Fire and Fury documentary raising Ire and Indignation

Last week Stuff Circuit, part of the Stuff media organisation, released their Fire and Fury documentary.

The documentary is a slickly produced piece of journalism, looking at the rise of the movements centred around conspiracy theories, “freedom”, anti-vax and anti-government, and culminating in the protests and occupation at parliament in February and into March.

The piece was funded by NZ on Air, and produced by Stuff's Paula Penfold. It's available on YouTube.

The documentary shines a light on the groups and people behind the protests.

There is some sensible guidance we should apply around when to amplify the sort of mis- and dis-information that these people and groups are spreading. It can certainly have a backfire effect of driving more people to these movements. The key test is whether the information is already spreading outside of the niche communities - and on this measure, it certainly already is.

Alarmingly, it seems that there are plenty of kiwis, from all walks of life, who have signed up, to various extents, to these ideas and inhabit these communities. I'm sure we all know of friends or family members who've gone down the rabbit hole, as it's known.

The prominent protagonists (or perhaps antagonists) featured were

• Counterspin media, which is a live-streamed channel featuring lots of alt-right and conspiracy theory material. Kelvin Alp and Hannah Spierer and the hosts.
• The Voices for Freedom women - Claire Deeks, Alia Bland, Libby Johnson - they're the ones with the teal and green signs all over the place, and are, supposedly, just a bunch of “mums” who just want their freedom.
• Chantelle Baker, who's a prominent so-called “independent journalist”.

Interestingly, the documentary covered a lot of the people that Mark and I have been talking about in our newsletters over the past couple of years. But it also covered some people who were drawn into the protests, who were not leaders. Of the three people covered, two were still in support of the protests, but one - Josie - had seen through it and come out of the rabbit hole.

Unsurprisingly, the documentary has raised the ire of those featured in it, with the prominent parties calling it a “hit piece”.

Chantelle Baker has (had - see later) a large following on social media platforms and was very much at the centre of the Wellington occupation. On the final day, when the police moved in to close the protest down, she was doing her live streaming, and providing commentary - from her perspective - on what she thought was happening.

In her commentary on the protests, she claimed, variously, that the fires, which initially involved protestors' tents, and then the childrens' playground, were started by police, and/or Antifa, with zero evidence.

The documentary played a lot of her live stream coverage of the protests, but it seems she doesn't like that her coverage was used in the documentary - going on to say that it was defamatory. I find this laughable.

The thing is, the documentary was pretty clever in the way it was done - for the main part, it presented actual footage from the people involved - playing Baker's livestream videos - essentially letting her demonstrate, in her own words, exactly the misinformation she was spreading.

It's difficult to see how this could be defamation - if anything, she's defamed herself by letting the public see, through the documentary, just the sort of unhinged content she's putting out. And, of course, the first defence against a charge of defamation is the truth. Nothing in the documentary was dishonest, and in my opinion, it presented a pretty clear picture of what was happening.

She's also claimed that the funding by NZ on Air, which uses taxpayer money, somehow makes it a government propaganda piece. Again, this is laughable. NZ on Air are independent of the government - and it takes a particularly conspiracy theory fuelled mind to try to make that connection.

And, as an aside, these sorts of “independent media” outlets aren't subject to the scrutiny and standards of the traditional media. They can essentially say what they like, usually with zero consequences for reporting misinformation.

Moving on to Voices for Freedom, they are claiming that the documentary has given them a boost in their subscriber numbers. Of course, this can't be verified - we have to take their word for it. And they hardly have a stellar reputation for honesty. Of note is that they're known for spending large sums of money on campaigns - we've seen their flyers in the nation's letterboxes, and a number of huge billboards appearing throughout the country, but nobody knows where the money is coming from, though they've claimed that it's mostly from small donations from their supporters.

Voices for Freedom are a limited liability company, with Deeks, Bland and Johnson listed as directors. They've been around since late 2020, and their website claims that they'll be transparent in their funding. Well, nearly two years on, there's been nothing which reveals where their money is coming from.

So, the big concern right now is that there's a new protest happening this week. On Tuesday, the various freedom groups will be back at parliament - this time organised by Destiny Church's Brian Tamaki under his Freedoms and Rights Coalition group.

Tamaki has put the call out for a meeting at parliament - and they're planning on running a mock trial of politicians, for supposed “crimes against humanity”, calling for a vote of no confidence in the government and a snap election.

The interesting thing is that Tamaki has organised quite a few protests over the past couple of months, but the turnouts seem to be dwindling - potentially an embarrassment for him should only a few people turn up. This last week, in a livestream to his flock, he was saying that people must take time off work, or even quit their jobs, to attend the protest. I guess this is an interesting way of bolstering the numbers.

But, I'm uneasy about Tuesday. While the protest was shut down in March, these people didn't go home and realise the error of their ways and thinking. There's certainly potential for it to turn quite nasty. And if people turn up to counter protest, there's certainly potential for some nasty conflict.

I'm hopeful that the police will have their act together and keep a careful lid on things. At the very least, they're shutting down the roads in advance, which limits the ability of protestors to move vehicles in and do a Protest 2.0.

I have wondered about who has watched the documentary. It would be great to see some analytics on that. It's quite long, running at just over an hour, and that might put some people off it. It obviously resonates with people with an interest in politics and in countering conspiracy theories, but I wonder whether it's largely academic to a big chunk of the population.