Back into the Shadows...
The secretive Manifesto to take over local government
It’s easy to forget about Voices for Freedom - they have seemingly lost a lot of their influence over the past few years, from the height of their white noise anti-vaccine, anti-mandate bullshit when the way we dealt with the pandemic was a lot more prominent in our lives and the shit-flinging illegal occupation at Parliament was still happening.
Some of what they spawned are still annoying people - their media output, Reality Check Radio continues to platform people who claim the ridiculous, like the missing MH370 was loaded with the only fruit apparently known to diminish the effects of mRNA1 (regular RCR contributors New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science, NZDSOS actually did this), oh MPs like our current and future deputy Prime Minister’s so that’s cool and totally not a concern.
But despite some well known names like Peter Williams, Rodney Hide and Paul Brennan behind the mic, streaming data shows it’s struggling to maintain a viable audience - that’s what was behind their “suddenly offline” stunt last year. There’s serious questions being raised about their finances, the “grassroots” funding amounts they seem to be getting wouldn’t cover the extensive costs they have but despite years of promising to release it’s financial records, they still won’t disclose who actually pays for them and legally they don’t have to because they are not a charity.
In fact there are a number of actions we should be concerned about from this group still. They clearly have the influence within NZ First they were after, and that can be seen when Tanya Unkovitch uses their language, and she and Peters meets with them to accept their covid petition. And having the Phase 1 Commissioner validate their influence last week, it shows this group of older, mostly pakeha folks do have a bit more influence than we might realise.
And of course, in 2022 they tried to make the country ungovernable by encouraging a number of candidates to run in local elections covertly (I’ll swing back to this, I promise, it’ll be worth the wait). I personally have little time for people in the VFF camp - it shows me a complete inability to think critically to be on the same side of history as the alt-right, white-is-right, spreaders of disinformation. So it was a bit of a shock to find them at an event I was hosting last week, flags waving away under the trees.
Now it was a coincidence that I was hosting AND they were there - my hosting gig was a last minute change that wasn’t promoted anywhere, they just wanted to have a day out at a local park enjoying an event put on by an organisation they had hoped to make ungovernable. But it was still a fascinating experience - because they were told to remove their flags - the event was apolitical, and part of the permit rules was no offsite advertising, they were advertising their website. They used every excuse to justify it - freedom of speech, how will their other members know who they are, how come the event is allowed flags that says this is where the event is but we’re not?
It was a masterclass in entitlement and misdirection to get what they wanted - which didn’t work in the end.
But those sort of actions, that’s the crux of the freedom movement’s plans for this year’s local body elections - well according to an 18 page document accidentally sent to me by someone who didn’t know the difference between Reply and Reply All - because somehow, through no fault or forethought of my own, I had ended up in an email chain that included a number of the conspiracy pushing disinformation grifters2 and candidates who ran last local body elections where media used the phrase “[Insert candidates name] denies links to VFF” to describe them all from around the Motu.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Paul... The Other One to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.