He said political polarisation, international conflicts and conspiracy movements had helped fuel the spread of extremist narratives in New Zealand since the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe left and right is playing out on a local level,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s disinformation and misinformation groups… sovereign citizens, many groups, alt-right groups are growing globally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kumeroa said security analysts were seeing increasing signs of overseas ideological influence shaping behaviour and rhetoric within New Zealand-based extremist communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are seeing quite a bit of international influence around political positions, whether it be left-leaning, right-leaning against opposite groups,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kumeroa specifically named white nationalist organisation Action Zealandia as an example of a group expanding its reach.<\/p>\n
\u201cGroups like Action Zealandia and a few others, they\u2019re starting to grow their numbers, grow their reach and take a position,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kumeroa said extremist rhetoric increasingly targeted politicians, judges and public figures, particularly around contentious political issues including Covid-19 policies, immigration and international conflicts.<\/p>\n
He said security agencies and private intelligence operators were now routinely monitoring social media, encrypted platforms and parts of the dark web for signs of radicalisation or threats.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re constantly monitoring all sorts of groups,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kumeroa warned that while many online threats amounted to \u201cchest puffing\u201d, authorities remained concerned about the risk posed by lone actors radicalised online.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are lone attackers out there that may have been radicalised by certain local international groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He said political polarisation, international conflicts and conspiracy movements had helped fuel the spread of extremist narratives in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[125549,2740,28450,226,78,1019,117,111,43,139,69,37250,107856,312,16189,5764,80],"class_list":["post-441298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-farright","tag-former","tag-groups","tag-growing","tag-in","tag-international","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-penny","tag-sas","tag-says","tag-smith","tag-soldier","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}