2022 was a watershed year in Aotearoa’s battle against conspiracy theories. During the occupation at parliament and the local body elections, FACT Aotearoa’s small group of volunteers stood with others in an effort to counter extremists. Here we reflect on 2022; a year of grim vindication, but also of hope and progress in countering disinformation.
Early in 2022, FACT’s members were very concerned about the growing “freedom” movement and their capacity to do something drastic. The occupation of Parliament in January and threats of violence to public figures proved us right.
New Zealanders at large became aware of the freedom movement when the occupation of parliament began. During Aotearoa’s first full-blown brush with the conspiracy theorist agenda, FACT produced the “Love, War, and Hate” video which called out the hypocrisy of a self-proclaimed peaceful protest whose spokespeople publicly made violent threats.
FACT also contributed to the Stuff Circuit documentary Fire and Fury by Paula Penfold, which looked into the protest and conspiracy theorists in Aotearoa. Some of the screenshots and videos of the extremists in the documentary were recorded and sent in by our volunteers after many gruelling hours watching conspiracy theorist content.
“It felt like all the late night doom scrolling had paid off,” said one FACT volunteer on Fire and Fury. FACT continually keeps an eye on extremist media in New Zealand, to the detriment of everyone involved, so to see it all cumulate in Fire and Fury was cathartic.
FACT’s largest undertaking in 2022 was our scrutiny of candidates in the local body elections. An internal FACT operation to review candidates for fringe ties and extremist connections became a public effort. Some 200 candidates of concern were brought to our attention. FACT members screened the candidates, then passed on info about those we could link to conspiracy theorists or antivaxxers to journalists for further fact-checking. Those candidates were then asked pointed questions, and their answers were made public via print, broadcast and online media. Likely in part due to FACT’s campaign, just 38 successful candidates out of 200 extremists were elected.
As the backdrop to all this, FACT had a number of smaller wins – we contributed to the Stuff piece on Sue Grey. We pushed back against Melanie Reid’s uncritical coverage of Voices For Freedom at the parliament occupation. FACT, along with Nadine Roberts at Stuff exposed how VFF was secretly providing support to five Cantabrian local candidates, and subsequently all five failed in their bids.
FACT also became a charitable trust last year, so we can now receive donations to help fund our work. We have been invited on or have given comment to almost every major media outlet, and via social media we have also become an information source for everyone.
2023 will pose its own challenges to Aotearoa’s civil society. But FACT will continue to offer its support and advice in the face of the conspiracy threat.
