Last week we analysed the three segments of Mr Gower’s TV-presented thesis on the alleged threat from non-black racists in NZ, thinking that was going to be all – but no, he was back again on Sunday 19 May in the 6 pm news bulletin with another 6:37 minute installment (at least not the lead item this time), and may have still more to come.
Sunday night’s piece was more of a history lesson from his perspective, rather than covering topics particularly relevant to the here and now; but having examined the pieces from last week, we should say something about it.
It begins with one of the many police raids in the last 2 months on those who have stances on Globalist mass migration opposite to those of PM Jacinda, recorded in this case by the target of the visit himself on a camera phone. The pink(!) shirted policeman totting a pistol and an unarmed female constable didn’t want the conversation recorded (why?) and departed after a few minutes.
Then Mr Gower announces, apparently dejectedly, that despite all the raids, the police have made zero arrests for “white supremacy” as it was all about “community reassurance.” Hmm.
Then cut to a scene from the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers in which “Nazis” have to jump off a rural bridge somewhere in the U.S. to avoid a car being driven at high speed towards them “and are portrayed as sad, bumbling idiots.”… “Gang expert Jarrod Gilbert says that’s how the ‘far right’ have often been viewed here.”
Gower continues: “But there has always been a dangerous element to the white power movement here. Gilbert describes them as ‘hard-as-nails skinhead street-gang kind of guys’ who thrived in the South Island. The most notorious was the Fourth Reich, which terrorised Nelson and the West Coast.”
The members of this last group, founded in a Christchurch prison in 1994 were violent, but there is a problem in describing them as ‘white supremacists’ as members were a mixed bag of races.¹ In 2011, co-founder Malcolm Chaston was convicted of the murder of (white) Christchurch woman Vanessa Pickering, and sentenced to life in prison. That seems to have been the end of media reports of the group.
According to Mr Gower, “Like the Nazis they emulated, most of the skinheads’ venom was aimed at Jews.” One problem with that statement is the four victims he identifies of the Fourth Reich gang weren’t Jews. The other problem is that skinheads are not ideologically motivated, by and large; they are an expression of an alienated youth subculture. They have provided the street presence for a few self-styled ‘nationalist’ grouplets in NZ.
Black Power and the Mongrel Mob have been associated with the Maori Party, to the extent that when that party was founded these gangs were represented on the party’s national committee. Shall we now say that any Maori political manifestation is intrinsically violent and gang related? Silly, but it’s the usual double-standard.
“But then, in 2001, 9/11 [the major Muslim terrorist attacks in America of 11 September 2001] happened and the extreme far-right added a new ‘enemy’ to the list. Sociologist Paul Spoonley says this led to new followers.” Of who — the skinheads? Hardly. Incidentally, one notes Gower’s use of “extreme far right” which says a lot about his need to hype up his utterances to the max.
Next Gower introduces Joris De Bres, the Race Relations Commissioner from 2002 until 2013. “Alarmed at an increase in threats against Muslims, he repeatedly asked the Government and police to start recording crimes motivated by hatred and racism.”
One could safely assume that most crimes of violence are motivated by hate, unless they are incidental to a crime of robbery or theft, Mr Gower? There is the problem, too, of how to decide if racism was the motive – perhaps in those rare instances that the victim and perpetrator were of different races and that there was no other apparent motive? And is that not recorded by police?
“I don’t think we’re sufficiently aware that we do have people among us who do those things and who have a real and worrying hatred,” De Bres told Newshub.
According to Gower, De Bres started collecting data on this theme himself. Given that it was theoretically one of his roles, one might have expected him to.
“During his time as Commissioner there were more than 100 race-related crimes reported in the media.” Well, that is over a period of 11 years, so hardly a big number considering the number of crimes that occur, and one can understand police not considering it a significant problem — it wasn’t.
The narrative returns to Sociologist Paul Spoonley: “They are part of a big international network and that’s a big challenge here in New Zealand, just not realising that we’re now hooked into this conspiratorial, racial vilification, white supremacist network,” Spoonley says.
A big problem with that last comment is that it contradicts what Spoonley said on this radio interview with Mike Hosking in March 2017 : “we should not worry about ‘white supremacists’ in NZ.” It would actually have been helpful for both Gower and Spoonley to define what they mean by that term, but they don’t
There are a couple of sound bites from Muslim females about displays of hostility they have encountered on the streets. It seems that Mr Gower, along with Jacinda, don’t seem to realise that Islamic clothing is provocative to many who’ve seen reported on numerous news items over the last 20 years literally hundreds of Islamic terror attacks motivated by what’s in their Koran. The obvious thing for Muslima would be to not go around wearing that clothing — there’s no requirement for it in their scriptures — until such time as the frequency of these events diminishes to pre 9/11 levels. Easy.
So where is Mr Gower going with all this? It seems that the pending Jacinda government ‘Well-being’ budget is going to include expenditure for ‘fighting white supremacy’. Again, what is it? Gower has so far totally failed to produce anything that merits special revenue directed to fighting this ambiguous notion. It probably means that the Office of the Race Relations Commissioner is going to have more funds. Time and again, the commissioners have shown themselves to be bigoted against any manifestation of pro-European heritage. Other than the original ‘conciliator’ in 1971, Sir Guy Powles, all subsequent race relations commissioners have done nothing to justify the continued existence of this branch of government and the question that should be contemplated is whether taxpayers’ money should be saved by its abolition.
The problem for Newshub in broadcasting overblown, inaccurate reports like those of Patrick Gower on minor problems is that in future, Newshub viewers will have an “oh yeah?” response at best; at worst “oh no, not him again” followed by a press on the TV remote to another channel.
- An inquiry of our own produced this statement from someone in the know: “They had a big mix, even two guys who were part-Chinese. Their last name Sewhoi, one of them killed a guy. Their leader and one of the murderers was half Samoan. One of the other murderers was Maori, they had a few half-casts. They were much like the Aryan brotherhood in America, who will take anyone who helps them.”