Kieran Ford. Peace Review. Volume 32, Issue 4, October-December 2020.
When in March 2019 a gunman shot dead fifty-one worshipers in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the world reeled in shock. The Muslim community of a country that many thought was immune to global terrorism had fallen victim to the brutal violence of an Islamophobic, white supremacist attacker. The bubble of New Zealand’s security had well and truly burst. Responses to the attack varied. Many responded with compassion, embracing New Zealand’s Islamic community in an attempt to reconstruct some semblance of security for New Zealand Muslims.
New Zealand’s under-examined far-right community raises the very same themes and issues faced around the world. Furthermore, the far-right in New Zealand sits inescapably within a colonial settler context, and as such, narratives and themes emerging from these groups correlate with far-right movements in similar contexts such as Australia and the USA. For instance, efforts to pass gun control measures have been met with resistance from a New Zealand gun lobby and calls for legislation on hate speech have been resisted as limitations of free speech. With Trump’s four years in the White House, Bolsonaro presidency in Brazil, and far-right movements growing across Europe, it is vital to take seriously the threat of the far-right across all societies, particularly considering the ways in which the alt-right has itself globalized through online networks.
Neo-Nazis have existed within New Zealand society for over fifty years. Paul Spoonley’s publication, The Politics of Nostalgia, offered an extensive investigation into the nature of skinhead gangs and white supremacist movements in New Zealand throughout the 1970s and 80 s. These groups continue to exist to this day. The National Front, an offshoot of the British group of the same name, first appeared in New Zealand in 1967. The group remains small and its actions sporadic. The day after the shootings in Christchurch, the organization’s website host removed the site due to complaints, though that website has since re-appeared. Other smaller skinhead gangs, such as the Southland Skinheads, also persist throughout New Zealand.
Those involved in the New Zealand National Front have also appeared as key members of various like-minded organizations. Kyle Chapman (who led the group from 1997 to 2005) set up the organization “Right Wing Resistance” in 2003. Chapman, in a post on the right-wing forum Stormfront, described the group as the “street arm of the National Alliance” (a far-right political party comprising a coalition of the National Front and other smaller groups). In 2009 it was reported that between five and fifteen individuals, members of Right Wing Resistance, were carrying out patrols in a suburb of Christchurch, concerned about “Polynesian youths.” This perceived concern regarding Polynesian migration by the Right Wing Resistance mirrors the very same concerns of the National Front forty years before.
The New Zealand National Front extends a legacy of National Socialist politics since its introduction over fifty years ago. The current leader of the National Front, Colin King-Ansell, founded a group of National Socialists in New Zealand in 1969 after release from prison for attacking a synagogue. In an interview in 2005, Kyle Chapman also referred to immigration from Asia as an “Asian Invasion.” These anti-immigration, white supremacist politics have continued to attract a regular, if small, number of people. It was reported that a march in Christchurch in 2012, organized by the Right Wing Resistance and attended by members of like-minded organizations, attracted over 100 people. Approximately fifty joined a white power rally the year after in the same city. The March 2019 mosque attacker appeared to hold similar attitudes. From the attacker’s manifesto as well as symbols drawn on his weaponry, it is clear he held Neo-Nazi beliefs such as the right of European colonial settlement, the superiority of white peoples, and a fear of “white genocide.”
It is notable that a great deal of white nationalist activity has centered around Christchurch, the city in which the mosque attacks took place. The attacker chose Christchurch, having originally planned to attack Dunedin’s mosque, citing both the larger number of potential victims as well as the history of far-right activity in the city.
One individual arrested and imprisoned for sharing the video of the mosque attack online, Phil Arps, gained notoriety in 2016 when he delivered a box containing a pig’s head to the Al-Noor Mosque in Christchurch, one of the two mosques attacked three years later. Arps is videoed delivering the package, offering a Nazi salute and shouting, “White Power!” As Arps’ behavior demonstrates, global trends of Islamophobia have offered the far-right a new constituency of blame and a target for their hatred.
While skinhead gangs and Neo-Nazi groups continue to exist in the country, however, the newer phenomenon of the “alt-right” is also growing in New Zealand. This mirrors a global trend in which predominantly young, white men are gathering online. Hiding in anonymous forums such as 4chan and 8chan, individuals embark on “red pill” journeys, referring to the film The Matrix in which Neo is offered a choice between a blue pill to return him to a state of ignorance, or the red pill where he faces learning about reality. In their forums, they watch videos and share ideas on various themes: men’s rights, scientific racism, and white genocide.
As a result of gathering online where locations of members are traceable only through IP addresses that the website hosts have no legal requirement to share, ascertaining the scale of the alt-right in New Zealand is a profound challenge. Some groups have also engaged in offline activity as well as online, however. Perhaps the most dominant group within the alt-right in New Zealand in recent years has been the Dominion Movement. Set up in early 2018, the group engaged in a variety of activities from putting up posters and stickers (with slogans such as “Equality is a false God” and “Revolt against the modern world”), to cleaning up beaches. The group promptly shut its website after the Christchurch shootings, so it is hard to tell how large it got before it shut down.
Kerry Bolton, a long-time member of the White Supremacist and Neo-Nazi movements in New Zealand was invited to their one-year anniversary as a special guest in February 2019. In an article on his website, Bolton says that present were fifty delegates from around the country, suggesting the wider membership could be larger, though this cannot be confirmed. The movement attracts some individuals who express overtly racist sentiments. According to the anti-racism blog “Angry White Men,” the Dominion Movement was co-founded by Johan Wolfe, who was interviewed on an Australian alt-right podcast. Asked to describe the New Zealand Māori population, Wolfe replied: “they’re not all bad. But there is a prevailing attitude of thuggishness … there are decent ones, but most of them are, you know, you’d cross the street if you saw them coming towards you.”
In the second half of 2019, the group reemerged under a new name, Action Zealandia. This group shares the same ethos and strategy, gaining press coverage having placed posters and stickers around university campuses, particularly in Auckland. Other groups have also emerged within recent years, including one group named the Western Guard. The Western Guard have predominantly engaged in poster campaigns on campuses in Auckland, deploying slogans such as “white lives matter.” The group sought members who were “physically fit, presentable, and were not homosexuals, transsexuals.” Alongside this, controversy has erupted regarding so-called “European Students’ Associations” advertising for student members at Auckland’s two main universities. The groups deployed images on its Facebook page complete with the motto “strength and honor,” which one writer described as “wording reminiscent of World War II Nazi mottos written in the Fascist ideology’s favored gothic font.”
Interestingly, Winston Peters—former Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand—offered some support to these groups. Peters lead the political party New Zealand First, who are considered to have, amongst other policies, a strong stance on immigration. Shortly after the story regarding the European students’ associations caught the media’s attention, Peters openly criticized the decision to shut down the groups. As he was leaving the event where he made these comments, Peters then signed a photo of “Pepe the frog,” an important meme figure amongst the alt-right. While he claims he could not see the image of the frog, nor did he have knowledge of its significance, Peters’ actions attracted wide support from the alt-right movement in the country.
While the Dominion Movement adopted an image of an eagle as its logo (as did the National Socialists of Germany), these movements are far more closely aligned to the growing international identitarian movement than they are to the Neo-Nazi organizations of the like run by Kerry Bolton or Colin King-Ansell. Recorded prior to the website’s removal in March 2019, the Dominion Movement listed four aspects of its goals and activities alongside its motto of “Family – Community – Nation”: self-improvement, community-building, appreciation of nature, and activism. They also isolate who they consider to be “our people: White New Zealanders.”
Under “self-improvement,” the movement hopes to build a strong collective nation of strong, healthy individuals in traditional family units. As such, it promotes exercise, education, and spiritual growth. Action Zealandia even excludes obese individuals from joining. The group critiques a capitalist individualism, however, arguing for a stronger sense of family and wider community, rather than a consumerist fragmentation. Interestingly, this sense of togetherness extends beyond the national realm to the natural in the movement’s desire to conserve the natural beauty of the nation through, for example, engaging in beach cleans.
The rhetoric of the Dominion Movement mirrors the wider political discourse of the right around the world, and particularly in the U.S. Annie Kelly, for instance, writes of the calls for “re-masculinization” post-911 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001, and she raises the alt-right’s critique that both nation and man had been “feminized.” As Kelly writes, “Millennials became conceived of as spoiled and undisciplined characters, whose strong sense of social justice was in fact a childish desire for heavy-handed paternalist protection in their conflict with ‘the real world.'” One can see these themes emerge amongst the alt-right’s “alternative media” in New Zealand, such as Right Minds NZ, whose articles cover themes such as gun control, but also argue strongly against the legalization of cannabis in an upcoming referendum.
Within the final section of the Dominion Movements manifesto on “activism,” one uncovers a great deal of the wider politics of the Dominion Movement, where the writers list a number of what they describe to be “malicious forces”: “Plutocratic, predatory Chinese speculators,” “Global financial powers,” “Cultural Marxist subversives,” and “Craven Kiwi politicians [who] betray their country to foreign powers.” As such, the movement appears to mirror central features of the alt-right movement globally: social conservatism, an emphasis on masculinity, isolationism, and a radical anti-immigration stance.
The use of posters and leaflets by these alt-right groups follows a wider series of incidents of white nationalist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic leaflets and posters appearing in towns and cities across the country—actions that have not stopped post the Christchurch mosque attacks. In July 2018, leaflets encouraging individuals to download an e-book denying the Holocaust were delivered to addresses in Dunedin. In the same week, a poster was spotted in the city with the phrase “It’s OK to be white 14 words,” making reference to the slogan of American white supremacist David Lane. This slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children,” operates as an ideological gathering point for the theories of “White genocide,” anti-white racism, and a theme heavily drawn on in the Christchurch shooter’s writing—demographic displacement. In May 2019, Islamophobic leaflets were left on the car windscreens of churchgoers in Palmerston North. In June 2019, leaflets with the slogan “It’s alright to be white,” including links to a white supremacist website and ebooks, were delivered to addresses in Tauranga.
This theme of anti-white racism has dominated the far-right political sphere of the last few years in New Zealand as well as globally. In the words of Richard Spencer, the American far-right activist who first coined the phrase “alt-right,” this movement offers “identity politics for white people”—a theme evident within many of the leaflets delivered across New Zealand, speaking of what Kelly calls an “explicit rhetoric of victimhood.” Whiteness, argues Madfis, is presented within the alt-right not as privilege, but instead as liability, such that it “allows whites to feel like blameless victims of affirmative action and reverse racism rather than the gleeful recipients of an inheritance of white privilege.” This theme again gained media coverage in New Zealand when the auction website Trade Me decided to stop the sale of t-shirts and stickers with the phrase “it’s ok to be white” following outrage from New Zealanders as well as the New Zealand Human Rights Commission. The seller, writing on their blog, decried the decision arguing that it was evidence of the racism of the Human Rights Commission against white people. Interestingly, this decision also raised concern from the campaign group Hobson’s Pledge, a group who seek to remove laws in New Zealand that promote Māori participation and representation. The group shared the news of Trade Me‘s decision on their Facebook page with the comment, “This is the world we live in.”
Alongside an inheritance from the globalized alt-right movement, there appear to have been two cornerstone events that have attracted the attention and provided a gathering point for the alt-right in New Zealand in recent years. The first was when New Zealand signed the UN Global Compact on Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration in December 2018. This appeared to spark a whole series of ad-hoc groups and organizations such as “New Zealand Sovereignty,” which focuses on narratives of anti-immigration and holds regular rallies on the issue of ensuring strong borders for the country.
The second regarded the cancelation of an event featuring the controversial speakers Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern. The cancelation of this event sparked numerous discussions (and protests) regarding free speech. Molyneux in particular is an important figure within the global alt-right movement, with a large following of his YouTube videos that focus on “scientific racism”: the deployment of pseudoscience to offer credence to theories that suggest “scientific” evidence for racist attitudes and ideas. The cancelation led to a “free speech rally” organized by the founder of the organization, “Islamic State Watch New Zealand,” which sports the strapline, “Following those who follow the Prophet,” and has 1,900 followers on Facebook and a similar number of email newsletter subscribers. The event attracted placards revealing the multitude of issues and concerns at the heart of the right in New Zealand, including slogans such as “Free Tommy Robinson,” in reference to the continuing court cases of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, former leader of the Islamophobic and anti-immigration organization, English Defence League.
The issue of “Free Speech” remains a key theme on the right. Ad-hoc Facebook groups emerge and are deleted at regular intervals. In 2019, the group “Kiwi Alt-Right” had ninety-four members whereas “Kiwis Against Political Correctness,” a group set up just four days after the Christchurch shootup, had seventy-nine members. Both groups have since been removed. It is without a doubt that certain political decisions made by New Zealand’s political leadership, such as broadcasting the Islamic call to prayer, have antagonized far-right attitudes about the so-called “Islamification of the country” since the attacks. A wider Islamophobia, is evident in New Zealand society. A Facebook page, “Islamic State Watch NZ,” had a following of 1,900 in 2019, though this is reduced to 733 at the time of publication. Another Facebook page, “Boycott Halal New Zealand,” which engages in attempting to boycott all products that are Halal-certified has 2,756 followers.
The ACT party, a New Zealand libertarian political party, has taken on this issue of “Free Speech,” as an attempt to distance itself from the National party in the run up to the elections in 2020. The ACT party leader, David Seymour, has attacked what he termed the “intolerant left” and has registered a private member’s bill in order to remove legislation regarding hate speech, according to news reports, “such as section 61 of the Human Rights Act, which outlaws publicly abusing or threatening people on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins.” ACT’s moves mirror moves made by libertarian parties across Europe. Parties such as UKIP or Alternative für Deutschland have sought to gain political capital from the surge of populist politics and it has been the centrist political parties that have lost out the most.
New Zealand has within its community a significant population of far-right supporters and activists. It is notable that this community is evidently networked globally, engaging online with the same themes, ideas, and debates of the global alt-right. At the same time, there is clear evidence of the colonial legacy of the New Zealand far-right movement. The established, older Neo-Nazi networks have, of course, a direct link to the British National Front of the 1960s. Yet, newer groups are clearly tapping into British far-right movements as well, hosting solidarity events for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon in particular. While numbers remain small in real terms, one must remember that New Zealand is a small country, with a total population of less than five million people. Were New Zealand a country the size of the UK, the same proportion of far-right activists in the country would entail over 200,000 individuals.
Before the attacks in 2019, there was little awareness either within or outside the country, of the scale and particularities of the alt-right movement in New Zealand, but as evidenced by Jacinda Ardern’s leadership of the “Christchurch Call,” a multinational attempt to regulate hateful uses of social media, New Zealand is clearly vulnerable to the same global forces as any other part of the world. Alt-right beliefs are a global export and are finding new markets around the world to exploit. Yet, New Zealand’s colonial-settler context offers nuances and separate challenges to other parts of the world as well. As Māori scholar and lawyer Moana Jackson points out, white supremacy has been in New Zealand since European settlement began.