Web of Karens – a review.

The editor of The Daily Blog asked me to review “Web of Chaos” which aired again on TVNZ last week. The editor has taken a strongly critical stance on this documentary (and the ‘Disinformation Project’ around which it revolves) since it first aired in November 2022. No doubt the 18 months elapse, with the time for sober reflection and an assessment of how things have transpired, will have done nothing to redeem this politically correct propaganda piece. Has it aged well, or is it a foaming, frothing, fear-mongering, reactionary, authoritarian, illiberal adjunct to bookend the nannying, over-bearing era of Jacindamania, every bit as biased and deceptive as RNZ’s disgraceful state-funded homage to the state’s iron fist: ‘Fire and Fury’?

The rapid deterioration in opinion polling results on the credibility of the news media in New Zealand suggest these execrable documentaries have merely reinforced the public perception that the media and the state and the ruling bourgeois cliques form a suffocating blanket over national public discourse and that malignant nexus is what really undermines journalism and democracy. The evidence is patronising notions amounting to re-education produce a dividend of resentment.

From memory the thesis of “Web of Chaos” was it takes an Orwellian surveillance and compliance apparatus run by left-wing Karens to raise a village – and if you disagree with that you are, ipso facto, a Nazi. Easy to agree when your platform is funded by the same coven of Wellington wankers giving woke a bad name; but rather harder to agree if it means the grim serial cancellers will be emailing complaints to have your channel demonetised on the basis of misgendering and other social slights which have been elevated to the pre-cursors of international terrorism.

The irony – or really hypocrisy – is that the online hysteria and intolerance and warped claims of ‘truth’ coming from livestreams in the recesses of suburbia are comparable to the hysteria and intolerance and warped claims of ‘truth’ coming from the state-funded networks. Dismissing the dissident voices as ‘grifters’ who are corrupted by their connections to global networks is rather rich when considering the financing of the pro-state documentaries and the financing and global networks of the “disinformation” industry. The citizen vloggers and would-be dissidents at least for the most part appear to hold honestly held, if kooky, beliefs – the media minds behind “Web of Chaos” and “Fire and Fury” on the other hand must know at some level that their polemics are so biased as to be dishonest. When they are in the editing suite cutting out assaults by police, cutting out the Speaker’s involvement in the Parliamentary encampment saga to give a false impression of the facts is that not dishonesty? It’s certainly not fucking journalism!

And speaking of cretinous, the slimy condescension of the ‘Disinformation Project’ founder and director, Kate Hannah, is next-level Karen. The complete absence of self-awareness coupled with the self-importance makes for a repulsive personality – she even looks and sounds like Helen White. This is someone who tried to organise a secret meeting of the big media players to institute a blacklist – that is what was attempted by all accounts before the meeting was cancelled due to security threats. Yes, security threats, if you can believe it – which I can’t – not cancelled because she realised she was turning into Joe McCarthy, but because the sinister scheme had been rumbled.  That someone with such an attitude – attitude problem – should head such an entity and have been so indulged by so many is so troubling. Is she not an opportunist and a grifter also? Is she not a paranoiac conspiracy theorist also? Is she not just essentially the establishment version of Liz Gunn with a lot less output?

If you saw “Web of Chaos” as a montage the unflattering suspicion is this is a mokumentary – a spoof, a parody. The white robed, cross-burning, avatar boogey man ready to leap out of your child’s mobile phone in between Tiktok videos is what is conjured up in the emotionalised dramatisations. One minute you’re innocently scrolling through Danish-style hair plaiting in Pinterest, nek minnit you’re wondering if Liz mucking up your NZ Loyal list position was because she’s a Rothschild reptile like the rest of them. You are one click away from an incel Momo convincing you to start automatic payments to the Act Party. You can’t trust anyone anymore – so start trusting the Government again! Now they have enough Karens on staff and enough American spyware installed to make sure you will never have access to anything that challenges the Government line you will be safe – forever safe. A Star Chamber committee to sanitise public discourse is just what the doctor of intersectional social media ordered.

A search on Youtube found several local counter-documentaries tearing “Web of Chaos” several new ones. Each one delicious. And at this point it occurs to me – why isn’t this publicly-funded programme, airing on TVNZ, available on Youtube? Why isn’t this taxpayer-funded satire on the NZ On Air website? Why isn’t this government-funded cry-bullying wankery on the NZ On Screen website?

The editor then informed me it was available on TVNZ+. Oh no, no, no – no you don’t. “All you have to do…” No, no, no. “…is sign up.” No, no, no, no, no, just no. No. Fuck no. That’s not freely available. How is it free if you are forced to sign up to anything? Fuck that! They put this fucking trash on, this abomination, joke of journalism, on the freeview platform but they won’t put it on Youtube. TVNZ wants me to register, like a fucking slave, to have the privilege of viewing this shite and owning my eye balls for an hour on their shitty fucking site!? Get fucked. Talk about grift, Christ. So let’s examine that cunty scam for a moment.

The atrociously inept – now sacked – Media and Communications Minister, Melissa Lee, gave a tortured and incoherent answer to TVNZ’s free-to-air status back in March. She was playing semantics, trying to say that as long as the shows were online it was widely available… even if it was behind a paywall! Insane. My instinct tells me TVNZ was trying to convince her to change their statement of intent (due to be finalised before July) so that they no longer had to provide free-to-air TV and they could end freeview – in part because their main rival Warner Bros/Discovery wanted out. Part of the negotiations may have been to put as much as possible behind a paywall or some shitty sign up thing that would then migrate to a paywall and having heritage product like ‘Fair Go’ move over is exactly what would happen if that were the case.

There is no credibility in the scheme to have publicly funded material gatekept like this. I don’t want to play that game, comrade.

We need a ‘NZ Off Air’ Youtube channel to get all the NZ On Air funded shows in one place. That would sort out this nonsense; but I bet TVNZ and the other big platforms would sue the fuck out of anyone who tried to do that. It’s such a shitty rort to subsidise the platforms. I’m so fucking over it.

In conclusion: I didn’t watch it – and neither should you.