Stop Doing The Thing
Even If It's A Thing We've Been Dog Whistling Ourselves For Ages
What happened in Tauranga last week was tragic. People died - all the noise aside, this is what we need to remember first and foremost - people are hurting, a community is hurting.
On Monday, the Prime Minister and Emergency Management Minister both called for people to stop making racist posts about the tragedy. The PM called these people trolls - and he’s not wrong.
They are the trolls he and his coalition partners gave power to, encouraged and platformed - but he is right that they are trolls that are not helping the situation.
About a year ago, during Auckland’s Pride Week, posts about right wing MPs’ involvement in Pride events drew the ire of the “anti-woke” (aka bigots who refuse to admit it) voters of the coalition - which they actively encouraged during the election. Only halfway between elections, days after fascist wannabe Brian Tamaki’s followers stormed a library and scared and threatened people over drag quuens reading children’s books in an imported culture war moment that shocked the country, it wasn’t a good look to let it happen. You can read more about that here.
In some ways, this is a similar situation where the shitty people were emboldened by the current government then suddenly have to be told to not be so bold because their shittiness is happening at an inconvenient time for the government.
You see, the people who are “just asking questions” about rumours and speculation over co-governance, the forced removal of non-native trees, the demands of local iwi on the management of Mauao - they’re looking for a race based explanation that backs up their anti Māori views - but they don’t seem to see what they’re doing or how the questions they’re asking are racist. They’re just suddenly really curious experts in soil anchoring and buttressing - just like they were experts in vaccines, weather patterns, viruses, gender ideology and international financial systems over the past few years. Seriously, check out their profiles when you come across the comments they make on MSM posts - the ones I’ve come across all have conspiracies, pro-trump, pro Israel, hard right content filling their feeds.
It doesn’t matter that none of the things they’re claiming happened - and there’s multiple sets of evidence that show this, because even though they won’t admit it, they’re just after a scapegoat that allows them to continue to think racist things without being considered a racist - because most racists don’t consider themselves racist and to admit to that would be a hell of a cognitive shock to the system. It’s part of the reason why they didn’t stop to question the ethnic or cultural backgrounds of the people who created all that forestry slash that caused widespread damage to the East Coast during Cyclone Gabrielle’s record rain fall.
But New Zealand First proxy, and well known political mud slinger, Cameron Slater keeps jumping on the band wagon claiming it’s all the fault of local Māori. This is the same Cam Slater that Nicky Hagar talks about in Dirty Politics as working with Simon Lusk to vilify Mitchell’s opponents, and have him selected in the safe seat of Rodney in his run for the National Party Nomination. Mitchell claimed to have no knowledge of the link with Slater in that nomination run, Hagar claimed otherwise with excepts from conversations allegedly showing Mitchell was aware and in support of the campaign and enjoyed the impact it was having. Either way - when it suited him, the words of someone making racist comments this week were once fine because he benefited from it.
And it’s not uncommon to see the supporters of the coalition in comment threads make both implied and straight out racist comments on news stories. For 3 years now they’ve been happy to vilify anything connected to Māori - do they really think anyone is buying the “but how are we meant to know a kura is a school when its on a sign with the word school and a picture of a school, right next to a school - it’s just so confusing for those poor tourists” lines? And through it all, the coalition has not only allowed it to go unchallenged, they actively encouraged it.
In the 2023 Election, NZ First Candidate (and 2025 Local Body Candidate for Waimakariri) Rob Ballantyne spoke about having the cultural mandate to bury Māori - a move the leader of his party defended. A leader who has used racist terms for foreign born MPs. Their coalition partner, National, has had the trade Minister, Todd McClay and Hamilton East MP Ryan Hamilton both seen making comments vilifying people because of their race in the house. Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have all called out the coalition for encouraging dog whistle racism in their actions and policies which of course the coalition denies - they just want us to believe they genuinely don’t see how rolling back changes that have allowed greater connection to people’s culture, history and communities could possibly be seen as racist or bigoted in any way, honest, truly, really!
And if I hadn’t been at meetings where the National candidate literally winked at the audience and said “we’re opposed to co governance because we believe in one person, one vote” then had the NZ First candidate take the microphone off him and go “well I’ll say what he wont - we don’t want bloody Māori controlling everything” while the Act candidate sat their reeling because it turned out he had had a conversation with his Party Leader where he was told this was a step towards civil war - then maybe it would sound half feasible.
And here’s the hidden problem - we can look and see racist dog whistles over the past three years, we can see it from elected officials and from the public who support them, we can read headlines like “Hipkins claims Luxon using racist dog whistles” till the cows come home - but the actual risk of continuing use of these dog whistles is never mentioned.
In 2001, Tali Madelberg’s The Race Card argued that because it looks bad to be openly racist to all except 8.6% or whatever Act got, of the population, politicians use of dog whistles get more cut through with a public also not wanting to admit it’s racist. The terms they use, like south Auckland bottom feeders, inner city residents, being tough on crime - they bypass audience’s internal racist monitors. “Oh Luxon is saying he’ll be tough on crime - who can be opposed to that”, while also understanding that Māori are over represented in crime and prison data and removing tools which allow a judge to understand backgrounds and circumstances to ensure appropriate rehabilitation, while admitting it will have a disproportionate impact on Māori is just the coalition being tough on crime is racist but they don’t have to admit that because the way it’s framed doesn’t make it sound racist.
Aotearoa specific research shows us that racism and misogony are ubiquitous in the harassment of our female MPs - and these dog whistles are amplifiers for those traits. Local research also shows media has, for 160 years, framed Māori, particularly Māori standing up for themselves, in negative ways creating a discursive marginalisation that uses linguistic shorthands to justify inequality.
And there’s a lot of research showing that our social cohesion has frayed wildly in recent years - The Helen Clark Foundation report in 2025, Stats NZ Institutional Trust data and MSDs Te Korowau Whetū framework all show concerns about the cohesive strands that hold us together - exacerbated by racism, especially racism driven by dog whistling politicians.
And research from Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures shows that the most effective way to stop the erosion of social cohesion from these dog whistles is to call them out - they lose their power when people point out the issue because it can rewire the way our internal “racism” indicators work - which is something none of the media articles on the topic do - they just say “this politician claims that politician is doing a thing”.
As a country, we have issues - but hiding from them, and exacerbating them for gain only to have to turn around and decry them when awful shit happens, is something unique to politicians, and much more common in politicians on the right than the left.
So yes, absolutely the Prime Minister and Emergency Response Ministers were right to call out racist trolls - sadly it took a tragedy for them to do this. But we need to remember that they were also, in part, responsible for the rhetoric and dog whistles that emboldened these shitty people to do shitty things in a time of grief and tragedy.
Good stuff Paul. A vital problem to be pulling out of the shadows and sterilising with sunlight.