Where are they now, and what are they talking about? Toby Manhire dives in.
In bursts of distress, confusion, violence and fire, the 23-day occupation of parliament grounds came to its end one year ago today. The anti-mandate, anti-vaccine protest uprooted the country’s political centre, literally and figuratively. It brought much of Wellington to a standstill. New Zealand as a whole watched on, captivated. Most were horrified. Others – including many affected by Covid vaccine mandates – declared their support.
What began as a Canada-inspired convoy from both ends of the country morphed into an encampment comprising numerous groups and individuals playing organising roles – sometimes in conflict with one another. In a February 2022 post, we attempted to identify and characterise the key people in a piece titled “figureheads and factions”. Today, a year after the flames, the question is: where are they now?
Convoy NZ
The Facebook group that once comprised more than 80,000 members was shut down, and has splintered into numerous other groups across Facebook and myriad other platforms, including, of course, the refuge of the deplatformed, Telegram.
Discussions in recent days have spanned memories of the occupation, coordination of future events and a panoply of other subjects. Various plans to mobilise for a first-birthday gathering were largely scuppered by Cyclone Gabrielle, with many instead focusing efforts on heading to affected regions to help with the cleanup. A clear and common thread among people who were involved with or supported the parliamentary occupation was how to assist those smashed by the floods. While some organisers seized on a chance to push their agendas and build profile, most members of these groups clearly sought only to help.
Counterspin – Kelvyn Alp and Hannah Spierer
Then there’s Counterspin. One year ago today, while the embers were still burning on the lawns of parliament, an angry Kelvyn Alp told the his audience: “Can you imagine if a few boys brought out of their boot a few AK-47s? Those muppets would have run for the hills. That’s the problem. You disarm a population under a false flag so they can then come and eviscerate you.”
Led by the bellicose Alp and his Greens-cheerleader-turned-conspiracy-peddler partner Hannah Spierer, the far-right Counterspin channel had been building its audience consistently in the months leading up to the occupation, but ramped up its coverage substantially over the course of the encampment, becoming platform of choice for the more extreme voices.
The “false flag” referred to above was, of course, the March 15 mosque attacks, which Alp baselessly, absurdly asserts were known to government. The pair are currently facing charges in the Christchurch District Court related to the distribution of a publication classified as objectionable which makes similar false-flag claims and includes footage from the banned stream of the attacks. They are contesting all charges.
Counterspin operatives are also active offline. A nationwide bus tour was held last year, while representatives have recently disrupted events hosted by Act leader David Seymour and National leader Christopher Luxon.
The Counterspin audience has grown substantially over the last year, reaching tens of thousands across Telegram, Facebook and livestreams – feeding a piping stew of conspiracy theories from pre-Māori civilisation and chemtrails to adrenochrome, from the moon landings to brainmelt claims the US military engineered the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. According to on-site counters, recent broadcasts have attracted more than 100,000 views apiece.
The Counterspin duo recently began furnishing an hour of content to Infowars, the platform headed by Alex Jones, the US conspiracy theorist ordered to pay more than a billions US dollars in damages for falsely claiming the Sandy Hook shooting was a false flag operation. As with many groups involved in the occupation, they are currently fixated on weather and climate. On the Sunday that Cyclone Gabrielle began to impact New Zealand, Spierer dismissed it as a “fizzer”, while Counterspin ran a blog post suggesting the storm was a result of “weather manipulation”.
In this week’s episode of Counterspin, titled “Weather Wars”, Alp decried “climate change global warming bullshit”. One of the two guests on the show, speaking from Napier, shared assorted rumours about packed makeshift morgues and hospital wards full of corpses. The claims are untrue. He said, seemingly swept up in a blatant falsehood, that the true body count was not 11 but “could be 500, could be a thousand”.
He said he had been speaking with Voices for Freedom (see below) in the hope of “finding a bit of land [in Hawke’s Bay] that we could recreate the freedom village on, with all of the food and toilets and everything.”
In the same episode, Alp said, following a boilerplate conspiracy burst about George Soros, “There are dark entities controlling these muppets, and they’re terraforming your bodies, terraforming this earth, to make it more palatable for them, not for you.”
The Freedom and Rights Coalition / Destiny Church – Brian Tamaki
Brian Tamaki was not at the Wellington protest last year owing to bail conditions, but the Freedoms and Rights Coalition he founded played an instrumental role, including overseeing parts of the security and PA operation (which at times saw clashes with other groups surface – the FRC accused Counterspin of running a “smear campaign”).
Through 2022, the FRC was among the most active groups seeking to continue the energy of the occupation, hosting demonstrations around the country, including the Tamaki-led march and mock trial of the government on the steps of parliament in August (verdict: guilty). Tamaki, who with his wife Hannah has long explored electoral possibilities, used the occasion to announce the formation of a new political party, Freedoms NZ. That party was formally registered last week, though Tamaki (who has said countless times that he will not seek election personally) had to backtrack on his indication that the Outdoors Party would join forces, after his advances were rejected. The components of the umbrella party are Vision NZ (Hannah Tamaki’s party), the New Nation Party and the FRC. Both Labour and National have ruled out working with the party.
Tamaki is undeterred. In a sermon this week, he promised “the biggest upset ever in the history of New Zealand’s political scene is going to happen this year”. He also said that every group needs “a clear-cut leader”, an “anti-Christ spirit”, and that “our eyes are opening to the lies of the witchcraft, the false prophet, the media, and also politicians”. Also, he told his followers, he is “very, very, very, very, very irreplaceable to God”.
And in case you missed it, last week Brian Tamaki told his Destiny Church congregation that the destructive, deadly Cyclone Gabrielle was a divine consequence of abortion permissiveness, homosexuality and high consumption of pornography in Gisborne and Hastings.
Voices for Freedom
VFF was set up by a trio including Claire Deeks – an unsuccessful candidate for Jami-Lee Ross’s Advance NZ Party, which teamed up with Billy Te Kahika in the 2020 election. The group has opposed vaccination through mass flyering, billboards, social media posts and, for some eager members, just plain old harassing people getting vaccinated.
The group, which has at times succeeded in attracting some perplexingly unsceptical media coverage, has played whack-a-mole with Facebook, with pages resurfacing only to be removed. It mounted a concerted, if mostly unsuccessful, campaign to encourage and coach supporters to stand in October’s local government elections, and recently launched a one-year-on occupation “exhibition”, complete with fundraising drive.
VFF have encouraged members to support the recovery efforts following Gabrielle and have not – as far as I’m aware – embraced any weather-related conspiracy theories. In a post on Telegram, one of the leaders of the group, Alia Bland, a Piha resident, wrote: “It has been heartening to see New Zealanders discard their differences to come together in service of humanity. Previous rifts relating to issues of personal medical choices and status have been cast aside in the desire to respond to the needs of fellow community members. If there can be silver linings in such devastating times, this reconnection and healing sure fits the bill.”
Chantelle Baker
After chalking up hundreds of thousands of views in her Facebook livestreams during the occupation, the former star of reality show “ZM’s Ladies of New Zealand” was kicked off the platform for spreading misinformation. That did not stop her, however. The influencer-in-chief of New Zealand conspiracy survived on Instagram, built a Telegram following, shared her thoughts via the Facebook page of her dad, Leighton (see below) and launched a new brand – or “cultural institution”, as she calls it – called Operation People.
And she certainly didn’t stand still. The last year has seen her travel as far as Ukraine, where her output would have delighted the Kremlin, and to Gabrielle-stricken Wairoa, where she distributed water following a fundraising drive.
Leighton Baker
The former leader of the New Conservative Party and father of Chantelle was arrested a year ago today, but he is one of many (see below) against whom charges – he called the resisting arrest charges “bizarre” – have been dropped. He’s recently posted on Facebook in solidarity with those who have suffered in Cyclone Gabrielle and criticising co-governance, while providing Facebook real estate for his banned daughter to post.
Outdoors & Freedom Movement
The Outdoors Party resisted the appeal of Brian Tamaki’s umbrella party and continues to work on its campaign for this year’s election. Co-leader Donna Pokere-Phillips won 130 votes in the Hamilton West byelection. The better known co-leader, Sue Grey, has brushed aside challenges to her status as a lawyer and acted in the Baby W case among others, including one where she was held in custody for a short period of time after being found in contempt of court. The Outdoors Party, with 28,000 followers, is a repository for any number of conspiracy theories.
Billy Te Kahika
The blues musician, man of God and former politician, Billy Te Kahika was once a talisman for the “freedom movement”. He may no longer attract big audiences, but he continues to issue earnest sermon-esque livestreams from his Northland home. A key character in Elements of Truth, Te Kahika is working on a documentary of his own, focused on the occupation and the media coverage, called River of Lies, The NZ Scamdemic. In a trailer, he greets “fellow freedom fighters” from his base in “Soviet, communist, socialist, fascist New Zealand”.
At the end of last year Te Kahika was found guilty of organising a protest in breach of lockdown rules and will be sentenced at the end of this month.
Liz Gunn
Across the course of the occupation, the former TV host grew to become a prolific, prominent figure in the movement. As her audience ballooned across social media, she homed in on rallying causes, most conspicuously the case of Baby W. In tandem with Counterspin, she leapt on the case of the parents insisting only on “unvaccinated blood” for their child, and protesters gathered at the High Court and Starship Hospital.
Gunn returned to mainstream headlines in recent days after being arrested at Auckland airport at the arrival of a Tokelauan family that she has seized on as the next opportunity to promote the cause. Gunn denounced “thuggery” on the part of police, cursing “corrupt globalists” putting New Zealand on a path to “becoming like communist China”.
Matt King
As promised, the former National MP for Northland has begun his own political party, DemocracyNZ, successfully registered with the Electoral Commission in September. Across the last few weeks he has focused social media output on the impact of the floods in Northland, while also denouncing his former party’s “climate showmanship”.
New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science
The group continues to issue anti-vaccine material, if with less frequency than before. A recent online post recalled the days of “camp freedom”, offering a “stark contrast to that which the Lamestream Media had you believe”.
Damien De Ment
Still posting. Recently seen streaming furiously on subjects including the “massive violence against white people”, “the fascist government”, and “unvaxxed corrupt Māori”. While he gets an occasional spot on Counterspin, De Ment’s most eager audience appears to be almost entirely comprised of his own sock puppets.
Karen Brewer
After a great deal of encouraging people to shout “sovereign citizen” slogans at the gates of Government House (in Wellington and Auckland), Brewer has returned to Australia, where she continues to ply her conspiratorial trade to an audience of 15,000 on Telegram.
The disinformation landscape
The cast of characters involved in the occupation of 2022 was always a mixture of experiences, motivations and mindsets. While many ordinary participants reintegrated into whanau and communities, some of the bullhorns “latched on to other things” and “pivoted to different narratives, particularly in the sunset of the traffic light framework”, says Sanjana Hattotuwa, who studies all of the groups and individuals above, among others, for his Disinformation Project research.
What has changed, he says, is the “complexity of the way they’re connected” – with the networks and “sophistication” of messages evolving.
In retrospect, much of the occupation rhetoric seems almost innocent today, he says. “In every measurable way” – across the number of accounts, the scale of response, the extreme views and expressions of violence – “it is more toxic today and more misogynistic than it was in 2022.”
On Telegram, the almost entirely unmoderated social sphere, a network that teems with extremism, “it’s like the shattering of a glass”, he says. The conspiracy messages today are “dispersed and amplified and propagated on a range of other accounts”. That includes a host of material drawn from the Russian disinformation playbook. “Since the invasion of Ukraine, we have progressively seen a marked shift to choreographed and scripted, important and local content mirroring and amplifying Russian disinformation.”
The Baby W episode was a “white hot” moment, he says. And authorities had failed to grasp its seriousness. “I was so worried at that time … The aggravation against Starship [hospital], against the judge, against the police, against medical staff, was unprecedented. It exceeded anything, including the 2022 protest.”
Other targeted moments included Jacinda Ardern’s resignation, where the level of violent material posted was “greater than the sum total of what we studied in 2022”, the forthcoming census (“I’ve seen some really violent stuff”) and, of course, Cyclone Gabrielle.
Police and prosecutions
The vast majority of those arrested in relation to the occupation have had their charges withdrawn. Over the course of the occupation and up until March 4, police arrested 253 people. Since then, most – 172 in total – have had charges dropped. Thirty received diversion, 20 pleaded guilty, two youths were issued warnings, and one was found not guilty, according to information provided by police to The Spinoff yesterday. There are 26 people still facing active prosecutions for one or more charge.
Of 48 people arrested since March 4 following police review of what took place, most prosecutions are proceeding, with a handful of guilty pleas and warnings but no charges withdrawn as of today.
The Independent Police Conduct Authority, which has received almost 2,000 complaints in relation to the occupation, is nearing the end of its investigation into the police response. “We hope to finalise the work and publish a report by the end of March 2023,” a spokesperson told The Spinoff.
More than 150 police officers were injured during the occupation, with nine hospitalised. Thirty-five police staff were referred to psychologists as a result of their work at the event, with more than a third of those involved, about 750, referred for wellness support.