On 30 June, TV3 Newshub screened a report by Patrick Gower on “white supremacists’ death threats against Winston Peters”. While the report does a good job of highlighting how the identitarians are the new face of neo-Nazism and their international connections, it ends up being a promotional video for Winston Peters.

The report shows a far-right rally in Christchurch against the UN Migration Compact a few weeks before the March 15 attacks, during which Philip Arps – currently in prison for sharing and promoting the video of the Christchurch killer – and others call Winston Peters a traitor and want him hanged. Arps can be seen making a throat-slitting gesture. Peters reaction to the clip is that – as always – evil foreigners are to blame for this, this time “a bunch of neo-Nazis in Austria”. Gower concludes from that, without Peters confirming it, that he is talking about Martin Sellner from the Austrian Identitarian Movement.

Sellner is currently under investigation by Austrian authorities for a possible involvement in the Christchurch attack by forming a terrorist organisation with the killer. Which explains why Peters now wants to put as much distance as possible between himself and anyone from the identitarian movement, here or elsewhere.

We’ve seen how deadly serious the far right are in their death threats. But why is someone shouting “hang him” at a rally worth a special investigation by Patrick Gower, when for example Green MP Golriz Ghahraman receiving far more explicit death threats is hardly worth a few lines in the media? A lot of people in this country have heard worse threats against them than “hang him”, and when they complained they were told to harden up and were accused of being against free speech.

Peters then goes on the attack against the National Party and in particular Simon Bridges for also being opposed to the UN Migration Compact, which culminates in this statement: “Mr Bridges was allowing a bunch of neo-Nazis in Austria to reflect his opinions and now he is part of a campaign to get someone murdered in our country.” While the first part is entirely correct, it is also not new. What Gower does not mention is that this information was revealed by the GCSB in a Parliamentary Committee on June 21.

It does seem that National’s position on the UN Migration Compact was based on a fear-mongering campaign of the far right. And the fact that they removed the petition against it from their web site immediately after the Christchurch attack shows that they knew it. This was then topped by Simon Bridges first lying that the petition was removed as part of periodic archiving and then later blaming a “junior staffer” for it.

But this accusation that Bridges fell for some fake news distributed by the far right seems a bit rich coming from Peters. Because only two years ago, in March 2017, it was Peters who was the hero of the identitarian European Students Association at Auckland University.

Back then, Peters held a speech at Victoria University about the value of free speech. The NZ Herald wrote at the time: “During his speech to students he questioned the media’s role in causing the ‘European’ group to shut down. He accused journalists of suppressing dissenting voices, and on his way out, unashamedly signed a cartoon of a frog named Pepe – the most popular symbol of the alt-right. … Asked about signing the Pepe poster, Peters said ‘give me a break, a student asked me to sign a piece of paper and I couldn’t see the whole thing’”.

This denial sounds rather lame, given that there is a picture of Peters proudly holding the poster up and smiling into the camera. But it made Peters the hero of the identitarians on 4chan. The Herald quotes some reactions: “Guess who just got my vote!!”, “Winston is /ourguy/, right? I want someone to get rid of the Indians and Chinese, those f****** are stealing our country right out from under us.”

The local identitarians also knew about the importance of influencing the upcoming elections: “As we all know, meme magic is enormously powerful. Bill English has lost the election, it belongs to Winston,” the Herald quotes one of them. They even wanted to take over NZ First: “We need to start influencing NZFirst both directly and through Young NZFirst.”

Peters was not objecting to any of this when it benefited him, but now is all enraged about it and wants the SIS to “investigate how Sellner and the European Identitarian movement influenced so many New Zealanders”.

It’s Peters’ old routine – condemn it when it comes from another country, use it when it comes from here. Unfortunately, Patrick Gower fell for this utter hypocrisy.