I’m not sure if Kirsty Johnston’s article about the ‘Alt Right’ in New Zealand was more disingenuous or just hopelessly out of touch. Either way, she completely missed the mark as far as demonstrating understanding of the growing discontent in New Zealand and around the world with the political, media and academic establishment.
Ms Johnston spent several months snooping around various New Zealand Facebook and 4Chan groups incognito. She then approached a number of individuals in those groups and organised some interviews. The result was a predictable controlled media hit piece, attempting to paint a picture of a handful of neo-nazi types getting carried away online whilst having no meaningful effect on mainstream politics. Continuing to carry water for the establishment, she then dutifully makes associations between the supposed Alt Right and NZ First. (In the first version of the article, she had even tried to link Don Brash and the Hobson’s Pledge movement to the Alt Right, but had to issue a grovelling retraction).
This is classic mainstream media disinformation, misinformation, deflection and distraction. Attempting (largely unsuccessfully I suspect) to mislead readers into thinking that anyone who challenges the established political norms is some kind of extremist. An alternative, and much more enlightening, approach would have been to investigate and articulate the growing groundswell of discontent and anger with politics as usual in New Zealand.
The mainstream media, the political establishment, the intelligentsia, those who consider themselves thought leaders, guardians and gatekeepers of public opinion, are hopelessly out of touch with real people. They also have little or no insight into how out of touch they are.
What all the various groups mentioned in Johnston’s article have in common is that they provide platforms for people to express and discuss concerns which have somehow become disallowed in establishment politics, mainstream media and in our educational establishments. For example; the pace of immigration; the potential problems of an increasing Islamic population; political correctness and limiting of free speech; feminism and its’ corrosive effect on society; the stranglehold leftist ideology has over government and its’ institutions (even when supposedly centre-right parties are in power); the dangers of race based laws and policies; the erosion of gun rights; how the banking system and crony capitalism favours special interest groups and the super wealthy at the expense of ordinary people. This is not the platform of some fringe extremist group. These are legitimate concerns of many ordinary people, but are verboten in our controlled political dialogue.
New Zealand politics is ripe for a person or party that can be a catalyst for this strand of political philosophy. That’s the real story.