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It normalises as something that is … inevitable”.Īblett-Hampson told the Guardian that while the censor’s office had banned the alleged shooter’s specific manifesto, there was a variety of material surrounding it that did not reach New Zealand’s legal thresholds for a ban. “It doesn’t glorify it, but it doesn’t also push back on it. But he had concerns that its propagation meant it could spread to audiences who were receptive to radicalisation. Many of the groups sharing the Buffalo material online were not directly glorifying it, Hattotuwa said – some believe it was a “false flag” or “distraction” set up by elites to divert attention. “The anti-vax landscape ones who are front and centre, distributing, propagating and amplifying this content – that’s an entirely new phenomena that wasn’t there in March 2019,” he said. Within those groups, the Buffalo material was already spreading, he said, with several accounts that appeared to be expressly set up to disseminate the video and so-called manifesto. Anti-vaccine factions had intermingled with far right and Q-Anon groups, and developed new, conspiratorial and extreme communities, typically hosted on Telegram. While it’s impossible to track the true number if people who have viewed the material on platforms such as Telegram, Hattotuwa said that New Zealand’s fringe and misinformation-spreading ecosystems had grown dramatically since the Christchurch attacks in 2019. Within New Zealand, researchers are concerned about the spread of copies of the alleged Buffalo terrorist’s propaganda, and say the country has developed fertile ground for extreme material among the pandemic era’s conspiratorial and anti-authoritarian movements.ĭr Sanjana Hattotuwa, who studies disinformation and fringe online communities for Te Punaha Matatini research centre, said the researchers had observed the Buffalo live stream video and propaganda material spreading extensively within New Zealand groups they monitored.

New zealand live stream shooting video liveleak