‘Anti-fascist Investigators’ Alerted Police After Detecting Christchurch Mosque Threat

A group of “anti-fascist investigators” alerted police to threats made against two Christchurch mosques after stumbling across an alleged reference to a car bomb on the 4chan website.

The group is now calling on the government to address the social causes behind the fascist radicalization of white youth.

On Friday, a 27-year-old man appeared in Christchurch District Court on charges of threatening death, after allegedly threatening to bomb two Christchurch mosques on the 4chan website.

He was placed in preventive detention and was granted the provisional suppression of the name.

The man was arrested on a St Albans property Thursday night, along with a second person who was later released.

But it was an anonymous activist group called Paparoa who was in charge of raising the alarm.

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In an anonymous email provided to NZME, a Paparoa spokesperson said they are a collective of “anti-fascist researchers.”

They were inspired to train in the wake of the attacks on the Christchurch mosque in March 2019.

“We came together when we saw that what was missing in anti-fascism [action] in Aotearoa, it was a group that focused on investigating and monitoring the fascists. Y [one that] You could work with community groups, academics, and journalists to expose them.

“Some of our researchers are relatively new, while others have been researching fascism and other forms of hatred, such as anti-Semitism, for decades.”

They say they monitor harmful threats online through “researchers” embedded in local communities and online spaces.

“We focus on hate content online, as today’s fascists primarily organize online, as opposed to earlier generations of fascists who organized in person, like skinhead gangs.”

The spokesman said terror threats tend to increase around the anniversary of the Christchurch mosque attacks.

“This year it happened through the threat of a 4chan car bomb, while last year, the fascist Action Zealandia member Sam Brittenden posted a message on Telegram, threatening to attack the Al Noor Mosque.

“The government should focus on creating and implementing policies and programs that address the social causes behind the fascist radicalization of particularly young white men.”

Paul Spoonley, a professor at Massey University, says the government should work with these types of groups to detect harmful threats.

“We really need to make this much more professional, we need adequate resources, and we need a government agency that works together with these groups. So it becomes official and well-resourced, rather than voluntary.”