New Zealand Asks For My Help With Their Memory Hole

Well, there goes my planned vacation in New Zealand!

A lot has happened in the nearly two and half years since the Christchurch massacre. Cast your mind back through the Corona fog, if you will, to March 15, 2019, when a young man named Brenton Tarrant massacred fifty-one people in two different mosques in Christchurch, the largest city on South Island in New Zealand.

Mr. Tarrant’s evil actions prompted a renewed push against “Islamophobia” all over the world, but especially in New Zealand.

The killer left behind a manifesto, copies of which immediately began disappearing from the Internet. As is my usual practice, I made it available [pdf] to those who wished to download it and read it.

When New Zealand cracked down on anyone who possessed a copy of the manifesto, making it a jailable offense, I warned our Kiwi readers that they should not avail themselves of that link if they wanted to stay out of prison.

Dymphna posted her own inimitable take on what happened in “Pigs and Monkeys and Mossad, Oh My!” (It was one of the last major posts she wrote before her death.)

A couple of days ago, just before my phone and Internet went out, I received an email from a fellow in the Department of Internal Affairs in New Zealand. Before you read the text, I must respectfully request that you refrain from contacting the department to complain. There’s no need to intervene on my behalf. I have nothing to fear from the New Zealand government, but there’s no sense in poking the beast excessively in his lair.

Here’s what the email said:

Dear Gates of Vienna

Good afternoon,

I am an investigator within the Digital Safety, Digital Violent Extremism Team at the Department of Internal Affairs in New Zealand. The Digital Violent Extremism Team is dedicated to preventing the spread of unlawful online content that promotes, supports or encourages violent extremism. We strive to keep New Zealanders safe from online harm, such as content relating to the Christchurch attacks which deeply affected NZ communities.

Recently, we received information regarding a PDF document hosted by your website: https://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/tarrant-manifesto.pdf The PDF is the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto.

The Christchurch terrorist published a manifesto containing his beliefs and plans online, the same day he livestreamed the Christchurch mass shooting attacks that took place on March 15th 2019. Tragically 51 people were killed and 50 were injured that day.

Following the tragic events, various Heads of State, Government and Leaders from the tech sector around the world have committed to what is known as ‘The Christchurch Call’.(1) The ‘call’ rests on the conviction that a free, open and secure internet offers extraordinary benefits to society and that respect for freedom of expression is fundamental, however no one has the right to create and share terrorist and violent extremism content online.

The Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto has been classified as ‘objectionable’ (banned) under New Zealand legislation.(2)

We have confirmed that the PDF document hosted at the aforementioned link is the manifesto, which is objectionable in New Zealand.

Could you please advise me of whether you can assist with having this file taken down from your site or alternatively blocking visibility of the PDF from New Zealand in order to comply with our law?

We would greatly appreciate the assistance you can provide in reducing the harm to the New Zealand public, the victims and their families.

I hope you are willing to assist us and look forward to hearing from you in due course.

With best regards,

(1)https://www.christchurchcall.com
(2)NZ Films, Videos and Classifications Act 1993

Ngā mihi nui

[Name redacted]
Inspector of Publications
Warrant Card [redacted]
Manager: Digital Violent Extremism, Digital Safety
Toi Hiranga | Policy, Regulation and Communities
Phone Work [redacted]
Te Tari Taiwhenua | The Department of Internal Affairs

This was the text of my reply:

Thank you for getting in touch with Gates of Vienna.

I am an American citizen who resides in the United States, and, as such, am not under the jurisdiction of New Zealand Law. The company that provides web hosting for my site is located in the United States, and therefore lies outside the jurisdiction of New Zealand Law.

I believe strongly in the free flow of information, whether good or bad. Mr. Tarrant is an abhorrent person who committed an atrocity; nevertheless, it is useful for all interested citizens to understand the way the mind of a homicidal psychopath works. In addition, with the passage of time, his manifesto will gain historical relevance, just as Mein Kampf and the Koran have historical relevance today. Despite their violent, psychopathic content, the last two works may still be legally published in New Zealand, if I am not mistaken. In any case, the publication of all three is legal in the United States.

I intend to continue to make Mr. Tarrant’s manifesto available to anyone who wishes to download it. My doing so does not mean I support or agree with its sentiments; quite the opposite, in fact.

You say you work for the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs. The key word there is “Internal”: I am external to New Zealand; therefore my actions and activity are of no concern to you.

Cordially,

Ned May
a.k.a. “Baron Bodissey”
https://gatesofvienna.net

Once again, if you want to read the killer’s manifesto, it’s available here.

The extreme totalitarian actions of the New Zealand government are bizarre. Does Te Tari Taiwhenua really think that their citizens are unable to tell right from wrong? Or do they assume that Mr. Tarrant’s sentiments would have such broad appeal that those who read them might be inspired to cast aside their moral upbringing and imitate the murderer’s example?

In either case, they must have a low opinion of their own citizenry.

Note to commenters: I will treat remarks about Brenton Tarrant the same way I have treated those about Anders Behring Breivik, and summarily delete any expressions of support or approval for his vile actions. I don’t care how you justify it; you might as well save yourself the trouble if your sentiments happen to run in that direction.

26 thoughts on “New Zealand Asks For My Help With Their Memory Hole

  1. I never thought in a million years that a country of the west would work so Orwellian to shut down what is written or spoken because it may hurt someone’s feelings. Oh have the mighty fallen in such a short period of time. The west is dead, long live the west!

    • If it hurts the white feelings it is okay if it hurts the Catholic Jewish or Protestant Calvinists it’s okay but you guessed it if it hurts …. Dare we say who ….. So much for free countries that’s not permissible , is it?

  2. Oh Baron, I really do enjoy how you tell those modern day stasi to very politely get bent. Brilliant!

  3. The Manifest is important for the following reasons:

    1) People will know the killer’s true motivation, so they will have full knowledge of their profile without intermediaries.

    2) By obtaining this knowledge, people can prepare themselves not to fall into the trap of narratives, in which the press and some dishonest politicians, as well as non-governmental organizations, who try to paint the criminal with the ideological profile of interest groups, with the intent of trying to criminalize certain groups and ideas that have nothing to do with the case.

    3) It is the original source of an assassin whose profile can lead to other individuals, and prevents the dishonest use of the Manifesto to distort political interest groups, who can misrepresent it to use it in disinformation campaigns, in which they will use certain features of the Manifesto as a parameter for prosecuting innocent people.

    This gentleman is probably just doing his job, like a trained dog, but he should be aware, as well as his owners, that all the actions of the authorities around the case served no purpose, other than to demonize political groups, beyond of arbitrary weapons confiscation actions in New Zealand. If the case was used politically by the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, then imagine the Manifesto, which they are trying to hide at all costs?

    • “beyond of arbitrary weapons confiscation actions in New Zealand”

      I do not understand this “beyond of” expression. What does it mean? Maybe it’s a local New Zealand expression.

  4. It’s all about control. They’re not really asking you anything. They’re trying to figure out how to get at you.

  5. Assuming for a moment that this New Zealand government official is legit, how to do justify erasing from history the actions, deeds and words of the plethora of homicidal maniacs the world has suffered? Are we to eliminate all reminders of the Holocaust, Stalin’s murderous reign, Pol Pot’s killing fields, Mao’s re-education camps or even the Oklahoma City Bombing? Excellent job in pointing out that Mein Kamf is readily available in NZ to this pin head. But wait, the next thing will be that governments will claim ownership of these materials and demand they be removed under DCMA.

    • Barney, this has happened in the case of Mein Kampf.
      The legit copyright belonged to the state of Bavaria in its qualtiy of being heir to the private Hitler leftovers.
      They only renounced to block copies a few years ago and thus allowed a new critical approach to the greater public. There is now a commented edition on the market
      that however is not a huge seller, still being unreadable blablah.

  6. I’m just amazed you’ve managed to find a government official who’s even dumber than Heels Up Harris.

    I would have responded with the same answer Leonidas gave to Xerxes at Thermopylae, but your answer is definitely more subtle, brilliant, ironic, and completely wasted on such a moron as that New Zealand lickspittle.

    • Well, better not celebrate my success too soon. He is, after all, a government apparatchik with unlimited taxpayer funds at his disposal. I’m still awaiting a further response. The NZ government may not be done with me just yet.

      • I was eager to read your reply to NZ official. It was better than I expected: truthful, logical, judicial expertise, nuanced and sensible.

        They are not “finished” I believe that. Given CAIR the real overarching judge of the west, just one beck or sign to Biden and his handlers, will do the job.

        It’s the land of the brave. But CAIR are installed as braver.

      • Oh but Baron, don’t forget or underestimate the Christchurch call, as the call was called for by the great mare Shahcinda. Who got facebook google and the others together to form the new Internal/External, Global (well Western at least) Propaganda and Espionage Department known to us special folk in the know, as “The 5 Noses”.
        Just a friendly heads up. Cos there’s NOTHING they can’t sniff out and destroy. Phoohey! to your constitutional amendments!

        • Lol, The 5 Noses.
          I haven’t heard The 5 Eyes program called that before.
          But if they are spying on internal citizens in an attempt to monitor or control speech that certainly is nosey.

          The way they billed it was a signal intelligence (SIGINT) effort against foreign enemies, including terrorists.
          According to Wikipedia the program has thousands of collection stations such as a military base or ship, which are uniquely identified by SIGINT Activity Designators. In March 2013 over 500 were actively sniffing data in that month.
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGINT_Activity_Designator
          But maybe the 5 noses is a different, new program, or the 5 eyes expanded to include help from big tech.

  7. Dear mandarins within the Digital Franz Kafka Et Cetera all over the world,

    Good morning,

    I am an investigator of Freedom Team within the Free World. The Freedom Team is dedicated to preventing the spread of totalitarian ideologies that support or encourage violent Jihadists and Antifa thugs, among others. We strive to keep the West safe from Globalist and Communist harm, such as censorship related to any violent attacks.

    Recently, we received information regarding the censorship of the motives of several terror attacks.

    A free and open internet offers essential benefits to society and freedom of expression is fundamental. FULLSTOP. No ‘but’, no ‘however’.

    No one has the right to restrict the freedom of speech. Could you please advise me of whether you can assist with abandoning your censorship efforts, in order to comply with Freedom?

    We would greatly appreciate the assistance you can provide in reducing the harm to the West; including the victims and their families.

    I hope you are willing to assist us and look forward to hearing from you before Freedom is completely destroyed.

    With best regards,

    Standing Freeman

  8. Wow, I wasn’t aware that we’re having a One World Government already with it’s seat in Wellington.

    Why do I have the funny feeling that your eloquent reply to the New Zealand Stasi-operative will have them having a Hissy-fit and run around like Headless Chickens?
    Tyrants cannot stand of being defied and have their illogical academented logic questioned, and when someone does, the only thing is to lash out.
    I guess that “Gates of Vienna” will be banned in New Zealand now.

    Also, who do you think Jacinda called first to compalin about this attrocity of your defiance against her Rule of arbitrary “Sharia Law”?
    Creepy Joe, Kamala or their Overlord Xi Jinping?

  9. Australia and New Seeland are full of great surfers and scuba divers. All the party people go there. But when it comes to real philosophy and politics, those little islands seem to be lost at sea.

  10. I can confirm that the violent and abhorrent Islamic manifesto, called the “Koran” remains available in New Zealand. It seems the communist government here thinks that its members will somehow be protected from Islamic extremism as long as they whimper on about the nutty Australian that murdered all those folk in Christchurch. Meanwhile, as they launch their “hate speech” suppression of free speech laws, the government ministers, including the Prime Minister, can’t even define what hate speech is. The PM seems worshipped overseas, but here in Godzone we regard her as a bit thick.

  11. “bleat for peace” contains an assonance, so it makes for a slogan, albeit a meaningless one. I despair of those who use bleating to promote tyranny, apart from God, there is no peace, and shutting down free speech will never, ever promote peace.

    Tyranny is kept at pay either by violence or by exposure and awarenes. Violence should be a last resort only when free speech fails. There is very little in Tarrant’s speil, that I disagree with, however, I also know that most of those whom he shot were innocent of nothing other than seeking a better life in a free country.

    In many ways, Islamic immigration is like leaving California for Texas, but bringing one’s democratic affiliation with. A Democrat Texas would be just as unpleasant as California has become.

    Muslim immigrants need to understand that in setting foot in Rome, they agree to become Romans, or at least to abide by the laws and customs of Rome. By his act of brutal terrorism in somebody else’s country, Tarrant became part of the problem and made everything that much more difficult. Jihadism is nasty, but the real problem is an elite that will use any means at their disposal to destroy Judeo-Christianity and the influence of the bible thus are Muslims just pawns in a greater and nastier enterprise. Tarrant played god, and as such, is just as bad as any elites who are also playing god. Jahovah is love – he commands us to love our enemies whether they be Muslims in a Mosque or jumped up, bumptious NZ officials, safe in their govermnment offices.

    Today we have had a day of (balloon) firebombs here in Sderot, I wonder if New Zealand gives money (aid) to Gaza to assist them in hurting Israeli Jooz?

    I wonder if the Hamas Charter is freely available in Christchurch, encouraging as it does, the murder of all Jews….

    Hypocrisy rules OK, even in NZ!

    • ‘Muslim immigrants need to understand that in setting foot in Rome, they agree to become Romans, or at least to abide by the laws and customs of Rome.’

      They do not agree to anything of the sort, furthermore, they are encouraged in the belief that they are expressly exempted from any concessions in that way.

  12. “unlawful online content ”

    The very concept of such a thing should abhorrent.
    I guess New Zealand is just a North Korea that isn’t starving.

  13. Baron,

    Congratulations on an eloquent reply to a dreary bureaucrat.

    This brings me to something I have been meaning to ask you. Speaking of tyranny, there is a book, published in 1969, which is an unparalleled study of Tyranny: “Tyranny. A Study in the Abuse of Power” by Maurice Latey. The book has been out-of-print and almost unobtainable at a reasonable price for many years, but is blindingly relevant to our circumstances today. For example, it gives an excellent description of the defining characteristics of fascism, as displayed by Hitler after he had won the Chancellorship of Germany running on a (then discarded) socialist platform.

    I’ve been working on digitizing the book. I’ll probably have to buy a devoted book digitizer to finish, which I’m willing to do. I wonder if you have some advice on how to make the pdf available for general use. As I mentioned, I tried researching its copyright status, and from what I can find, any copyright has long since expired.

    • The only thing I can think of is to let me upload a copy to Gates of Vienna that people can download. I can publicize it to some extent, especially if you provide me with a short introduction giving an explanation about the book, a bio of the author, etc.

  14. The biggest reason to keep such documents available, and why this one disappeared so fast, in my opinion, is it disproves the narrative, and as a bonus provides yet another example that shows the mainstream media and a whole lot of politicians are blatant liars that are feeding the public propaganda.

    Predictably when this happened the dishonest media sang a unified chorus that he was a right wing extremist. They always do this and they are always wrong, at least that I’m aware of. These people never share the values or views of conservatives or people on the right end of the political spectrum, but most criminals and terrorists have a lot in common ideologically with the left, which the leftist media often tries to hide, if not glorify (such as when they praise antifa riots that result in torched businesses and buildings, etc.).

    He’s no different. In perusing his manifesto, the only political leanings he expressed were those on the left: Calling himself an eco-fascist, expressing concern about global warming and the psycho view that by killing people he is helping reduce global warming, having a section slamming and condemning conservatives, saying he wants to destroy the U.S.’s 2nd amendment gun rights, etc.

    To be truthful, his manifesto did not have a strong political theme, mostly focusing on his view that Muslims need to be attacked and harmed, but when he did veer into his political leanings, they were definitely on the left side.

    Thank you for posting this, and for the bureaucrat who’s overzealous efforts to censure free speech resulted in the awareness of the availability of this document giving an audience a chance to review it.

    PS – On the matter of being able to fact check the propaganda:
    Even after all these years, typing “Christ Church mosque shootings” into duckduckgo.com (which is much less pervasive in pushing political ideology than Google) results in Duck Duck Go giving a side bar next to the search results that includes: “Motive: far-right extremism, islamophobia …”

    Without the valuable service of this article and providing a link to the document, it would be hard if not impossible to personally debunk that and prove the intuitively real reason was anti-islamic violence, by a violent leftist cut out of the same cloth as Extinction Rebellion I might add.

    Thank you for posting this article.

  15. Hmmm…, Thanks for that info. Yes this country sure isn’t the great place it once was. I remember a similar request (it may have been here) from “Netsafe” Another NZ govt outfit attempting to extend it’s overreach to the U.S.
    I can tell it’s genuine as half of the identifying info is in (Maori) a language illegible to 99.9999% of people. And although it’s now officially one of our languages, it sure won’t be mine, as I am (as far as I know) %100 British European with 0% desire to read, speak or learn a tongue as foreign to me as Urdu.
    In the past few days I received, 1st a text from my Dr, followed by a text from the Ministry of Health, followed by an email from Ministry of Health … “Kia Ora Brent” (They’ve lost me already) blah blah “Vaccine” blah blah “Ready now” blah blah “come in and….”
    So it’s all go around here. Not sure how long they’re gonna wait for a reply before moving to plan B.
    Time I withdrew from this evermore unpleasant society further, Sadly.
    I’ll keep things light and pleasant as I know by now I must be being monitored. It’s hard to hold in so much disapproval of my own country and most especially it’s current govt and not voice as much.

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