The detail: What will Billy Te Kahika Junior accomplish with the platforms?

The Detail is a daily news podcast produced for RNZ by Press room and is posted on Stuff with permission. Click on this link to subscribe to the podcast.

The conspiracy theories championed by Billy Te Kahika Junior are many, varied, and well documented.

The Advance NZ co-leader has claimed that billionaires have developed weaponized viruses to enslave humanity.

He claimed that the government was authorizing the military to enter people’s homes and plans to implement forced vaccinations.

READ MORE:
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* Doubts about Billy Te Kahika Jr.’s military and police background
* The Conspirators’ Choice: How the Farthest Fringes of Politics Are Making a Game for the Center

Repeat misinformation about the effects of fluoridation and 5G.

Many of Te Kahika’s views have been discredited by fact-checkers.

So why release it one more time, as the Circuit of Things research team did yesterday with the release of their Fake profit documentary film?

In today’s episode of The detail, Emile Donovan sits down with reporter Paula Penfold to discuss the team’s investigation into one of the country’s most polarizing political figures uncovered and what they hope to achieve by highlighting more inconsistencies in the narrative Te Kahika has built around himself.

The Stuff Circuit investigation revealed new information about Te Kahika in five main areas: her claims about her military background and her time at the police college; your business practices; his repetition of anti-Semitic conspiracies; and his behavior with women.

But with Advance NZ languishing with one percent in the polls, isn’t a 47-minute documentary like this simply giving Te Kahika’s profile oxygen that her numbers don’t justify?

“I think the reason is that … his influence is not directly political. He has had almost four million video views in the last two months. People are watching, listening, listening to his messages, and some of those messages are wrong. ”Says Penfold.

“When someone has so much traction, we think it is a useful investment of our time to take a look at the messenger, as opposed to the messages.”

Stuff Circuit’s treatment of these revelations around Te Kahika is forensic and factual: in a seated interview, Penfold presents him with a series of facts, and he grows more uncomfortable as the interview progresses, eventually storming out.

But none of the revelations are as explosive as the conspiracy theories that Te Kahika himself defends in his many videos on social media.

So is this really proportional? Te Kahika has claimed that Covid-19 is an international hoax perpetuated by governments; Who cares if he embellished his military record?

“I think it’s an old-fashioned way of looking at it, of treating it in a purely political way,” says Penfold.

“While you may not sign up for polls … you have an audience. You are influencing people. They are spending money on your party, taking action based on what you say.

“There is another element to it. People who know him talk that politics is not his ‘end goal’. He wants an influence that is broader and longer than politics.”

What could that endgame be?

“A woman who worked closely with him talks about her idea of ​​buying a plot of land and building a fortress. Establishing a place where people can come and be with him.”

“People who know him don’t think he’s a seat in the Hive. They think he wants to have his own following in any arena.”