Fabricated Consent

Uncovering what happens when Astroturfing Goes Local

Over the past few months, every time I venture into public, I have been asked if I would be covering this year’s local elections - and the short answer is yes. I’ve always been disappointed in local election turn out, the one of the most common bits of feedback I’ve been hearing for decades is that people just don’t know enough about the candidates to make an informed choice - and with the rise of the alt right in trying to take over Councils they want some help identifying candidates.

And once nominations close and we have the full list of candidates, an amazing team of volunteer researchers and myself will begin digging and be making content around which candidates in each local authority have shared those kind ideologies before.

But this year we have seen a proliferation of something different - we’ve seen the alt right and pseudo law groups start to create local astroturf groups en masse - fake grassroots groups designed to push the ideologies of the candidates they want to see elected. And I’ve put together a deep dive documentary on the topic.

These groups have a lot of cross over but don’t all see eye to eye - Voices for Freedom for example seem to be working to keep pseudo law group Challenging Councils at arms length but there is still cross over, like the Canterbury Concerned Ratepayers group which often shares content from Challenging Councils having a Voices for Freedom member as their spokesperson and ties with Wellington Voices for Freedom Regional Coordinator and candidate for Kapiti Coast, Dean Harris.

Harris actually stared a website called Concerned Ratepayers, and on it he suggest people check out other local groups, all of whom are run by Voices for Freedom coordinators.

But of course, none of these groups openly admit that - although they will share the latest content from sources like Reality Check Radio, The Platform, The Tax Payer's Union, the Free Speech Union and other voices within the far right media sphere. On the last day of editing I was given a link to a Whangarei group doing this

Last local election, Whangarei was a mess - NZCPR with their little astroturfing Democracy Northland, this time round VFF and NZCPR have teamed up to from C.R.O.W - Concerned Ratepayers Of Whangarei. Pity they uploaded their first meeting onto bitchute on the Voices for Freedom channel, with VFF member Tane Webster talking about their plan to get voters to connect the pain points from Council with the solutions their secret candidates were offering. It was removed quickly and they have denied there’s any link between CROW and VFF, but really, they’re not that smart and not that good at this.