Linda Williams promotes Antifa website Paparoa internationally via an associated international socialist organisation Hope not Hate. And let’s be clear, Hope not Hate, Peace-Action and Antifa are all different names for the same socialist union franchise. Each person starts their own group to collect cash personally for their efforts.
An example is how they worked together to protest against FREE SPEECH at Aotea Square on August 3 2018, taken from the facebook organisers (Tamaki Anti-Fascist) event page:
This from Hope not hate UK:
The creators of Paparoa consider it their “sincere tribute to the victims of the terrorist massacre in Christchurch” and call on all of us to “honour them by ensuring racism becomes permanently off-limits in Aotearoa/NZ.” To learn more about this effort, I spoke to Linda Williams, one of the founders of the site, to learn more.
Can you explain what the aims of Paparoa are and what motivated those behind it to create it?
Paparoa was created in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque massacre. It was a day of horror that most kiwis will never forget. 51 Muslims were murdered by a lone wolf who had been blinded by the “Great Replacement” theory.
We’re not your typical antifa collective. Public outrage was so widespread that a lot of ‘everyday’ people signed on within days. This has given us deep roots into a lot of communities. But working people are more cautious about becoming targets, so we decided to anonymise everybody. That is, we’re building a membership-driven organisation with people that don’t (and can’t) know each other! It’s a mind jam at first (how do you keep out infiltrators?) but we’ve found a logistical way through.
Whilst directly targeting Muslims in New Zealand, the Christchurch attack was distinctly international – the killer attempted to garner an international audience, was inspired by far-right ideas from around the globe, and was in contact with the international far right. How do you think groups across the world fighting back against hate can work better to beat this far-right internationalisation?
Isn’t it ironic that they are acting as globalists? I think the answer to your question is data. Large amounts of data. Data drawn from antifa organisations and NGOs and amassed to the point where it becomes information. Then more, and better, to the point where it becomes insight and action.
Why has nobody come forward with a project to network all the databases that community organisations have built up over the years? The Christchurch murders might never have happened if we’d had access to information from Australia, France or Austria. And just as importantly, a publicly accessible global database would be a huge disincentive to lone wolves and shitposters.
The Paparoa site says “Given the current climate in Aotearoa/NZ, most racist groups have disbanded. This means there are a lot of lone wolves out there”. Assuming this is reference to the fallout from Christchurch, could you explain for people unfamiliar with the New Zealand far right how this disbandment occurred?
There’s not a single white supremacist group still operating in public. They’ve either dissolved, disbanded, or gone totally underground. Websites and social media sites are gone, thousands of shitposts have been deleted, and members are being monitored and publicly exposed (we’re proud to be helping in every way we can). Their guns have been taken off them and many are losing their jobs.
Every time one of them pokes their head up now, the media and police are all over them. We’re not naive – we know this season is just an anomaly – but when they finally re-emerge under new names there will be a whole new infrastructure in place to deal with them.