New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters,
leader of the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party, is
continuing to support a fascistic smear campaign against
Green Party MP Benjamin Doyle.
Doyle spoke to the
media on April 9 for the first time following a fortnight of
vile and baseless slanders from Peters and numerous
far-right commentators, who implied that Doyle was a
paedophile. Peters had demanded that the Greens answer
“serious questions” about Doyle and called for the
police to investigate the MP.
The only “evidence”
produced by NZ First and its supporters are unremarkable
family photographs shared by Doyle on Instagram—including
some that included Doyle’s child—alongside
“inappropriate” language.
The hysterical campaign
focused on the fact that Doyle—who identifies as
non-binary and uses they/them pronouns—had named their
Instagram account “BibleBeltBussy” and labelled one set
of photos with the words “bussy galore.” For several
days, New Zealand’s media was dominated by discussion of
the meaning of the word “bussy,” a lewd slang term which
Doyle had foolishly adopted as a social media
nickname.
The demonisation of Doyle is
part of the National Party-led government’s efforts to
stoke divisions based on race, gender and sexuality, and to
divert public attention from its historic assault on
workers’ living standards and preparations for war. This
includes plans announced on April 7 to double the
country’s military spending, which will be paid for with
even deeper cuts to healthcare and other vital
services.
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Doyle told the media that he
had faced a “barrage of abuse and vitriol,” including
“a significant number of threats to my life and the safety
of my child and family.” The MP said their social media
posts had been “taken wildly out of context and
manipulated” in a campaign driven by homophobic and
transphobic lies and conspiracy theories.
Asked to
respond specifically to Peters’ statements, Doyle did not
condemn the deputy prime minister. He said he would rather
have a face-to-face “restorative conversation” with
Peters, “because I believe that we can’t resolve
anything through bickering or in the media.”
Peters
rejected the offer, telling Radio NZ: “No, I’m sorry,
[Doyle] can speak directly to the police… Those are the
people he needs to speak to, not me.”
Peters claimed
that he was not attacking the LGBT community, writing on
Facebook: “The posts were ‘problematic’ for their
content—not because of what Doyle identifies as or what
sexuality he might be.”
This is contradicted by the
facts. The Post reported on April 9 that the campaign
against Doyle was started by businessman Rhys Williams, a
former member of NZ First. Using an anonymous X account,
Williams distributed screenshots from Doyle’s Instagram
account, which were then seized upon by Christian and
anti-transgender activists and by Peters.
Doyle became
a target for these layers after advocating greater access to
medical procedures for transgender people. NZ First, copying
Donald Trump and other far-right movements internationally,
has campaigned vigorously against transgender rights. At NZ
First’s insistence, the government has removed sex and
gender education guidelines from schools.
In an
interview with the right-wing Platform podcast on April 4,
Williams described himself as a “concerned New
Zealander.” In fact, Williams was the main organiser of a
major anti-transgender conference in Wellington last year,
which featured speakers from NZ First, the evangelical
Destiny Church and the far-right Christian lobby group
Family First.
On his X account, which has more than
9,600 followers, Williams frequently glorifies NZ First
while posting hundreds of comments demonising LGBT people.
His deranged statements include: “Rainbow = pedophile …
simple as that” and “Trans Activists are either
pedophiles or mass murderers.”
Williams also repeats
conspiracy theories about the state-funded charities
InsideOut and the Burnett Foundation, which promote sexual
health and education, smearing them as part of a “rainbow
cult” that is “grooming” children.
NZ First
president Julian Paul told the Post that Peters had not
coordinated or planned anything with Williams. “We became
aware of the Doyle issue just like everyone else—reading
the plethora of posts on multiple social media platforms,”
he said.
This is not credible. Williams’ X account
is followed by several senior NZ First figures, including
Paul, “party secretary Holly Howard, board member Helma
Vermeulen, and MPs Shane Jones, Jenny Marcroft, and Tanya
Unkovich,” according to the Post.
Moreover,
Williams’ politics are those of NZ First. Like Peters, he
attacks transgender people and rails against “cultural
Marxism”, while also supporting the Trump administration
and defending the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Green
Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick told Radio NZ that Doyle
had become “collateral damage” in a culture war aimed at
distracting attention from serious issues including the
government’s austerity measures. “Winston Peters knows
precisely what he’s doing. It’s the same playbook that
he’s used for decades, which is to goad the media, to be
outrageous… to court controversy in the headlines,” she
said.
Yet the Green Party itself bears responsibility
for the prominent role played by NZ First, which is
effectively setting the government’s agenda despite only
having received 6 percent of the votes in the 2023
election.
The Greens, including Swarbrick,
enthusiastically joined a Labour-led coalition government in
2017 that included NZ First. Then Green co-leader James Shaw
declared that the Greens agreed with NZ First “on far more
than we disagree,” and pledged to work closely with the
party. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made Winston Peters
both foreign minister and defence minister.
The
Greens—along with various pseudo-left groups and liberal
publications such as the Daily Blog—played a crucial role
in sanitizing NZ First by falsely claiming that it had
moderated or even shifted to the left.
The Labour-NZ
First-Greens government strengthened ties with US
imperialism, attacked immigrants’ rights, and transferred
tens of billions of dollars to the rich during the first
years of the COVID pandemic.
NZ First is not, as
Swarbrick put it, simply trying to “be outrageous” and
“court controversy.” The party aims to push politics
further and further to the right, using the same playbook as
the fascistic Trump administration. It is stoking the most
toxic forms of nationalism, racism and bigotry in order to
provide scapegoats for mounting anger about soaring social
inequality and poverty, and to prepare for war.
This
agenda must be opposed, but the record shows that democratic
rights can only be defended in a struggle against all the
capitalist parties, including the Greens and
Labour.
Workers and youth must also reject the
divisive identity politics promoted by these parties, which
plays directly into the hands of NZ First. Identity
politics, based on gender and race, falsely blames white
people, heterosexuals and men for inequality and
discrimination, obscuring the fundamental class divide in
society.
What is required is the fight to unite the
working class—of every ethnicity, nationality, gender and
sexual orientation—based on a socialist program to bring
an end to the capitalist system, which is the source of
inequality, fascism and war.
By Tom
Peters, Socialist Equality Group
14 April
2025
Original URL:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/14/gofp-a14.html
