August marks one year since Exit From Affco first started, and things now feel well and truly off the rails in Godzone. A cosmic glitch has resulted in a vicious power struggle between half a dozen strange men all named Chris, fighting over who gets to look more morose on the throne. The top Chris is unable to get through a press conference without causing a crisis, so a few other Chrises in his party have been trying to get rid of him. The most recent attempt failed badly, leading to the banishment of the lesser Chris, the one charged with ensuring New Zealand is swallowed smoothly by the Amerikan Technoreich. As is mandated for all exiled National MPs, he was forced to hand in his shaving equipment.
The Chris who is meant to be challenging the main Chris for his job is instead apparently directionless and depressive, spending most of his time shooting down policies that are a little too progressive or running speeches through ChatGPT. King Winnie, 81, is turning demented the way his generation does with the “Good Old Days” pouring out, forgetting that he’s still the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The party of Keith Locke is now running a SAS veteran, one who can neither confirm nor deny whether he was implicated in war crimes against Afghani villagers. A party led by an ex-consultant hired off Seek and bankrolled by porn tycoon crypto-billionaires is now being propped up as the party that will deliver Common Sense Solutions (cutting all social services in favour of a UBI).
This is a roundabout way of saying that I have not enjoyed the election so far. Compounded with health issues and burnout, partly caused by writing and reading about satanic neo-Nazis for too long, I haven’t been as active in the infowar over the past few months. However, I have still been reading and collecting up stories, and after getting off heavy immunosuppressants a few weeks ago, I soon realised why I had been the way I had for the previous 2 months. So, this 1-year anniversary will also mark a return, especially to topics closer to home, beginning next week with a long read about Peter Thiel and the “investor class” now putting down roots in Papatūānuku. Because I can usually only do far-right research over bursts before taking a break, and I went too long on the last one, I’m going to put that to one side for now.
We’ve covered a lot of ground on here since Codename Muldoon last August. Tomorrow on the 1st, it’ll also have been three years since (while trying to distract myself from the first Chris v. Chris battle) I made a Xitter account with the vague intention of covering Aotearoa history’s weird side. Since then, I’ve been blown away by the interest and support, as well as the people I’ve been able to meet or work with, all because of an account at one time titled “david seymour drinks yellow liquid on tv”. So, I want to thank You, The Reader, for being one of those people making this possible. That includes you, the person in Morocco reading this. I also wanted to thank people like Will, Kieran (x2), Kyle, Nicky, S, R, K, A, and many more friends and colleagues for their advice, collaboration, proofing, yarns, and more over the past few years.
I would also like to thank those who have contributed one way or another with leads, tips, information, or anything illuminating. When I initially started I thought I would be able to do my work as an outside observer from a desk, relying on articles, documents, OIAs, etc. However, one of the unique things about this country is how much information floats out there in the ether (but only if you’re in the know), and you have to become a bit of a shoe leather. A lot of factors have led to this state of affairs, some of which have been covered here, but the past year has made that very clear. Some of the biggest scandals have been gossip that’s floated around Parliament for months, then dumped as part of coordinated hit jobs to break the dam and let the media move in for the kill. And while I have certainly enjoyed watching Luxon squirm under repeated pressure from a rebel faction, so much smoke has been blown by both sides, especially through the media, that it’s hard to take much satisfaction in it. No matter how the election goes, it seems like there’ll only be one winner: The Man.
“… [M]any politicians and mediatics who are flattered that no one can suspect them of being irresponsible know many things through their connections and confidences. Someone who is happy to be taken into confidence is hardly likely to criticize it; nor to remark that in all the confidences, the principal part of reality will always be hidden from him. Thanks to the benevolent protection of the cheaters, he knows a few more of the cards, but they can be false; and he never knows the method that directs and explains the game. Thus he immediately identifies himself with the manipulators and scorns the ignorance which in fact he shares. Because the scraps of information offered to the familiars of a lying tyranny are normally infected with lies, manipulated and uncheckable. They are, however, pleased to get these scraps, for they feel themselves superior to those who know nothing. They only know better than the rest so as to better approve of domination and never to actually comprehend it. They constitute the privilege of first-class spectators: those who have the stupidity to believe they can understand something, not by making use of what is hidden from them, but by believing what is revealed to them!”
- Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1984), XXI
Years and years back, before I had gotten properly into this field, I was talking to an individual involved in the importation of some technically not illegal chemicals produced somewhere in Rotterdam. Naturally, I began asking about the infrastructure that ran the distribution of this throughout the country. Among other things, he mentioned one visit to a luxurious North Island mid-sized city pad, owned by one of those rich Pākehā who seem very much to be part of a certain Dog Gang but for some reason sits above any scrutiny. When he arrived, he happened to see the deputy head cop of said city in another room. Obviously, drug dealers are not the most reliable sources, so I took it for what it was. However, not long after that I was talking to someone from that same city. She mentioned that her friend’s dad, the city’s deputy police commissioner, had just been collared for corruption. His colleagues had dropped a dossier they’d spent over a year building on him. I never saw it once hit the papers.
So again, thank you to all those who’ve have made this possible. I did also want to take the opportunity to ask what you would like to see from Exit From Affco going forward. I’m going to be putting out more, sometimes shorter articles over the next few months, but down the road I want to find a way to release regularly while still managing to do the long-term and in-depth research that is hard to fit into a schedule.
I have been late with posts and not as active as I started out, and I’d like to apologise for that. I can be a very inefficient writer sometimes, partly a bad habit of over-perfectionism, and that’s something I’m working on. However, because I’m covering an already light field like New Zealand history, and especially out there topics at that, I feel a mix of responsibility and pressure to make sure that what I put out can stand up on its own. I set out with the intention of making sure that, even if you disagree with my editorialising, everything I publish here is backed up by evidence, and hearing that from people across the political spectrum has been something I’ve seen as a standard to hold myself to.
There are certainly many things happening in this country right now, but I have also wanted to avoid chasing the week-to-week news cycle too much. I have been toying with the idea of starting a podcast interview show which would cover the same spread as the usual Exit From Affco topics, but featuring a guest on a historical or contemporary topic that would run 20-40 mins. This would allow me to cover more on a regular basis alongside smaller written pieces and more in-depth research topics, but I also know some people loathe the podcast format. I would love to hear your thoughts, feel free to comment or reach out on here or through email at smithkstead@protonmail. com.
I also wanted to say a big thanks to those of you who are paid subscribers as you’re helping facilitate what Exit From Affco is able to carry out, in particular Will and I’s ongoing research into the Christchurch massacre (and the trans-Tasman travel that requires). We’re excited to share that with you at some point, but we’re also wanting to do this properly. So, to one year around the sun for Exit From Affco, and to what’s to come down the road.
And remember: we’re still packing the meat.
Congrats on one year!
Congratulations on 1 year and hope you're doing better after your health issues. A couple of friends and I are going to make a video about imperialism in the South Pacific, I hope you don't mind if we reference some of your essays. Big ups.