Fear: One Year On (Part 1)
How has the political landscape changed one year on from the publication of 'Fear'?
Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists came out one year ago this month. The book has been read by thousands of people and continues to be in demand, as I write I’ve just checked my local library system and 11 of their 17 copies are on loan. I’d of course still recommend the book for background on New Zealand’s far-right and conspiracist scene, as well as the content on New Zealand’s history, but current events don’t remain current and things have changed since the book came out. In what was originally intended to be one article but quickly became long enough it’s now going to be a two-parter, here’s a chapter-by-chapter update on where we’re at in 2024.
Chapter 1: Starting with Gamergate
I’ve been asked why I chose to start with Gamergate. This campaign of online harassment wasn’t the beginning of the alternative-right, whose origins can be traced to numerous sources, but it was the first major example of an online campaign of harassment that has set the standard for how the far-right goes after their critics. 2023 saw the rise of “mob censorship” with, unsurprisingly, woman journalists, and wahine Māori journalists in particular, being targeted more than their male and Pākehā colleagues. The original ‘Gamergate’ campaign is in the past, but we live in a kind of perpetual Gamergate now. Journalists and researchers know that if they publish about certain topics, the mob will be back.
Chapter 2: Watching a Disinformation Campaign in Real Time
In 2018 I watched the campaign against the UN Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration go from the far-right fringe to being adopted as policy by ACT and later National. That compact is rarely mentioned today, either by the far-right or in mainstream politics. New Zealand remains a signatory (National quickly did an about face on their policy when it came to light the Christchurch shooter had “here’s your migration compact!” written on one of his weapons).
Just as Gamergate provided a model for harassment, the campaign against the UN global compact has provided a model for influencing politics with disinformation campaigns. It’s not necessary for far-right movements to form new parties and successfully win the votes of enough of the population to be represented in parliament, instead they can influence small parties, who in turn can influence large ones. We’ve seen this in recent months NZ First adopting policies to end all remaining vaccine mandates and conduct an inquiry into the pandemic response, and to remove relationship and sexuality education from schools. These once fringe ideas, stemming from conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine and so called “gender ideology” are now, via NZ Firsts coalition agreement with National, government policy.
Chapter 3: Action Zealandia
Action Zealandia formed out of the remains of the Dominion Movement, who went into indefinite hiatus after the 2019 mosque shootings, and quickly became the most significant fascist organisation in the country. A founding member who was an active duty soldier was arrested (and is still awaiting court martial) for allegedly leaking classified documents to a person he believed to be a representative of a foreign country. Another member planned terror cells while a third was arrested in relation to a threat to Al Noor mosque in Christchurch.
Researchers infiltrating the would-be fascist vanguard though found the group to be unfit and ill disciplined, and “mostly incompetent”. Today the group appears to be moribund, with no new podcast episodes or articles in almost a full year, with only the occasional post on their Telegram channel. Hopefully, the young men who got involved have grown out of their alt-right phrase and moved on to better things, but there are likely some individuals who haven’t- even if they have moved on from Action Zealandia.
Chapter 4: Tube full of Hate
YouTube did not come out looking good when the Royal Commission's Report into the 2019 mosque shootings was released. “YouTube has been often associated with far right content and radicalisation.There has been much debate about the way YouTube’s recommendation system works. One theory is that this system drove users to ever more extreme material into what is sometimes said to be a “rabbit-hole”.” While YouTube has since then committed to limiting the reach of content that brushes up against their hate speech policy but doesn’t violate it. New Zealand’s most popular far-right YouTube personalities, Lee Williams and Terry Opines, have had their channels follower counts stagnate, but still reach thousands of viewers between them.
Chapter 5: Inciting Fear, online and off
This chapter was primarily about my own experience of harassment and intimidation from the far-right. Since the book was published, I’ve been able to reduce the harassment by taking civil cases under the Harmful Digital Communications Act (HDCA). I spoke to a Stuff journalist about my experience for this article. The HDCA is not adequate for addressing the kind of organised mass harassment campaigns that journalists and researchers are subjected to, but it’s a start. While harassment is not as constant as it once was, my life is forever changed.
Chapter 6: Deus Vult! The far-right and Catholicism
The Sons of The Most Holy Redeemer, the order whose oratory I attended a mass at in the hopes of getting to talk to some of the priests there about the former Action Zealandia member who had got involved, have been in the news for performing unauthorised exorcisms. Young men on the far-right continue to self-identify as ‘traditionalist Catholics’, I wrote about this for CathNews, drawing on this chapter of Fear but also expanding on it a bit.
SSPX resistance priest Father Francois Chazal, author of ‘The Fear of the Jews’ a book which denies the Holocaust and blames a ‘Jewish elite’ for abortion, pornography ‘big media lies’ and ‘big government Socialism’ had planned to visit Australia and New Zealand in 2023, but according to him was barred entry.
Chapter 7: Tyranny and Evil: The Christian Right
ONE New Zealand, who were only one of several Christian parties on the ballot in 2020 but the most overtly Christian Nationalist, changed their name to NewZeal, and former National Party MP Alfred Ngaro became their leader. I wrote shortly before the 2023 election of Ngaro’s Christian Nationalist ideology. When the votes were counted, NewZeal received 16,126 of them, 0.56% of the vote. While this is well shy of making into into parliament, it’s double the 2020 result of ONE, and with the vote for New Conservative collapsing, NewZeal is likely to be the voice of Christian Nationalism going forward (Brian Tamaki may wish it was him, but it isn’t)
Chapter 8: The New Conservatives
As mentioned above, 2023 saw the vote for the New Conservatives collapse, to a meme 4,532 votes (0.15%) even if we add the 2,105 votes received by the party started by their former leader, The Leighton Baker Party, it’s a far cry from the 42,613 votes (1.5%) they got in 2020. Party secretary Diewue de Boer stepped down, stating that “I planned to stay and build up the New Conservatives into the next few elections, but after the total collapse of our vote down to 0.15% that is no longer something I have the will or energy for.” Leader Helen Houghton remains, pleased that even if their own vote has been decimated, a couple of their policies are being implemented thanks to NZ First, who according to de Boer is the party they lost their voters to.
Chapter 9: Qanon: Conspiracy Theory in the age of Algorithms
With none of the prophesied events predicted by the message board poster “Q” coming to fruition, the conspiracy theory should really have died out. Last November Geopolitical Monitor said Qanon had “lost its shine” but went on to note that “the upcoming presidential election in 2024 will most certainly pour fuel on the QAnon fire.” Meanwhile in Aotearoa, little reference appears to be made to Q or Qanon in far-right spaces, but the core belief of the theory- that a nefarious cabal of elites secretly control the world- permeates those spaces.
Chapter 10: Advance New Zealand
Goneburger. Last I heard, former leader Jamie Ross was working as a pimp. The other co-leader, Billy Te Kahika, was found guilty of electoral fraud. He and Vinny Eastwood, the conspiracy theory talk show host, avoided jail for holding a protest during a COVID lockdown. Both still create content for social media, but lack the influence they had during the height of the pandemic.
Chapter 11: Voices for Freedom
When I wrote Fear, including this group of anti-vax mums alongside chapters on white nationalists and the like felt a little unfair, but a year on I feel that if anything, I went too easy on Voices for Freedom. In 2023 the group launched Reality Check Radio (RCR), an online radio station which has become Aotearoa’s largest spreader of mis- and disinformation. Branching out from vaccine conspiracy theories RCR has spread conspiracy theories about climate change and the UN, which originate with the John Birch Society. They have given a platform to the Dutch far-right politician Thierry Baudet and Australian far-right senator Malcolm Roberts.
In a new show hosted by Dieuwe de Boer, he discussed the great replacement theory (almost entirely uncritically) and the “the virtues of nationalism” with William McGimpsey, a member of the Free Speech Union who has called decolonisation “a war on white people” and stated that “Ethno-nationalism is normal and good”
Chapter 12: ‘The Fox News of the Pasifika Community’
Almost no one is watching Talanoa Sa’o. While the show was cancelled from Apna Television episodes are still produced and are uploaded to Facebook and the YouTube channel associated with The Daily Examiner. In both these places, views are in the double digits. The hosts, Elliot Ikilei in particular, were once significant figures on the conservative right, today their influence is next to nothing.
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