Hello everyone,
so I’m not actually from New Zealand, but from Europe and I’m currently very worried about the rising popularity of facism and alt-right politics in my country and europe in general. I’m very scared of experiencing physical violence and I’m now very seriously considering moving to another country before the facist parties are elected into power. One of the countries I’m considering is New Zealand, because there wouldn’t be that big of a language barrier and also because I haven’t heard of a lot of problems with facism in New Zealand. So I wanted to ask you if my judgement is correct and what the political situation regarding the alt-right is like in New Zealand.
Thank you for reading. I really appreciate your help :)
I’m tired of the crazed notion that middle age women who oppose vaccination are somehow crypto-fascists, who are secretly working to advance the interests of the National Front and Action Zealandia. It’s a Reddit fantasy that only exists because of the echo chamber in /r/newzealand where nobody can challenge their stupid views without being banned.
There are people on Reddit who think that Carl Bromley and Lee Williams are Nazis. These are just angry old men with out-dated views, who put all their energy into venting online, or trying to start movements that just die off after 6 months.
The overton window has shifted towards anti-immigration. 2 years ago anyone who’s even slightly critical of immigration would’ve been called a fascist. But on Reddit this week, there was an anti-immigration thread that has 200+ upvotes. The person said that if we don’t stop immigration, then housing will stay expensive forever, because the government can just bring in immigrants to fill new houses and apartments. This is bad for our country and it shouldn’t matter what the tone is. Immigration just sucks and everyone knows this regardless of what they believe or who they vote for. I live in a shared house and earlier this year a whole Indian family moved in, with the screaming kid, her parents, and even the grandparents. I don’t hate these people personally, but man do they talk loud outside my door after 11pm at night. They are like the Gypsies of the South Pacific. Always having a loud conversation and bringing their family woes into the ears of other tenants, as if they owned the entire house just because they rented 2 of the rooms.
I think it’s time we realised that immigration is unsustainable. It just pisses me off at a personal level, I don’t even need an ideology or a political viewpoint to be annoyed. Nobody understands this until you have to live with a child that was spawned from another man’s cock, and the kid is banging on walls and crying right outside your stock hardware store bedroom door. It’s unbearable, and it’ll only get worse. Time to wipe off that **** eating grin New Zealand. You’ve got bigger problems than obscure political groups that mainly exist online.
There is a massively weird discourse in this country that exists on Reddit and Twitter - a big obsession with what online groups are supposedly planning. There are claims that far-right groups in NZ are preparing terrorist attacks, and that people have planned car bomb attacks (but without having a bomb or any means of making one). Then Kyle Chapman was arrested for owning a gun, but he’s not even a part of any far-right group. Some Reddit Karen will somehow connect Kyle to a group though, and claim that the Rob Gray Life Centre is a terrorist training hub. Rangi Kemara is already suggesting this online because yes he really is that stupid, just another angry liberal on the internet spouting unfounded opinions.
There is no coordinated right-wing group that is taking over political parties and changing the discourse of society, things like anti-immigration sentiment are just occurring naturally as people learn the truth.
As a redditor would say:
I am LITERALLY for open borders and ethnic restaurants (Masala Dosa, YUM!) but I am honestly against unlimited immigration of 100,000 people per year, it’s literally destroying the housing market for my whole generation!!!1
Sorry Jeff but I have to disagree with you on some of what you wrote.
Your description of their beliefs isn’t quite complete, you’re missing some of the most critical stuff off the list of things they oppose:
I’ve spent some time observing and talking to people in these movements and for the most part these two terms are usually dog-whistles for:
Personally I wouldn’t bother putting the “crypto-” in front. It’s hard to spend any time in these communities without beginning to notice some of the really major similarities between their ideologies and the early stages of European fascism in the start of the 20th century. Those middle-aged women may not personally identify with the labels of “fascist”, “racist”, “anti-Semitic” or “homophobic”, but the things they say align pretty well with those labels. Yeah I agree the terms of fascist, nazi etc are thrown around a little too freely by the online left, but sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade. For us on the left, “fascist” is shorthand for “authoritarian far-right” (in the same way “communist” can be shorthand for “authoritarian far-left”), and based on the things I’ve seen you and others associated with that movement write online, I am absolutely comfortable giving you the label of “authoritarian far-right”.
Based off the many things he has said in his Youtube videos I am quite happy to call Lee authoritarian far-right, as well as a racist and a homophobe. If some people online shorthand that to “nazi” I won’t lose any sleep over that. Carl on the other hand strikes me as a bit of a clown by comparison, though I haven’t followed him as closely.
You may recall this actually did happen in New Zealand’s very-recent history, and it is something kiwis are (rightly) alert to, and are (rightly) unwilling to let happen again.
Kyle has expressed some quite extreme beliefs on topics like race, culture, and has convictions for violence related to those views. Let’s be 100% clear here, “far-right” and “terrorist” are labels that fit Kyle pretty well from his track-record, even if he has softened up a bit in the last few decades. He is absolutely not the kind of person who should be in possession of weapons, let alone firearms - I’m actually really curious to know what his justification for being in possession of them was. And he’s running “survivalist” training courses at RGLC - Rangi is hyperbolic but he has a point.
To be fair I’ve never met you in person, or Kyle, or anyone else at RGLC - I can only go off the things I’ve seen you say online. In fact I agree with you on some issues - for example you personally are 100% correct to be angry about the state of housing and income inequality in this country - I’m angry about those same issues. However I don’t think the solution to these problems involves racism, or homophobia, or hate in any form - it’s just a pointless non-productive waste of your emotional energy.
If I’ve got the wrong end of the stick about you as an individual, by all means let me know. But I’m pretty comfortable to call the movement you’re defending in this comment far-right and authoritarian.
I don’t think the protest movements fit on a political spectrum of any sort. They’re just angry about things and much of it is justified, I think the government should listen to their views on vaccination. The only term that I identify with is pro-russian. The United States is basically a fascist country which hides behind a rainbow flag, but now I’m being as hyperbolic as Rangi HA-HA-HA. As far as I’m concerned, people like Valerie Morse are fascists and authoritarians. They stand with NATO and Ukraine and have no problem with missiles and artillery shells being sent to Ukraine, despite the same Peace Action group protesting against arms companies. I can’t wait for the rules based order to fizzle into irrelevancy.
The word ‘globalist’ was popularised by Alex Jones maybe 12 or 15 years ago. I don’t believe that all these middle age women at the protests are blaming Jews for the vaccine. If someone posted that suggestion on Counterspin Media, they’d probably be banned. When they say globalists, they really mean it… Outsides influences corrupting our country such as the U.N. agendas to fight climate change at the expense of good jobs.
There’s a saying on the left that if you sit down at a table with a nazi, there are now two nazis at the table. I don’t completely agree with that logic, but the far-right are a sizable influence in those protest groups. Sure you get the crunchy hippy vegan wellness-mummas who are only there because they’re anti-vax or anti-fluoride or whatever, but they have seemed pretty alarmingly willing to jump on the anti-trans hate train recently. Anger at the system does seem to be the main uniting value, you’re right, and personally I think that anger is something that needs to be healed through civil discourse and maybe politics. But that anger is currently being hijacked by the far-right to bolster their cause, and that worries me.
I don’t believe they are either, but I think some of the people supporting and pushing these movements absolutely are. For a movement that is hyper-aware of “agendas” and “narratives” the people in these protest movements seem pretty oblivious to the possibility their own movement is influenced in exactly that type of way.
Which is honestly unsurprising. Western intelligence groups have been sounding alarm bells about Russian attempts to interfere in the politics of western democracies for a decade or so now, as you likely know well. In my time on Telegram I’ve noticed a constant low-level hum of spam in major channels that has all the fingerprints of state-sponsored propaganda, likely out of Russia. Telegram itself has such intimate links to the Kremlin it may as well be a state asset at this point. Whatever your personal reasons for being pro-Russia, you have to recognise they have a clear interest in sowing disharmony in western nations, and they have the capability to do it. If I were in their shoes, these anti-government fringe movements would be the perfect tool for the job. Have you really not considered the possibility that you’ve bought into the propaganda platform of an increasingly hostile foreign government?
The guy who made telegram is dodgy af. I have no idea what he’s up to, but Russia’s ministry of defence is on there, officially.
I love the russian propaganda, but I don’t approve of boomers ranting about the whole trans-gender thing. It’s too cringe for me, especially when we have problems like housing. I’ve definitely seen that hum of spam on certain issues. It’s designed to appeal to boomers and fools. The anti-vaccine and anti-WEF is totally a state sponsored operation, it’s about undermining trust in institutions on the long-term.
I’m against the NZ government and I’m against the so-called “intelligence community” too.