Why Don’t We Trust Ordinary People?

Anyone following social media over the new year will know that the widespread existence of Muslim rape gangs in the United Kingdom has exploded on X, largely thanks to Elon Musk’s focus.

What’s astonishing - apart from the industrial scale rape and torture of young white women - is how long this has gone on. Many people knew it was happening 25 years ago. Some say the origin of these rape gangs may date back to the 80s.

Yet all this time mainstream media, police, politicians and academics paid inadequate attention to the unfolding horror, not just because they feared being called racist for even talking about it, but significantly, because they decided that ordinary people could not be trusted with this information. If ordinary people were in full possession of the facts, heaven help us. Their reaction might fuel racism and/or an intense dislike of Islam or Muslims. And that would shatter the myth of happy multi-cultural Britain.

So for the sake of racial harmony, up to quarter of a million girls, maybe more, were sacrificed.

Fortunately to my knowledge New Zealand has not experienced anything like this, but we still do have the same fear of ordinary people, the same response by institutional elites wishing to shield ordinary folk from dangerous counter elite views.

Since it closed late 2024, we no longer have The Disinformation Project (DP) keeping an eye out for the “genocidal” views of ordinary folk who refuse to believe men can be women and are branded far right extremists for their apostasy. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other organisations charged with keeping watch on the illicit views of the great unwashed.

Take Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa (HEIA) run by Dr Chris Wilson, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Auckland University, and funded by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC). In HEIA’s sights are the public’s hateful opinions on hot button issues such as gender, race, climate change and views on Covid-19.

The problem is, at least on the issue of gender, their assessment of what is or isn’t acceptable, is not shared by most ordinary people. For HEIA adheres to the religion of gender ideology in both its language and in its assumptions, a religion rejected by the majority of New Zealanders in regular polls and surveys.

Examples of the sort of gender hate speech that concerns HEIA in its reports included the role of transgender people in competitive sports and sex education within New Zealand. Yes, concerning but not for the reasons HEIA posits.

HEIA note that a claim last February that the breast milk of transgender women is comparable to the breast milk of “cisgender” women prompted “an increase in anti-LGBT and HII” within their data, “referring to child abuse and other topics.” Can it really be hateful if most ordinary folk looked at that claim and felt queasy?

As well, the HEIA report highlighted anxiety surrounding perceptions of a widespread gender ideology being implemented within schools, governments and international institutions, reminiscent, they say, of cultural warfare ideas imported from the United States.

Another common trend, warns HEIA, is the “denial that transgender people exist” and that they are the product of “poor mental health or fetish.”

From HEIA’s point of view, any deviation from gender ideology is hate speech. Yet the sort of posts that trouble HEIA read like sanity to me - and if survey results and polls mean anything - to most ordinary New Zealanders.

The HEIA report also covers hate speech expressing anti-semitic, anti-Maori, anti-immigrant, Islamophobia, Anti-Asian/Southeast Asian, Anti-Black and Ableist sentiments. Plus it monitors alternative views on Covid-19 and vaccines, climate change, the impact on farmers and racial segregation such as separate spaces for Maori and Pacifica students at Auckland University. If you’re wondering what they regard as hateful, it’s instructive to read their examples. You could be forgiven for thinking that any view that challenges the official narrative constitutes hate speech.

HEIA are not the only outfit monitoring ordinary folk. There’s also New Zealand's National Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism as well as Internet New Zealand, both located in Wellington.

The former is not particularly active, mainly supporting PhDs on topics such as “Understanding the nature and wellbeing impacts of anti-transgender extremism in Aotearoa.” Their funding was significantly reduced last year.

The latter, Internet New Zealand, is a well-heeled, non-profit organisation dedicated to managing the nz domain name. They also fund groups that align with their mission to promote accessible, secure internet.

To this end, Internet NZ provided the Disinformation Project with a $100,000 grant in 2023 to strengthen the country’s “resilience to disinformation.” They continue to fund groups peddling gender misinformation. Of course, that’s not how they put it. They call it “LGBTQIA+ specific cultural training for organisations, including not-for-profits and businesses” and funding to develop training “which specifically addresses the ways misinformation and disinformation impact transgender and non-binary identities.

Academic and elite concern about the rebellious views of ordinary Kiwis is not limited to gender as featured in this story. That’s just my obsession.

When it comes to race, it appears less is more. For instance, New Zealanders only found out about the 2019 He Puapua report on Maori self-determination when it was leaked in 2021. And there’s no shortage of voices lamenting public discussion about the Treaty Principles Bill. As for a referendum of the hoi polloi on the bill - out of the question.

All over the world I see ordinary people, tired of being patronised and lied to by their betters, rising up and voting for a counter elite prepared to articulate their concerns. In Europe that has led to the election of immigration and Islam critic, Geert Wilders from the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, a surge in support for groups like Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), the rise of Reform in the UK, and Trump in the United States.

Some journalists have called it a class war. Batya Ungar-Sargon’s Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women makes a compelling case. Others have concocted convoluted explanations involving narratives of a village and a river.

The truth, in my view, is much simpler. Whenever I hear the descriptors ‘far right’ and ‘populist’, I hear instead the frustrated lament of the despised and disregarded ordinary citizen.