifications for violence and funding the machinery, technology, and weapons used to displace families, imprison children, demolish homes, and persecute entire communities. Today the church is crucifying Christ all over again.”

Many evangelical congregations, such as Aotearoa New Zealand’s Destiny Church, adhere to Christian Zionism, a belief that posits that for a Biblical prophecy to be fulfilled Jewish people needed to return to historical Israel. This world view in especially common in the United States.

“Some might feel this [nativity scene] takes away from the joy of Christmas, but this is precisely the meaning of Christmas. The birth of Jesus among us – not into wealth, safety, or power, but rather a difficult and messy birth in a cave of livestock under foreign military occupation, to an unmarried couple soon to become refugees fleeing a murderous political regime. Christmas is a very Palestinian story, and it gives hope that God turns up even in the most hopeless of places.”

Marilyn Garson, the co-founder of Alternative Jewish Voices who spent years working alongside communities in Gaza, commented; “Right now, we mark the hate-killing of Australian Jews at Bondi, but one grief does not blot out another. This week they are Jews. In Christchurch [March 2019], they were Muslim. None of us will ever be separately safe. We respond to Bondi, to Christchurch and to Gaza by refusing to be separate. We grieve every life lost and we protect whichever life is endangered. We stretch our hearts to hold them all.”

On December 14 two shooters, a father and son, killed 15 people attending a Hanukkah celebration, injuring dozens more in a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State. The younger of the two shooters had been a follower of radical preacher and noted antisemite, Wissam Haddad, a man Sydney’s Muslim community had been warning police about for over a decade.

The 2019 terror attack in Christchurch was carried out by an Australian white supremacist inspired by the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, and took the lives of 51 people worshiping and the city’s two mosques. Six of those killed were Palestinians.

Leading human rights monitors have warned Israel’s killing of Palestinians has not ended, with over 390 people killed since the so-called ‘ceasefire’. Over 70,000 people are confirmed dead, and the survivors face widespread starvation, malnutrition, and a harsh winter compounded by ongoing food and medical shortages due to Israel’s blockade. Most of the population are displaced, with over half of Gaza inaccessible and the majority of buildings destroyed.

Rev’d Matt Maslin of the Bryndwr Anglican Parish described the nativity scene as; “the perfect time to show solidarity with those who are violently oppressed, displaced and dominated because, at the heart of advent is the story of a God that has shown solidarity with humanity. The story of Christmas is one where God enters into the difficulties of humanity, to both empathise with and transform its suffering. This is a story we are invited to meaningfully participate in as well.” AC4PP say Christ in the rubble

“challenges us to think beyond ourselves during the Christmas season; it invites us to see the image of Jesus in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble. In those facing starvation and genocide in Gaza; those held captive, displaced, and living under domination in the West Bank; those mourning their loved ones violently taken from them in Bondi; those facing famine and genocide in Sudan and Congo; vulnerable communities being trafficked and exploited across the world; our neighbours in the Pacific and elsewhere already suffering the effects of climate destruction; those without food, shelter, safety, freedom and dignity.”

A vigil is being held at the Christchurch Cathedral on Monday December 22. The installation will remain at the Cathedral over the Christmas period, as a space for people to grieve, reflect, and pray. All are welcome.

My name is Maha Mohammad Ahmad. I live in the south of Gaza, Khan Younis city. I am a mother of two sons, Hamza, who is 15 years old, and Qusai, who is 12. My husband’s name is Mahmoud Ahmad, and he used to work as a taxi driver. Before October 7th, I lived in a small, warm home filled with love, mercy, and peace. I worked as an English teacher, a profession I’ve been devoted to for over 15 years. During those years, I put in tremendous effort to build a safe and loving home for my family, a shelter from the hardships of life. I was passionate about my work and received many awards for excellence in education.

Every morning, my husband would leave to earn some money by driving his taxi, while our sons would head to school to learn, grow, and build a better future. Life was simple, kind, and full of gratitude. We never complained. We were always thankful to God for everything we had.

But everything changed after October 7th.

On the morning of October 7th, I was getting ready for work, my children were preparing for school, and my husband was getting ready to head out in his taxi. It was just an ordinary morning until suddenly, we were shaken by the sound of explosions and rockets everywhere. That was the beginning of the war.

On December 22nd, 2023, the building next to ours my uncles’ was bombed. That same night, our apartment was heavily damaged. By the grace of God, we survived, but we lost our warm, safe home. It was no longer livable.

Then, on January 22nd, 2024, the Israeli forces invaded western Khan Younis. Like the rest of the city, we were forced to flee to central Gaza. We returned to Khan Younis on May 13th, only to find our city reduced to a lifeless desert; flattened, buried under tons of rubble. A city completely destroyed.

Now, my children have no school, no home. I lost my job. My husband lost his taxi, which was his only source of income. We lost life as we knew it. We lost our freedom. We lost every human right. Everything was taken from us, for no reason.

My eldest son suffers from partial brain atrophy due to lack of oxygen during birth. Before the war, I used to buy him medication. Now, I can’t even afford food. How can I afford medicine?

Our life, our memories, even our future; wiped out. What color is left in our world? What future can we dream of? We have literally lost everything. And for what?

Maybe just because we are Palestinians.

We are not just numbers.

We are families, mothers, fathers, and children. People who once had dreams, jobs, schools, and homes.

Today, that home is gone.

Our city is destroyed.

My children have no school.

My husband has no work.

And I have no way to provide even the basic necessities for my family.

We are not asking for luxury, we are asking for survival.

We are asking for a chance to rebuild something from the ashes.This is my story, and the story of every mother in Gaza, the story of every woman in Gaza.

You can support Maha and her family via this link.