If you thought Brian Tamaki was being far too quiet, unfortunately, it seems he didn’t take the hint when his latest Freedoms New Zealand puppet party bombed at the polls. The “Bishop of Bling” is planning a national march next month, on March 5, 2024, in Parliament grounds.
Why? He’s objecting to Chris Luxon supporting the anti-terrorist Christchurch Call, intended to forestall platforms providing avenues for hate speech on the Internet, as well as Dame Jacinda Ardern’s advocacy of curbs on anti-LGBTQI+ speech. This isn’t only his wheelbarrow- it’s also being pushed by the anti-abortion/anti-LGBTQI+ pressure group Right to Life New Zealand, based in Christchurch/Otautahi.
Tamaki has invited other right-wing subcultural ‘luminaries’ to the protest, which means New Conservatives, Loyal NZ, the Voices for “Freedom” anti-vaxxers, Family First and right-wing propaganda outlets Reality Check Radio (sic) and the Platform.
This is a defiant subcultural show of strength, intended to offset memories of how pathetically badly the three fundamentalist microparties: Freedoms New Zealand, New Zeal and the New Conservatives, all performed at last year’s general election. And apparently, Tamaki is now openly even attacking mainstream Maori, defending ACT’s divisive Treaty Principles Bill, after marching alongside the anti-Treaty misinformation group Stop Cogovernance at a Wellington rally last year.
Predictably, too, it seems that attacks on the Relationships and Sexuality Curriculum and transgender sporting participation have emboldened the extreme right. Still, given Tamaki’s traditional mutual antipathy against pakeha fundamentalists and their aversion to his self-aggrandizing cult of personality sect, it’ll be interesting to see how this works out. Or not.
