After years of making space for it, David Seymour now apparently opposes political violence

The Deputy Prime Minister has a history of looking the other way, until now

David Seymour photographed by Glenn Davies

Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour recently took the unusual step of asking parliament to pass a motion noting the death of American political activist Charlie Kirk. It was “blocked” by the opposition parties, which on the surface could make them look uncaring, but there is no precedent for parliament to note the death of a foreign political figure, who didn’t hold office, and had no connection to New Zealand.

Many New Zealanders likely heard of Kirk for the first time seeing reports of his death. Outside of extremely online politics nerds, he was an unknown here. Seymour, though, has seen an opportunity to try and import US culture wars. “People who stupidly say free speech IS violence or makes them ‘unsafe’ should finally be able to see the difference”, he wrote on X. “May he rest in peace and our thoughts go out to his loved ones.”

Seymour has (back in 2022) spoken of being made unsafe by speech from Te Pati Māori MP Rawiri Waititi. Waititi had joked about poisoning Seymour with karaka berries. Seymour said in response that he was “genuinely concerned that the next step is that some slightly more radical person doesn’t think it’s a joke”, Suggesting that he does actually recognise that a link exists between speech and violence. He also called for the cancellation of an arts festival because of a poem he believed was racist against white people.

The exact motive behind the assassination of Kirk is still unclear, but given Kirk's prominence as the founder of Trump-aligned NGO Turning Point USA (TPUSA), many, including Donald Trump, were quick to blame the political left for the shooting. “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them", Trump told reporters.

It’s a comment illustrative of the increasingly violent political climate in the United States. When first campaigning in 2016, Trump famously offered to pay the legal fees of supporters who would “knock the crap out of” protesters. The violence associated with Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign reached its zenith of January 6, 2021 when in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, supporters stormed the Capitol building in an insurrection connected to seven deaths.

In August of 2023, Reuters described political violence in the USA as at its worst since the 1970s. In contrast with the 1970s, it’s people rather the property being targeted, and violence was coming from the right. High profile incidents include the killing of Heather Hyer at the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in 2017, and numerous attacks on Democratic lawmakers and their spouses.

While violence from the left is not unheard of, it occurs far less often. When compared to individuals associated with a right-wing ideology, individuals adhering to a left-wing ideology had 68% lower odds of engaging in violent (vs. nonviolent) radical behavior (source).

Aotearoa New Zealand has, thankfully, not seen comparable levels of political violence. The one exception is the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, where a white supremacist who believed there was a conspiracy to replace white populations with non-white Muslim ones, took the lives of 51 people. The event, unprecedented in New Zealand’s history, saw a Royal Commission investigation that made recommendations on legislative changes that could prevent further political violence. These changes were vehemently opposed by David Seymour.

When legislation was passed banning military style semi-automatic weapons and parts that could be used to make them, Seymour, at the time the only MP representing the ACT party, was the sole vote against it. Seymour and ACT have also opposed amendments to the human rights act that would give incitement of disharmony against religious groups the same status as inciting disharmony against a racial or ethnic group.

These stances won him support from the far-right, who, while not necessarily ideologically aligned with the libertarian ACT Party on all issues, believed Seymour would protect their right to incite violence against Muslims while owning assault rifles.