'Fear' Two Years On (part 2)
Looking chapter-by-chapter and where things are now
After giving a general update on the state of things in part one, lets go chapter by chapter through Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists.
Chapter 1: Starting with Gamergate
A year ago I wrote “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.” That remains true. In the book I quote Steve Bannon on gamergate, “you can activate that army”. The radicalised young men of the Gamergate era played a role in Trump’s 2016 election win, even if they were just supporting him “for the lulz” or because they wanted to watch the world burn.
Today, radicalised young men are much closer to power. Take for example 25-year-old Marko Elez, a staffer at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Elez resigned after racist social media posts came to light including a post that read "Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool."
As Musk takes a chainsaw to the US public sector, prominent people who oppose DOGE’s actions are being targeted by online mobs. “In this highly charged and polarized environment, judges, elected officials, and journalists who fall out of favor can face swift, aggressive online retaliation," Ron Zayas, CEO of the internet security company Ironwall by Incogni, told Newsweek.
Chapter 2: Watching a Disinformation Campaign in Real Time
The campaign against the UN Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is long over, but disinformation campaigns are now a regular part of politics. In the lead up to Germany’s federal election, Russian disinformation has targeted the pro-Ukraine Green Party, as well as Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
"Russia is trying to degrade the 'enemy' with the campaigns that are not in any case or not always attributable or clearly attributable to Russia in order to create chaos, create panic and support anti-democratic voices in those countries," Julia Smirnova, senior research at Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS) told the ABC.
Chapter 3: Action Zealandia
Action Zealandia no longer appears to exist in any meaningful sense, but the group's former branches have mutated into new groups. Southwind in Wellington, Christchurch Legion in Christchurch, and Southern Rangers Active Club in Nelson (presumably inspired by the networks of right-wing extremist ‘active clubs’ overseas). The podcast Endeavour News features many of the same individuals and the same type of content as the now defunct Action Zealandia podcast.
Chapter 4: Tube full of Hate
There’s not a lot to say on YouTube, it doesn’t seem to have got any worse than one or two years ago, but it doesn’t seem to have got much better either.
Chapter 5: Inciting Fear, online and off
In the first part of this article, I encouraged people to submit on the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill. I’ll likely be appearing in front of the select committee. Much work remains to be done to protect victims of stalking and harassment (not just from the far-right)
Chapter 6: Deus Vult! The far-right and Catholicism
The phenomenon of hard right conservatives converting to Catholicism continues, with US vice president J.D Vance and Dutch far-right commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek being notable examples. Meanwhile the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, the group who’s oratory I visited in 2022 while researching for my book, have been expelled from the Canterbury Diocese following a Vatican investigation. Pope Francis has been a critic of the traditionalist elements in the Church, given he may not be Pope much longer it will be interesting to watch how his successor handles that fringe element.
Chapter 7: Tyranny and Evil: The Christian Right
Destiny Church has recently disrupted two pride events (Aotearoa celebrates Pride in February) punching, pushing and shoving their way into a library where a drag king was hosting an event teaching children about the science of rainbows. One teenager was concussed. This is an escalation from where things were when Fear was published. I would recommend reading this piece by Dr Emmy Rakete published after the violence from Destiny.
Chapter 8, Chapter 10, and Chapter 12: Fringe parties
The 2020 election saw a number of small parties on the right contest the election. Billy Te Kahika’s Advance New Zealand is long gone. Sue Grey’s Outdoors and Freedom Party and the Destiny Church affiliated Vision New Zealand remain in the FreedomsNZ coalition. The New Nation Party, which was briefly a part of the coalition, has now been deregistered. The New Conservatives (who it looks like might be changing their name to The Conservatives) and the Christian Nationalist party New Zeal are still around and we can expect to hear more from them next year when the election approaches.
Chapter 11: Voices for Freedom
This was one of the shortest chapters in the book, but Voices for Freedom today are one of the most significant groups on the right. Their online radio platform ‘Reality Check Radio’ broadcasts 7 hours of original content a day, promoting everything from misinformation about puberty blockers, to climate change denial, to the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory. With local elections coming up, it's likely that Voices for Freedom will be backing candidates as they did in 2022.
Chapter 13 and Chapter 14: Alternative media
I wrote chapters on Talanoa Sa’o and Counterspin Media Today both of those still exist, but barely. Talanoa Sa’o has episodes up on their Facebook page with views in the double digits. They are no longer produced weekly as they were when the show appeared on Apna television. The pair behind Counterspin Media have parted ways, and the last video uploaded to their Rumble channel was two months ago at the time of writing. The former hosts are still awaiting trial on a charge of sharing objectionable material.
Chapter 15: Sovereign Citizens and Chapter 16: Rural Rebellion: Populism in the Provinces
Last year a police intelligence operation resulted in 62 sovereign citizens losing firearms licenses. Police have identified 1,400 people as acting under the influence of Sovereign Citizen ideologies, and of that number, 158 were firearms licence holders. Richard Sivell, who allegedly shared the livestream video of the 2019 mosque shooting video and threatened former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, has been using sovereign citizen arguments in court.
Chapter 17: Hindutva in Aotearoa
In India,Narendra Modi returned to power in the 2024 election, but with a reduced majority. In the year since David Seymour praising him in at an event celebrating the opening of the Shri Ram Mandir temple in Ayodhya (built on the site of a sixteenth century mosque that was destroyed by Hindu nationalists in 1992) there has been little news about Hindutva adherents in Aotearoa.
Chapter 18: A Brief History of White New Zealand and Chapter 19: Southern Settler Colonies and Rhodesian Nostalgia
I often think of these two as ‘the history chapters’ but of course, that history influences the present. The furore over the Treaty Principles bill shows there are still many in this country who would reverse the steps we’ve made toward decolonisation. Donald Trump describing Afrikaners as the “victims of unjust racial discrimination” has kept the dubious claim topical.
Final chapters
In the final chapters of the book, I wrote about women and the alt-right, far-right Speculative fiction, the infodemic, and the occupation of parliament grounds. I finished with a chapter about what our future in a post-truth world might look like. I guess we now live in that future. Musks purchase of Twitter, followed by its subsequent enshitification, and now Meta ending fact-checking on their platforms would suggest we’re losing the battle against online disinformation.
I hope a point will come where I can look back on the book as something I wrote in “a different era” but we’re evidently still in the same era.