Who Poses the Bigger Threat: The Far Right, Or the Far Left?

Anyone Heard Of The 'Horseshoe Theory'? The notion that the political spectrum isn't really a straight line, but actually more of a horseshoe shape, is making something of a comeback in the 2020s. Its great appeal lies in the fact that it places those at the very ends of the Left-Right spectrum much closer to each other than to those at the centre. Listening to the diagnoses and proposed cures of those purporting to be opponents of the Far-Right, one is tempted to say: "If the horseshoe fits ..."

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 Intelligence 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 were, 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.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 4 June 2021.

Be Careful What You Wish For.

This Is What Counter-Terrorism Looks Like: Has the New Zealand Left forgotten already the enormous fuss they made about the ill-fated “Operation Eight”. How appalled they all were when the Police and other elements of the security services moved against a group of left-wing activists observed training in the Urewera Ranges with semi-automatic weapons and Molotov cocktails? Have they forgotten their outrage at the illegal use of surveillance equipment? The interception of e-mails. The heavy-handed raid on Ruatoki?

THERE’S A CURIOUS disconnect between the Left’s support for the Muslim community and its deep-seated mistrust of the security services. On the one hand, they are demanding that white supremacists be hunted down and brought to justice – by any means necessary – while, on the other, they are wary of expanding the already extensive powers of the secret state. The problem, of course, is that it’s very difficult to achieve the former without promoting the latter. It is, however, far from certain that the Left understands this.

One of the most consistent themes to emerge from the Left’s response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch Mosque Attacks is that of the authorities’ failure to identify and neutralise Brenton Tarrant’s terrorist operation. Unspoken in these critiques (most probably because those making them are unwilling to acknowledge the full implications of their own demands) is the expectation that, in order to guard against such a terrible crime ever happening again, the Ardern Government will oversee a significant expansion of the National Intelligence Community’s (NIC) counter-terrorist capabilities.

But what, exactly, would that look like? By what means could the activities of a Brenton Tarrant be detected? He had planned his operation with considerable care, always conscious of the need to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities. He understood the acute vulnerabilities of a democratic society and exploited them ruthlessly. Most particularly, he took advantage of our system’s fundamental assumption that people are motivated by good (or, at least, not illegal) intentions. By the time a society like our own realises that it is dealing with someone whose intentions are homicidally destructive – it is far too late.

To its credit, the Royal Commission recognised this core truth of the Christchurch Attacks: that only the intervention of pure chance could have prevented Tarrant from carrying out his deadly mission. The Left, however, remains unsatisfied. It refuses to accept that Tarrant was essentially unstoppable. With all its powers, surely the secret state could have intercepted Tarrant’s electronic communications? A proper network of spies and informants, buried deep in the white supremacist movement, would have had no difficulty in picking-up on this new member of the gun club; this obsessive body-builder at the gym; this traveller with the interesting collection of stamps in his passport.

But, what sort of society would that be? A society in which the state is permitted to eavesdrop on any and every communication without the benefit of a judicial warrant, would hardly merit the title of “democratic”. Likewise, any society in which every new face, every unguarded comment, is noted, recorded and reported to the security services by a vast secret network of spies and informants. A society, in short, bearing a striking family resemblance to the society of the (East) German Democratic Republic (GDR) and its state security (Stasi) protectors.

Is that really the direction in which the Left would like to see Aotearoa-New Zealand travel?

The scary thing is that it’s not entirely clear that such a society is not the Left’s ultimate goal. Not when its extreme antipathy to white supremacy and its determination to protect vulnerable groups from its “hate crimes” and “hate speech” are factored into the equation. After all, it was the Socialist Unity Party’s (as the GDR’s communists called themselves) fear of fascism, both within the GDR and across the border in the Federal Republic (West Germany) that led to the creation of the Stasi and the building of the Berlin Wall.

Is it really too fanciful to suggest that, just as the East German working-class sought protection from any resurgence of the recently defeated Nazis, so, too, does Aotearoa’s diverse multicultural society require protection from the hateful manifestations of white supremacy?

It is so very tempting to buy into the goals and methods of counter-terrorism when the terrorists are people you despise. Think back to the early 1960s, when the Black civil rights movement was being beaten, bombed and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. Recall the enraging photographs, published in Life magazine, of lounging Southern sheriffs, obscenely confident that their murderous suppression of African-Americans would go unpunished by the all-white juries empanelled to determine their guilt or innocence. Remember the increasingly shrill demands from liberal Americans that the FBI must “do something” to shut the Klan down. The unspoken assurance being that, whatever the FBI's “something” amounted to, the federal government would turn a blind eye.

And it worked. Of course it worked! Paid informers, midnight abductions, threats of torture, infiltration, disinformation, fostering extreme paranoia, deliberately inciting factional strife: such tactics always work. And when the Ku Klux Klan began to eat itself and its members started ratting each other out to the Feds, well, liberal America just set its jaw, shook the FBI Special Agents’ hands, and murmured “Well done.”

It is, however, important to remember that although the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Programme (COINTELPRO) may have started with the Klan, it didn’t end there – no siree! Having shut down the southern white supremacists, the FBI turned its attention to the burgeoning left-wing movement against the war in Vietnam; the Black Panther Party; Students for a Democratic Society. Because, that’s the thing about counter-terrorism in a capitalist society: it may crack down on the Right out of a sense of duty; but destroying the Left is something it will always do happily – for the pure pleasure of watching it burn.

Has the New Zealand Left forgotten already the enormous fuss they made about the ill-fated “Operation Eight”. How appalled they all were when the Police and other elements of the security services moved against a group of left-wing activists observed training in the Urewera Ranges with semi-automatic weapons and Molotov cocktails? Have they forgotten their outrage at the illegal use of surveillance equipment? The interception of e-mails. The heavy-handed raid on Ruatoki? Their message to the National Intelligence Community, then, was admirably clear: “Stop trying to turn New Zealand into a police state!”

Ah, yes, but Operation Eight was directed against the Left’s friends and comrades – wasn’t it? Thirteen years on, what would the response be if the news media broke a story about a group of heavily armed white supremacists undergoing military training in a remote South Island pine forest? How many on the Left would complain, I wonder, when scores of heavily-armed and armoured police officers descended on the little Canterbury town of Geraldine to apprehend the fascists?

Hopefully, the outcry in defence of New Zealanders’ civil liberties would be just as loud in 2020 as it was in 2007. Hopefully, the insistence on the presumption of innocence would be just as great.

Every state possesses the means to keep its citizens under strict control. The democratic trick is to ensure that it receives no encouragement to use them. If governments are incited to believe the worst of their citizens, then those citizens will not be slow to live up to their masters’ expectations.

Be careful what you wish for.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 15 December 2020.