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New Zealand designates Proud Boys as a terrorist group [1]
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Date: 2022-07-01
As Victor reports:
New Zealand’s prime minister can designate groups terrorist entities if they have carried out at least one terrorist act, and the government believed the Proud Boys’ involvement in the Jan. 6 attack was “consistent with the definition of a terrorist act,” it said in a statement from June 20. It said that the group’s “extreme right-wing ideology was founded on racist and fascist principles” and that it had shown a consistent fondness for violence.
The designation stems from New Zealand’s Terrorism Suppression Act of 2002, passed in the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks on the United States. There are no known Proud Boys operating in New Zealand, but like another U.S. group known as “The Base” that has now been similarly designated, they have been observed spreading, or attempting to spread, into neighboring Australia.
Unlike the United States, the parliamentary democracy of New Zealand does not suffer fools — or terrorists — gladly, whether they adopt noble-sounding names, such as “Proud Boys,” exotic-sounding names, such as “ISIS,” or even ironic anime mascots on 4Chan.
The New Zealand government described the Proud Boys’ techniques as “cryptofascist,” shrouding white nationalist tropes with obfuscation, humor and irony to offer its members plausible deniability and increase its appeal to “mainstream” or “normal” people. Underneath the layers of disguise, the group embraces violence against its perceived political enemies, the government said.
New Zealand learned everything it needed to learn about these groups and the individuals who spew their ideology when a white supremacist gunman opened fire and killed 51 people in Christchurch, NZ, in March, 2019. A current list of individual terrorists and terrorist organizations covered under New Zealand’s law can be found here.
As Victor notes, over 40 Proud Boys adherents have been indicted in connection with their roles in the Jan. 6 attacks. If you haven’t seen the Times investigation assembling a devastating video compilation of their involvement that day, demonstrating how the group deliberately planned and provoked those assaults, then you should really watch it. The video, which was published by the Times, is also copied below on YouTube, but it is apparently “age-restricted” for graphic language and content.
The U.S. has yet to similarly designate the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization.
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