Who Poses the Bigger Threat: The Far Right, Or the Far Left?
EVEN THE HEADLINE is misleading: “How the SIS Missed the Threat of the Far Right”. Marc Dalder’s latest posting on the Newsroom site purports to offer evidence of the Service’s failure to adequately assess the danger posed to New Zealand society by Far Right and White Supremacist groups. In fact, from the documents Dalder relies upon, it is clear that the SIS assessed the threat potential of New Zealand’s right-wing extremists with considerable accuracy.
That the SIS failed to prevent the “lone wolf” attack perpetrated by Australian extremist Brenton Tarrant is undeniable. But, once again, the official documents cited by Dalder make it very clear that, without the assistance of the most extraordinary dumb luck, the detection and prevention of such attacks is next-to-impossible. Curiously enough, this is also precisely what the Royal Commission of Inquiry Into the Christchurch Mosque Attacks concluded.
Dalder’s post highlights a paper produced by the National Assessments Committee of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (not, you’ll note, the SIS) entitled “The Right Wing in New Zealand: Myth versus Reality”.
According to Dalder:
“The bulk of this paper examined the threat of far-right groups, even though previous right-wing terrorists like Anders Breivik were not affiliated with a specific organisation. It determined that ‘established, overt groups’ like Right Wing Resistance and the New Zealand National Front ‘posed no threat to domestic security’ and ‘there is no information to suggest either group has the intent or capability to impose their ideology through illegitimate means’.
“Greater threats could be found in ‘small [extreme right wing] groups or individuals acting outside the sanction of established organisations’ who ‘are the key vector for harm associated with the far-right … Extremist racist acts are rare and have not routinely featured the use of firearms, but the relative ease of access to semi-automatic firearms means that a ‘lone wolf’ attack scenario remains a possibility.”
Reassuringly, the SIS agreed. Dalder quotes the relevant findings from the Service’s January 2018 Combined Threat Assessment Group report – the last issued before the Christchurch attacks:
“This document briefly notes that publicly available information ‘indicates the popularity of far-right ideology has risen in the West since the early 2000s’ but that New Zealand’s far-right groups don’t have ‘the intent or capability to promote their ideology by an act of terrorism’.
“Yet again, this focus on groups appears to have slipped up the agency. What about a lone wolf attack?
“As has been evidenced in similar jurisdictions to New Zealand, an extreme right-wing lone actor attack remains a possibility, albeit a remote one.”
Dalder’s judgement of the New Zealand National Security Community – revealed in sentences like: “Yet again, this focus on groups appears to have slipped up the agency”, relies entirely on ex post facto reasoning. He knows that Tarrant’s terrorist attack occurred, and therefore feels entitled to say that the SIS “slipped up”.
Except that it didn’t slip up. The SIS and its sister agencies looked at New Zealand’s tiny – and, frankly, rather ridiculous – Far Right community and quite correctly assessed its miniscule groups as possessing neither the intent nor the capability of carrying out a terrorist act. Far from slipping up, the SIS made the right call. It advised the Government that New Zealand’s Far Right groups were nothing to worry about – and they weren’t.
The ideologies of overt white supremacism and/or National Socialism simply do not attract New Zealanders in anything like the numbers required to merit the serious attention of the SIS. Every time these wannabe stormtroopers attempt to strut their stuff on the streets, they are monstered by a far superior force of genuinely aggressive anti-fascists – so much so that they usually require Police protection! Terrorists should be (and are) made of sterner stuff.
Certainly, the Christchurch Shooter was made of homicidally sterner stuff. Stuff which, as New Zealand’s national security analysts rightly warned, is almost impossible to detect or prevent. Yet, even here, their predictions proved accurate. They had rated the chances of a “lone wolf” New Zealander emerging to wreak the sort of havoc unleashed by Anders Breivik in Norway as “remote”, and, once again, they were proved correct. Brenton Tarrant was an Australian, radicalised online and overseas, who chose to carry out his “mission” in New Zealand precisely because it was just about the last place on earth where anyone would expect such a dreadful tragedy to happen.
So, what, exactly, is Dalder hoping to achieve by constantly berating the SIS and the rest of New Zealand’s national security apparatus for missing a “lone wolf” Australian terrorist? Especially when our spooks had repeatedly warned their political masters that “lone wolf” terrorists were almost impossible to intercept? Is he hoping that by repeating these charges over and over again he and his supporters will establish a political climate in which truly draconian levels of state surveillance are accepted as both urgent and necessary?
Assessing the response of the “anti-fascists” to the clearly illegal communication of genocidal ideas via a YouTube posting (quickly taken down) from a person later confirmed by the Police as suffering from a mental illness, one is left wondering. Our current laws prohibit the sort of violent, racially-charged speech posted by this individual – who may yet find himself charged with inciting racial hatred.
A small measure of comfort should, however, be taken from the fact that his anti-Maori threats were broadcast on YouTube and, consequently, detected almost immediately. Would that Brenton Tarrant had stated his murderous intentions so publicly: because, had he done so, the Christchurch Massacres would never have happened.
Sadly, this is not the way the “anti-fascists” think. The call has gone out from the Maori Party for a special “joint taskforce”, comprised of the Police and the SIS (and, perhaps, Race Relations Commissioner, Meng Foon, from the Human Rights Commission, who has gallantly volunteered his assistance) and mandated to step up the surveillance (and harassment?) of Far-Right and/or White Supremacist groups targeting Maori.
Even without such a taskforce, New Zealand’s own version of Antifa has succeeded in getting one such purveyor of Far-Right (but not illegal) online content sacked from his job.
What would a national security profiler say, presented with an individual, already dangerously radicalised, who loses his employment amidst a shrill chorus of public condemnation? Would the profiler be concerned that the subject’s anti-social inclinations might be even further inflamed? That his imagination would soon be seething with bloodthirsty revenge fantasies. Scorned and shunned, could he see such a person descending into the criminal underworld and letting it be known that he’s in the market for a military-style semi-automatic rifle?
One suspects a national security profiler, presented with such a case, would recommend that the subject be declared a “person of interest”. It is to be hoped that law enforcement would have the resources to keep an eye on him 24/7. Although, strictly speaking, until he actually acquired an illegal firearm, he would have committed no offence. So, round-the-clock surveillance might not be possible. What about the SIS? Well, no, the SIS is not permitted to engage in law enforcement – that’s the Police’s job.
Perhaps that’s what the Maori Party has in mind: the spooks and the cops working together, side-by-side – ably assisted by Meng Foon and an unofficial collection of civilian spies and YouTube monitors. Once the accusation of Far Right, White Supremacist and/or anti-Maori proclivities was made, these folk could swing into action. Maybe take the suspect into protective custody? Maybe interrogate him?
After all, interventions of this kind, targeting communists, socialists, gays and Jews, worked really well for the Nazis.
The right obviously poses the greater threat because they are in control of the money system and governments around the world. And they are determined to keep status quo arrangements going as long as possible -even if it means rendering the Earth uninhabitable.
They control the media that churns out the false narratives, and the governments that promote the false narratives.
On the other hand, the ‘left’ have the numbers and the ‘pitchforks’.
I think you’ll need more than pitchforks AFKTT. This isn’t the Eighteenth Century.
It is also important to restate that the posting is about the Far-Right – not capitalism in general. There is a difference.
Chris, although I disagree with your politics, you are a smart guy. You know your history too. As such, you will know that, historically, any and all so-called “enemies” of any ruling regime that promotes its own particular ideology are labeled as “terrorists” or “radicals” or other such deliberately loosely-defined (and so highly adaptable to the needs or that ruling regime) phrases for political purposes. Objective reality needn’t intrude on the use of such rhetoric. You are correct: actual neo-Nazis probably number about 10 in NZ. Rather, what is being done here, based on my observations (and keeping in mind the principle of deliberate use of language for political ends as I described above) is that simply disagreeing with the government’s ideology and with the direction the country is heading is enough to condemn someone to ostracisation or even legal censure, basically as an enemy of the state. You don’t see a problem with this?
Antoine
Absolutely agree with your rhetorically posed question.
Once again, one may find the answer in Voltaire:
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong”.
And as far as Chris appears to gift a higher level of acumen to “Our Spies”?
Try this for empirical research viz speculation:
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/05/26/guest-blog-ross-meurant-are-you-being-watched/
That is a seriously backward analysis. The Left are unquestionably the Establishment and have been for decades. Any mainstream (aka approved) media outlet, Facebook, Twitter and all the others have a uniformly Leftist political view. They ban anyone who expresses genuinely Right wing ideas (aka conservatism) because those ideas are a genuine threat to the product they are pushing (which is radical egalitarianism and broadly progressive liberalism). No leftists are getting banned, no matter how extreme the views they express. Moreover, you have the US State Department, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, DHS, NSA etc. all promoting LGBT rights at the barrel of a gun around the world, Antifa and BLM can riot everyday for months on end with impunity and without comment in the US because they assist the ends of those above, and the boogeyman de jure is the “alt-right” (whatever that means). Basically, if you do not accede to the liberal orthodoxy, you are a “domestic terrorist”. To think that the Left are not the dominant political class and the ideology that permeates society, is just to deny all reality. I welcome a response pointing out where and why I am wrong.
I think there are two thins going on Antoine. Yes the left have the airwaves, the MSM’s support on LGBT issues and talk about social issues without any useful outcome: but it’s cheap talk , distraction and entertainment for the masses, while the wealth and power in the world is being steadily and rapidly concentrated into the hands of an ever smaller group of unelected elite who don’t give a shit who pretends to be in government. They are in government it reality either way . Was it a Rothschild who said ” Let me control the money supply and I care not who makes the laws”.?
Genuine socialist , or independent capitalist aspiring governments all around the world are sanctioned, riegime-changed , isolated starved and destroyed.
D J S
Meng Foon and other dipstick social justice warriors are setting back race relations decades.
Also, didn’t we get all the MSSAs? Even a very cursory look at known firearms tells us that the vast majority are out there and now grey market, of course: likely between 100 000 and 200 000 of them. Many times more firearms are destined to disappear when a register is forced through with record bad sentiment from bad faith treatment by police association and government : the next lone wolf will find it much easier to sail completely under the radar.
Semi autos should simply have been made E Category, job done.
In Australia who’s laws we are trying to ape, the Lindt terrorist used a grey market gun as did the Darwin mass shooter.
We are less safe than ever.
*100-200k underground guns estimate includes all now banned firearms not just MSSAs
Who Poses the Bigger Threat: The Far Right, Or the Far Left – BOTH
I’d say a bigger threat is spies and gangs and people with issues coming into NZ and then unravelling here.
When you sell off list MP seats for $100k and a free trip to China is an exercise in soft power while the blind in NZ think it’s all ok, then something is wrong with our security services.
Also some of the biggest extremists are actually in government these days and openly share their views so it seems a double standard in NZ to crack down on hate speech going nowhere and nit pick of micro aggressive pro nouns while turning a blind eye to statements from our ‘friends’ all around us advocating for naked killing and aggression based on race or religion!
New Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett: “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life and there’s no problem with that”
Green Party (The Left) are the most dangerous group in New Zealand. They chant Hamas (Terrorist Group) statements like
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
By supporting / quoting Hamas statements they are supporting the murder and destruction of the Jews living in Israel.
Actually that statement originated from the Isreali’s not the Palestinians nor are they supporting murder and destruction when the Israelis are committing Murder and destruction on a daily basis and have been doing so since the countries establishment in 1947. So excuse me is it any wonder Palestinians are fed up with being treated worse than the South African Coloured community ever were within Israel itself and in The Palestinian territories. Israel is an outright murderous Apartheid state full stop.
I believe that offences through cyberspace should trigger the collective defence obligations of the while on government meaning that if anyone even thinks about envading the pitch to carry out something as inane as streaking accross the screens of an all Blacks game or some shut, that will trigger a response from the entire 5eyes international network. It’s either we have real tune surveillance or a brutal kind of surveillance.
Or we could have some futurist AI that could do the job of a billion multiplied by a billion analysis in a few seconds. Something like that you’d want to do everything in house, small circle top secret shit, need to know. These guys would have to be paid close to market rates, not full market rates for the rest of there lives to maintain the top secret statuses indefinitely, so starting rate of $250k upto 10 million for top guys.
Yeah buddy. This war by other means is just as expensive as standard war. But I do believe we have to stand up some kind of cyber force and have them see what the can do to integrate Artificial intelligence into the government does its business. And this stuff can’t go to the private sector at all else we lose our edge.
Control the language, control the masses. Control the narrative.
Something like that, someone once said.
What exactly is a threat?
I can think of far greater threats to my existence, and the existence of most others, than the far left or the far right.
Much easier to fabricate a perception than deal with the reality of the boiling frog.
Liberal Left an oxymoron. Liberals accept capitalism, Leftists oppose it. Corporations show a somewhat liberal bent just because their middle/lower-middle tiers (even somewhat their CEO/top-dog types) comprised of liberal dominated/indoctrinated university graduates. They may be Social Left on feminism, gender/sexuality, race etc but are fundamentally capitulated/surrendered to capitalism …indeed they constitute the whole ‘Administrator’ class within the Companies/Corporations, Gov & Education …all geared to the maintainance of capitalism. They aspire to the top of the heap & fear the ones below, serving as the 9% buffer between the 90% below & the 1% above. They safeguard the elite, along with the co-opted/suborned workers amongst the police & in the army.
Rightwing loves to conflate Liberals/Liberalism & Socialists/Socialism but they are not the same beast, only fellow travelers in some regards. Extreme Right is a joke in NZ somewhat, but they are bigger than the picture Trotter paints, after all the Fascists in Suits within Nats, ACT, & even some in NZFirst are still Fascists even without the shaved heads, tatts & flags on the bedroom/garage walls.
Interesting to see so many Kiwibloggers have crawled out of their holes and over here today. My take, NZ is being eroded by tensions between virtue signalling liberals and right wingers with the Maori Party thrown into the mix. By the time you all finish, we;ll be able to get down to some US style Beehive storming and/ or how about the Maori Wars Part Deux, led by and starring the Maori Party’s 1.6% of the vote.
Seriously, I am tired of all the polarisation and complaining that is going on everywhere. Everybody has an agenda and they are working it hard. How about Live and Let Live.
In the context of a global pandemic, it is the far left which poses the greatest threat because of extreme left legislation and a series of mind boggling wealth redistribution measures which has entrenched our poor working class.
Raising the minimum wage recently has alienated long serving employees because they are now receiving maybe thirty cents an hour more than new untrained workers, whereas previously they may have been getting eighty cents or more an hour more than new untrained workers.
Increasing the base rate of benefits has also alienated workers because people are being paid more but doing about the same.
Another issue for workers is automation which cost this country over eight hundred jobs in the space of one week back in 2015. This, along with the coronavirus pandemic and an expanding population, means that there are less jobs available to do but also more people available to fill those jobs. We are seeing automated petrol stations, supermarkets, and factories. The left always profess a keenness to create jobs in new State Owned Enterprises but this rarely occurs in actuality.
Also the left have squandered far more money on employing bureaucrats and paying for the associated perks than the right. In doing so, traditional areas of concern have been neglected. Mental health, alcohol rehabilitation programs, all the traditional mainstays of leftist policies except for health and education. Their focus now seems to forgo certain mental health programs funding altogether, instead focusing on new roads and bridges in Auckland. We’ve just had pretty epic flooding and several miniature earthquakes down here in Canterbury where I live. We’ve got roadworks being carried out, yeah, but what about replacing some of our old bridges?
In conclusion, I’d argue that the far left currently poses more of a threat than the far right.
You know Chris when you been stab by a skin head or been in a house when the neo-Nazi “lone-wolf” has fire boomed you, you might get that the whole far right hate is a bit more of a reality than you like to portray it.
As for the whole “lone-wolf” bullshit, I’m getting tired of that misdirection and utter lack of understanding how the modern far right works. Have you read any of their literature? The idolization of Tim McVeigh, the explanations on how terror works, the proscriptions on how and what to do? How the modus operandi is “lone-wolf”. Or my favorite, how to disappear into far right countries where you are protected by the state and taught all you need to know.
What is the difference between the neo-Nazi, white supremist, ISIS, al qaeda, at this point – not much. Any chance the effort that was put into the latter two, could go into at least a basic understanding how the far right in this country operate or at the very least how they are funded?
Or is it better to offer up more of the same tosh the royal commission feed us?
Were I stabbed by a skinhead, Ignatius, or if my house was fire-bombed by a lone-wolf terrorist (and if either of those things have happened to you, then you have my sincere sympathies) my first act would be to seek the intervention and assistance of the authorities.
Consider the swift action taken by the Police to confirm the identity of the “genocide” video and ascertain the threat posed by the person who posted it.
This is still a nation of laws.
When I see on TV black clad thugs smashing windows, looting, burning and attacking bystanders it reminds me of Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Hitler’s Brown Shirts. They also have the same anti-Semitic and anti Asian tendencies. So one cannot help but wonder; are BLM and Antifa today’s fascists? They claim to be anti-fascists but in the world of double-speak, that can be expected.
The 2020’s is starting to smell like the 1920’s to me…
I am aware of the shut down and punishment of women’s voices, those who question why gender identity trumps biological sex. There’s a scary campaign going on where women who speak up for their sex based rights are threatened and harassed. A women in the UK has lost her job because she said on Twitter she didn’t believe trans women are real women or words to that effect. Merely asserting science. Her case is before the Supreme Court now.
A student who said women have vaginas was harassed and intimidated. She is now suing the university for providing an unsafe environment.
And it’s happening here in NZ. A feminist group that is holding public meetings to discuss proposed legislation, has had their meetings cancelled at two libraries.
Libraries are refusing to stock books that question gender ideology.
I feel frightened to express my opinion on this issue. My opinion I think is reasonable and science based.
And it’s the left wing progressives that are doing it
Funny that those oddballs who got in a spot of bother in the Ureweras were lefties and weren’t those Italians the Red Brigade slightly more left than centre? Then there’s that loony bunch the Weather Underground, again radical lefties and just for fun let’s not forget FARC, a charming collection of Macho South American lefties happily seeding terror. Something of a trend there isn’t there?
This isn’t to say that there aren’t some batshit crazy morons on the right that should be thrown onto the deepest darkest hole we can find, more it’s just pointing out that it’s normally the lefties that take up arms against their perceived oppressors (who more often than not are just those ever so slightly right of centre and maybe on the odd occasion screaming lunatic fascists, but hey what’s the difference on this blog?)
Why is it you always get one person who thinks dragging up a few examples on the left will somehow balance a mass murder in Christchurch.
How about a few other mass killers from the far right – who have a tendency to take up arms against the working class because they perceived them as a threat, when anything like equality is on the cards.
So 9/11(take your pick 1973 or 2001)
The night of the long knives
The far right DEATH SQUDS – again take your pick – Argentina, Brazil or Colombia.
Those guys that made ollie north a fall guy CONTRAS – just your usual far right shitfuckery of Murder, rape and child combatants.
Did Eugène Terre’Blanche fall off your radar?
This list could go on for day just exploring Europe and Africa alone.
But lets set aside history from 80 years or so and deal with what is recent – Halle synagogue shooting, the Lega Nord shootings, or indeed Darren Osborne, just to name a few. There are no left wing organizations that have a similar recent history (even the mob in the Ureweras were no threat to anyone but themselves). I’d suggest we all add ISIS and al qaeda to the list of far right and crazy.
Your point Yeti, is well and truly lost on me. Unless your trying to make yourself feel better by down playing how violent the far right have been for the last 100 years. Why is it the center right never own far right violence, but are so quick to throw any far left wing violence quickly back in the center lefts face?
p.s. Stalin and the Gang of Four we’re utter scum. As are all authoritarians be they left or right are – so please don’t play that card in response.