You say you don't mean to bring race into this - but you do . . . and you should. Because Aotearoa is still, deeply, to its bones, a racist colonial settler state. I hate that as much as you do, I want to change it, and we have to fight our battles on our own fronts to start making changes.
For you, that probably looks a lot like what you're doing right now for the moment - shining a light on dark places where white people try to scuttle away from cleansing sunshine. It may change and evolve over time but acknowledging that you're part of this system, as I am, and that we have the responsibility to move for change, is our first baby steps.
I want to scream from the rooftops, fight on the steps of parliament, for tino rangtiratanga, for land back, for all sorts of revolutionary things - but we start with small steps because we step against a strong tide.
In the end, we don't get to call ourselves allies, we don't get to claim anything - we just platform the voices of the marginalised if we have a platform, we fight each little fight (especially among other pakeha people), we try to do our best and do our own learning rather than asking emotional labour of Māori and other Indigenous people. We try and make a difference in our own ways, and we claim no pride or glory in it, because it's only justice at its barest of bones level. We must be humble enough to always learn, always accept correction with grace and think on why we have been corrected, learn and grow from it.
You are most welcome to! I love it a little bit when I see fragments of what I write reprinted - it feels like what I've said means something to someone.
Thank you <3 As I learn more of our history, and our present, I am more and more driven to try and make change in any way I can, big or small. Whether it's words, whether it's in my work, it's all got to matter to tangata whenua in the end.
Oh, I'm keeping the soapbox! It gets used on the regular. Having a good rant might be my superpower - I need to restart my blog to get some stuff off my chest tbh!
I’ve had quite a few people approach me about the horrific abuse they’re getting from anti vaxxers who have decided their loved ones died from the vaccine. But many are too scared to speak out because they’re afraid they’ll get even more harassment and abuse. I can’t imagine losing someone you love then having some anti vaxxer random message you 50 times in an hour calling you a murderer for vaccinating. While you’re grieving! And this is what they’re doing. It’s horrendous. I’m still hoping eventually I can write something about it but basically every person who has come to me has shown me where the first accusation that it was a “vaccine death“ came from and it’s almost always Sue Grey.
She's ground zero for so much stuff - it's so incredibly frustrating. And Facebook has let her run loose.
Stay strong, Emily. You reach such a needed audience. Please write, when you have the time and inclination - but also - look after yourself and stay safe.
It’s absolutely vile. She hounded that poor family of the girl who died, I don’t know whether she did convince them (they need to grieve privately!) but has said on her page that she has been in touch with the family and they believe it was the vaccine. Her followers now believe that too.
Unfortunately I was blocked from her page so now I can’t keep reporting. (Don’t know why... all I did was call her the scourge of the earth 🤷♀️)
it's so ghoulish what they do, to families who deserve to be allowed to grieve their losses in what peace they can find in these times. My mind doesn't want to wrap around the awfulness peddled by these people.
Thank you for writing about Sue Grey! I was going to write to you this week asking if you knew anything about her. I have a much-loved brother down the rabbit hole, who told me Sue Grey is an amazing, caring person doing so much good work for those who want the right to 'choose what they put in their bodies'. My brother's wife is a teacher in NZ, who doesn't want the vaccine. Their kids are all fully vaccinated for childhood illnesses so they've never been anti-vax, but were hesitant with the covid vax so wanted to 'wait to see that it's safe'. They 'did their own research', stumbled across Sue Grey and now we feel we've lost them to her wacky crusade. So sad. She is claiming innocent victims, who are wowed by the fact she's a lawyer. And if my brother wasn't one of her victims, I would have assumed all her victims are just idiots. Sadly Sue Grey is sucking in some really good people who are now facing losing their livelihoods because they trust and follow her.
Sorry about you brother. This is rough. People will die. And so much of it is preventable - instead we're fighting these utterly stupid disinformation wars.
So sorry about your brother. It's interesting that Sue Grey and Voices for Freedom claim to be about protecting people's freedom of choice yet they tried to stop the vaccine rollout by challenging it in court earlier this year. I guess they only want freedom of choice for those that agree with them.
I wish more people knew about her jumping on people's deaths. When that student passed away, it was brutal for the school and the family. It's just objectively repugnant behaviour from Sue.
I really admire how you and the Webworm team stay so outwardly calm and keep your integrity when deep diving into these... people.
I’ve been part of a group fighting misinformation online - by either reporting people/posts/groups or debunking the rubbish in comments sections. It’s hard on your character having to read it all, feeling the toxicity seep in. I started to lose my compassion and it made me jaded. I found it hard to switch that part off when talking to the real people in my life, and I made some big mistakes - including cutting contact with my own brother when I realised he and his partner were under the spell of these... people. I changed. I became toxic. I turned my life into a dumpster fire and that is NOT me. I had to stop and pull away.
I am in awe of your curiosity and kindness, your relaxed openness when confronted with the “scourge of the earth”. Thank you for your hard work and insights into this crazy world we’re currently in ❤️ We appreciate you.
Thanks Alle - but also, thanks for the mahi you do. Go easy on yourself. Breathe. This stuff does weird stuff to your brain. I walk a lot, and try to pat a lot of dogs and cats.
Patting animals is so therapeutic 😍 I have two beautiful fluffy cats, one being almost like a dog in that he’s always around - and strangely protective!
Thank you Paul! It certainly can feel lonely. Luckily the groups I’m part of are supportive, and we keep each other sane ❤️ Kindness, compassion and respect are so important.
What sorts of controls have you got in place to avoid vicarious traumatisation for yourself?
In some ways, they're not that different from yours, Alle. Professionally psychotherapists are required to have both group peer supervision/support as well as individual supervision/mentoring from senior practitioners on a regular basis.
We're also encouraged to be aware of how much emotional distress we are channeling through our own being. The basis of most psychotherapy theory is that to be therapeutic, you have to be emotionally connected to your clients. That's what empathy and attunement are. As my favourite psychotherapist, Irvin Yalom says, 'It's the relationship that heals'. https://medium.com/invisible-illness/its-the-relationship-that-heals-207dce9b80ed
When there is great distress, that impacts us too. So it's important to manage how many clients in that kind of pain we see at once to ensure we can metabolise it through seeking support, empathy and play from loving and validating others. We risk burn-out (or more accurately, a gradual emotional rust-out) if we don't. We're only human too.
Wading deeply into misinformation like you were, Alle, there is a huge amount of emotional distress (rage, terror, shame, disgust, etc.) present whether it was voiced or not, that you'll can't help feeling and being affected by.
And yes, pets are wonderful for embodied touch and love. In fact, we have a new puppy called Dakota so she'll be forming part of my self-care regimen.
Thanks - I should clarify that psychotherapy is not all stress and trauma all the time even with clients who do have that to process. It has many wonderful and rewarding moments and we get to share those too.
Doing what Alle and the Rabbit Hole Resistance cohort were doing is a lot more thankless and harder in my opinion.
This is such a lovely thread - thank you all for the work you do. It reminds me that there are sane people out there even though it feels like so many are doing the anti-vax thing! My Mum had a very stressful phone call with a friend of hers who has a “mild” form of leukaemia and had started spouting a whole pile of anti vax sentiments - really volatile and very unlike her. Initially she made it sound like she wasn’t supposed to be vaccinated due to the cancer, but she let slip that her specialist had strongly recommended she get vaccinated. Mum said she tried to listen for her fears and gently reassure, but was feeling like she didn’t hear anything she said. Anyway…long story short, she rang to apologise today and said she was going to look more into “both sides” since Mum had said that sometimes we look on the internet only at things that confirm what we want to think.
I am cautiously hopeful that she will change her mind but hearing about the first conversation I would not have expected that!
Oh Emma, what a hard place for your mum to be in! I love how she really listened with compassion. It’s so important for people with cancer to take the vaccine, as the treatments do so much damage to their health and immunity that they need all the protection possible. A friend is battling breast cancer currently and is receiving chemo, earlier on when the treatment first started she had both doses of the vaccine and coped absolutely fine with it. A third dose is highly recommended for immunocompromised people which she is happily going to take 😊 Wishing you all well and I hope your mum’s friend keeps in contact!
Hi Alle. I think I know which group you're referring to as I'm also a member and recognise your name. I've also started to lose compassion for the people refusing to get vaccinated. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't people that were so close to me. All of my immediate family members are vaccinated but I have an aunt that's gone full Trump supporter/anti-vax and I also know 3 relatively close friends who are choosing not to get vaccinated. I haven't cut off contact yet but I'm close to doing it. It's just so frustrating! And I've got 2 young kids at home who can't go to school because of lockdown and those final few people who are refusing the vaccine so my compassion is rapidly fading.
Hello Lise! Lovely to see a familiar face 🤗 I feel you. It’s so polarising at the moment, especially with the mandates coming in. It seems like such a silly thing to lose relationships over, all I can say is this shit is so real and we need everyone to do what they can yet there is a group that is getting more and more radicalised and they were people we once loved and respected. It’s hard to know how long we should be willing to hold the door open for each person. As I said in Fleur’s post - if they were an a**hole before they’re even more of an a**hole now, and the rest are probably scared and listening to the wrong people.
I said goodbye to my Aunty like yours recently. She’s a seventh day Adventist (and Trump supporter) and quite intellectual so the arguments she was making on my posts - while completely wrong - seemed to anyone who glanced that they could be plausible. These “teachings” have been repeated to them and backed up with misrepresented evidence and false credentials to the point where they can’t believe anything official anymore. It’s so sad and frustrating.
Lockdown hugs to you! We have 2 young kids also and feck me it’s HARD. I wish you well in deciding what to do. The RHR crew are always here for a DM anytime 🥰
I will always and forever refer to these 'people' as dot dot people now - coz that fits. :-D Thank you. May the ...people fall into the pits of the very Hell they fear - just saying..... x
I mean at the heart of it, it's systemic racism right? Billy TK and Brian Tamaki are not white, Sue Grey and Peter Mortlock are. White people are more likely to excuse the behaviour of other white people, while condemning non-white people who are doing the exact same thing (or worse).
If someone gets fired for refusing to be vaccinated and procedural fairness wasn't followed by the employer then absolutely they have a legal right to file against the employer. But Sue is nothing more than a grifter who is exploiting people's ignorance and fear. I've just been following what Sue is doing since she started kicking off, and her behavior is beyond reproach. Oh and she is funded by Voices of Freedom, a white supremacist group.
She's also funded by a lot of donations from individual people, quite often a call is put out saying that she needs to pay legal fees...to herself *ahem*...and people dutifully donate. I'm a big fan of paying people fairly for their work but something about this always strikes me as disingenuous and lacking transparency.
Yeah, I know she gets a fair amount of crowdfunding and she's also wasting so many publicly funded resources at the same time. She's a deeply problematic person.
It makes me sick that people can be so unkind to others going through a tragic loss just to promote their “causes”. I can’t even imagine how terrible it must feel to have people willingly spreading mis truths and to frame it as “just asking questions” like they have a right to do it. Thanks for sharing these awful people, their actions need to be made known and challenged.
That sign made me think someone had been reading webworm, since David had pointed out Brian's bouffant brows right here. But then maybe great minds just think alike :-)
In defense of Brian, many have probably yelled at him and he misheard and thought they were saying 'go and get plucked'
People who are narcissistically organised can often enjoy both adulation and criticism - since it's makes them feel important. But laughter and mockery, not so much :-)
This Sue Grey stuff is bonkers - it may be worth forwarding this to the Law Society for further investigation - would be interested to see if she’s broken any lockdown laws etc… which would be a breach of her overriding duty to uphold the law.
Sue Grey is absolutely vile. I've reported her Facebook page for false information so many times yet it's still there. Her followers seem to be pretty unhinged too, there are a lot of comments about government control, depopulation, mass coverup of vax deaths etc.
Same... two of my friends who are anti-vaxxers are adherents of hers. They keep sending me BS from her which isn't ever verified. It's frustrating she's allowed to continue spreading her crap.
Sue gets plenty of kudos from the White Rose NZ group on Telegram. I follow it for laughs and to get an idea of how the conspiracy crowd think. I get the feeling from many of them that they enjoy the theatre of it all. Kind of like " live action role playing". Anyway you'll be pleased (maybe?) to know David that you were recently mentioned by name as "filth/scum" for being part of the media landscape in NZ.
The LARP aspect is something I've noticed amongst my conspiracy theorist family, too. For them at least, I think it's a way of feeling like they have power and special knowledge when in reality they are not well educated and can't control their future any more than you or I.
You're totally right about the powerful feeling of being involved in an important struggle with like-minded others. Humans are fundamentally social animals. But don't think we're immune because we're feeling that too being on webworm in a way, right?
I also need to push back on the idea that the conspiratorial are uneducated or stupid. It's an emotional phenomenon and completely independent of intelligence or education.
In fact, the more educated you are as a conspiracist, the better you are at constructing and reinforcing your argument. Sure, the evidence is all biased but the web of belief is strong and resists being dismantled. The less educated conspiracists will then pick up the arguments built by the more educated and feel supported by it and will spread them. Hence how the top 80% of anti-vaxx content comes from the 12 individuals - the 'dirty dozen' as they are called.
Yes, there are grifters at the top for whom it is all about the money and influence e.g. Ron Watkins, Alex Jones, Mike Adams… Just like it is for Grey and Mortlock.
It does seem to be a social imperative for many of us to feel like we're part of something important in some way. Thank you for the reminder!
Conspiracy theorists come from so many backgrounds, so many walks of life, and some of them are searingly intelligent and well-educated. Those are definitely the most frightening!
Sue Grey has been active for ages in the anti 1080 camp. There is a pipeline from anti 1080 to anti vax. Sue Grey was behind the campaign that put a dead Kereru on the steps of the beehive. She was vocal in turning every issue to that of 1080, for example, : ‘ Jacinda is in Vietnam on trade talks right now: What is she telling the Vietnamese about 1080?’ I often talk about ideas that are not necessarily congruent but that hunt together. The underlying ideology is that of purity. What is natural is pure, what is sovereign is pure, what is spiritual etc. You find these ideas in organic food markets and yoga studios all over. What scares me is that they seem fine mixing with the genuine fash. No one bothers about 1080 now, the talk has moved on. But you can trace anti vax ideas back to the 90’s and similar ideas, like fluoride in water, back to the 1960’s. Btw if you have time I recommend the podcast ‘Yeah nah pasaran!’ By Andy Flemin (Slackbastard) and Cam Smith. A show about fascism and its grave diggers
That purity/sanctity dimension is very well noticed and is one of the six pillars in moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s work on moral foundations theory https://moralfoundations.org/
Strong feelings (Haidt calls them ‘moral intuitions’) around purity/sanctity don’t just apply to the religious but underpin many other anti-science positions like wellness, anti-1080, anti vaxx, homophobia, etc.
'Purity' taps into the primal emotion of disgust. It's deeply visceral since the first organisms (bacteria) had to avoid consuming substances that would contaminate and harm or kill them.
As higher order and social animals are also preoccupied with *social* contamination which is avoiding being seen to be associated with others who are undesirable from the point of view of our in-group.
Disgust is essentially fear of 'bad thing getting inside me' hence the powerful almost nausea-like response. The slightly less intense social emotion of contempt is physically linked to smell i.e. 'bad thing over there' - which I'm keen to wrinkle my nose at and stay away from *before* it can contaminate me. In fact, psychologist and emotion researcher Paul Ekman calls it 'Dissmell' to highlight that link, an observation originally made by pioneering psychologist and psychoanalyst Silvan Tomkins.
My ideas about purity come from ‘Purity and Danger’ by Mary Douglass. Transgression is an interesting idea here that does not quite fit Haidt’s five. I’m very attracted to transgression - but so is the far right! The word ‘rebel’ now bothers me just in itself. It’s interesting and worrying how the language has been appropriated
Thanks for the reference - another book for my reading list.
You're correct that transgression doesn't fit in Haidt's model of moral *restrictions*. But we're (almost) all attracted to transgression - it's the basis of sexuality and desire.
Desire functions to counter disgust so it's temporarily more powerful. Sharing closeness and bodily fluids with others is normally something we strenuously avoid, but to procreate, nature needs to impel us to.
Desire facilitates this transgression - the breaking of boundaries and blending of essences - which we would normally avoid. It's partly why society is scared of desire and tries to regulate it so much - especially women's desire - because it's powerful enough to inspire transgression.
The sting in the psychological tail is that sometimes, once the sexual moment has passed, desire's enabling job is complete and our innate disgust can return sooner than we would like and what we were totally into moments before can now make us feel somewhat squicky.
Thank you that is interesting. Transgression means to carry across and I think of it as breaching eg the boundaries of the body, which is more porous than we think it should be. Blood is fine in my body but not on the floor. Sartre has an essay on stickiness which is problematic because it’s neither fluid nor solid - we don’t know what to do with it. Some of us have more rigid intuitive stances than others. I think of problems of orthorexia in the wellness community, like poor Jordan Peterson living on meat and water, and a woman I knew who was a breatharian. I bet she is anti vax! Thanks for the book reference
This is such a telling piece, I am not at all surprised by the story of Sue Grey or white conspiracy theorists barging around unchecked, but I am incredibly grateful to you David for writing about this, we need more journalism like this. I like to think I am quite careful with what media I consume (pretty much just articles and podcasts from Radio New Zealand, the odd article from the Guardian) but I would never ever have known about Sue Grey, whereas Billy TK and Brian Tamaki are regular butts of jokes in my friend circle. . . How do we, as consumers of news articles, digest our news with a sensible and logical lens? When I read an article about Brian Tamaki, how can I elbow my brain in the side and say to it 'now, do you think this article was written because he's brown and could there be worse people out there who are inconspicuous because white?'
What skills do we need as consumers to be able to identify these nuances in the articles we read? Is there a list of questions I should always be asking myself when I read an article? E.g.
"is this person's race mentioned and relevant to the story?" "is this person powerful/influential, so do their views matter to the community?" etc.
I'd be really curious to know what the New Zealand Law Commission makes of Sue Grey's Facebook posts. Surely this isn't consistent with their code of ethics?
Thank you SO much for looking into Sue Grey. She has been worrying me for quite some time. I know some of the people sucked in to her cult. She is a dangerous, evil woman. She is a ghoul sending her members out to look for any death or collapse to be used as evidence not to get the vaccine. Chris Cairns heart episode was put down to the vaccine by her. And the latest is a person in Takaka on Saturday who had a medical event at a pharmacy. Posted by one of her minions, with photos. The pharmacy put out a statement saying it wasn't due to vaccine but the damage had been done and the post was shared widely. Sue Grey needs to be stopped
There is so much to say on her, but I wanted to keep it simple: Her doing after people who have died. It's pretty clear what sort of person pulls that shit.
Sue has been around for a while, usually in the Ban 1080 scene. The media used to talk to her a lot, 10 years ago, or so. In the beginning she was rational and made good sense. Over the years she has made less sense and made some odd choices. I
You say you don't mean to bring race into this - but you do . . . and you should. Because Aotearoa is still, deeply, to its bones, a racist colonial settler state. I hate that as much as you do, I want to change it, and we have to fight our battles on our own fronts to start making changes.
For you, that probably looks a lot like what you're doing right now for the moment - shining a light on dark places where white people try to scuttle away from cleansing sunshine. It may change and evolve over time but acknowledging that you're part of this system, as I am, and that we have the responsibility to move for change, is our first baby steps.
I want to scream from the rooftops, fight on the steps of parliament, for tino rangtiratanga, for land back, for all sorts of revolutionary things - but we start with small steps because we step against a strong tide.
In the end, we don't get to call ourselves allies, we don't get to claim anything - we just platform the voices of the marginalised if we have a platform, we fight each little fight (especially among other pakeha people), we try to do our best and do our own learning rather than asking emotional labour of Māori and other Indigenous people. We try and make a difference in our own ways, and we claim no pride or glory in it, because it's only justice at its barest of bones level. We must be humble enough to always learn, always accept correction with grace and think on why we have been corrected, learn and grow from it.
*steps off soapbox*
Thank you. Thank you. Do you mind if I reprint this down the line? I like it a lot.
You are most welcome to! I love it a little bit when I see fragments of what I write reprinted - it feels like what I've said means something to someone.
Thanks Jay. Said it before and I'll say it again: You're a good writer.
Ka pai for your heartfelt and powerful kōrero, e hoa!
Thank you <3 As I learn more of our history, and our present, I am more and more driven to try and make change in any way I can, big or small. Whether it's words, whether it's in my work, it's all got to matter to tangata whenua in the end.
Feel free to stay up on that soap box, btw. The world needs more of this.
Oh, I'm keeping the soapbox! It gets used on the regular. Having a good rant might be my superpower - I need to restart my blog to get some stuff off my chest tbh!
I’ve had quite a few people approach me about the horrific abuse they’re getting from anti vaxxers who have decided their loved ones died from the vaccine. But many are too scared to speak out because they’re afraid they’ll get even more harassment and abuse. I can’t imagine losing someone you love then having some anti vaxxer random message you 50 times in an hour calling you a murderer for vaccinating. While you’re grieving! And this is what they’re doing. It’s horrendous. I’m still hoping eventually I can write something about it but basically every person who has come to me has shown me where the first accusation that it was a “vaccine death“ came from and it’s almost always Sue Grey.
She's ground zero for so much stuff - it's so incredibly frustrating. And Facebook has let her run loose.
Stay strong, Emily. You reach such a needed audience. Please write, when you have the time and inclination - but also - look after yourself and stay safe.
It’s absolutely vile. She hounded that poor family of the girl who died, I don’t know whether she did convince them (they need to grieve privately!) but has said on her page that she has been in touch with the family and they believe it was the vaccine. Her followers now believe that too.
Unfortunately I was blocked from her page so now I can’t keep reporting. (Don’t know why... all I did was call her the scourge of the earth 🤷♀️)
it's so ghoulish what they do, to families who deserve to be allowed to grieve their losses in what peace they can find in these times. My mind doesn't want to wrap around the awfulness peddled by these people.
Thank you for writing about Sue Grey! I was going to write to you this week asking if you knew anything about her. I have a much-loved brother down the rabbit hole, who told me Sue Grey is an amazing, caring person doing so much good work for those who want the right to 'choose what they put in their bodies'. My brother's wife is a teacher in NZ, who doesn't want the vaccine. Their kids are all fully vaccinated for childhood illnesses so they've never been anti-vax, but were hesitant with the covid vax so wanted to 'wait to see that it's safe'. They 'did their own research', stumbled across Sue Grey and now we feel we've lost them to her wacky crusade. So sad. She is claiming innocent victims, who are wowed by the fact she's a lawyer. And if my brother wasn't one of her victims, I would have assumed all her victims are just idiots. Sadly Sue Grey is sucking in some really good people who are now facing losing their livelihoods because they trust and follow her.
Sorry about you brother. This is rough. People will die. And so much of it is preventable - instead we're fighting these utterly stupid disinformation wars.
So sorry about your brother. It's interesting that Sue Grey and Voices for Freedom claim to be about protecting people's freedom of choice yet they tried to stop the vaccine rollout by challenging it in court earlier this year. I guess they only want freedom of choice for those that agree with them.
of course.....hypocrisy is rife in these ranks - the agenda appears to be purely for power and narcissistic ego tweaks, from what I can see.
I wish more people knew about her jumping on people's deaths. When that student passed away, it was brutal for the school and the family. It's just objectively repugnant behaviour from Sue.
I really admire how you and the Webworm team stay so outwardly calm and keep your integrity when deep diving into these... people.
I’ve been part of a group fighting misinformation online - by either reporting people/posts/groups or debunking the rubbish in comments sections. It’s hard on your character having to read it all, feeling the toxicity seep in. I started to lose my compassion and it made me jaded. I found it hard to switch that part off when talking to the real people in my life, and I made some big mistakes - including cutting contact with my own brother when I realised he and his partner were under the spell of these... people. I changed. I became toxic. I turned my life into a dumpster fire and that is NOT me. I had to stop and pull away.
I am in awe of your curiosity and kindness, your relaxed openness when confronted with the “scourge of the earth”. Thank you for your hard work and insights into this crazy world we’re currently in ❤️ We appreciate you.
Thanks Alle - but also, thanks for the mahi you do. Go easy on yourself. Breathe. This stuff does weird stuff to your brain. I walk a lot, and try to pat a lot of dogs and cats.
Patting animals is so therapeutic 😍 I have two beautiful fluffy cats, one being almost like a dog in that he’s always around - and strangely protective!
I love a good cat that acts like a dog
Right back at ya, Alle and ka pai for your mahi!
It can feel like very lonely work. The risk of vicarious traumatisation is very real too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_traumatization
I’m glad you stepped away and sought solace snd support. Self care is critical for any sustainable therapeutic work.
Thank you Paul! It certainly can feel lonely. Luckily the groups I’m part of are supportive, and we keep each other sane ❤️ Kindness, compassion and respect are so important.
What sorts of controls have you got in place to avoid vicarious traumatisation for yourself?
Great question!
In some ways, they're not that different from yours, Alle. Professionally psychotherapists are required to have both group peer supervision/support as well as individual supervision/mentoring from senior practitioners on a regular basis.
We're also encouraged to be aware of how much emotional distress we are channeling through our own being. The basis of most psychotherapy theory is that to be therapeutic, you have to be emotionally connected to your clients. That's what empathy and attunement are. As my favourite psychotherapist, Irvin Yalom says, 'It's the relationship that heals'. https://medium.com/invisible-illness/its-the-relationship-that-heals-207dce9b80ed
When there is great distress, that impacts us too. So it's important to manage how many clients in that kind of pain we see at once to ensure we can metabolise it through seeking support, empathy and play from loving and validating others. We risk burn-out (or more accurately, a gradual emotional rust-out) if we don't. We're only human too.
Wading deeply into misinformation like you were, Alle, there is a huge amount of emotional distress (rage, terror, shame, disgust, etc.) present whether it was voiced or not, that you'll can't help feeling and being affected by.
And yes, pets are wonderful for embodied touch and love. In fact, we have a new puppy called Dakota so she'll be forming part of my self-care regimen.
The "stresses" of doing what you do are fascinating to me. Infinite respect.
Thanks - I should clarify that psychotherapy is not all stress and trauma all the time even with clients who do have that to process. It has many wonderful and rewarding moments and we get to share those too.
Doing what Alle and the Rabbit Hole Resistance cohort were doing is a lot more thankless and harder in my opinion.
This is absolutely wonderful, thank you Paul! Aroha nui ❤️
This is such a lovely thread - thank you all for the work you do. It reminds me that there are sane people out there even though it feels like so many are doing the anti-vax thing! My Mum had a very stressful phone call with a friend of hers who has a “mild” form of leukaemia and had started spouting a whole pile of anti vax sentiments - really volatile and very unlike her. Initially she made it sound like she wasn’t supposed to be vaccinated due to the cancer, but she let slip that her specialist had strongly recommended she get vaccinated. Mum said she tried to listen for her fears and gently reassure, but was feeling like she didn’t hear anything she said. Anyway…long story short, she rang to apologise today and said she was going to look more into “both sides” since Mum had said that sometimes we look on the internet only at things that confirm what we want to think.
I am cautiously hopeful that she will change her mind but hearing about the first conversation I would not have expected that!
Oh Emma, what a hard place for your mum to be in! I love how she really listened with compassion. It’s so important for people with cancer to take the vaccine, as the treatments do so much damage to their health and immunity that they need all the protection possible. A friend is battling breast cancer currently and is receiving chemo, earlier on when the treatment first started she had both doses of the vaccine and coped absolutely fine with it. A third dose is highly recommended for immunocompromised people which she is happily going to take 😊 Wishing you all well and I hope your mum’s friend keeps in contact!
Hi Alle. I think I know which group you're referring to as I'm also a member and recognise your name. I've also started to lose compassion for the people refusing to get vaccinated. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't people that were so close to me. All of my immediate family members are vaccinated but I have an aunt that's gone full Trump supporter/anti-vax and I also know 3 relatively close friends who are choosing not to get vaccinated. I haven't cut off contact yet but I'm close to doing it. It's just so frustrating! And I've got 2 young kids at home who can't go to school because of lockdown and those final few people who are refusing the vaccine so my compassion is rapidly fading.
Hello Lise! Lovely to see a familiar face 🤗 I feel you. It’s so polarising at the moment, especially with the mandates coming in. It seems like such a silly thing to lose relationships over, all I can say is this shit is so real and we need everyone to do what they can yet there is a group that is getting more and more radicalised and they were people we once loved and respected. It’s hard to know how long we should be willing to hold the door open for each person. As I said in Fleur’s post - if they were an a**hole before they’re even more of an a**hole now, and the rest are probably scared and listening to the wrong people.
I said goodbye to my Aunty like yours recently. She’s a seventh day Adventist (and Trump supporter) and quite intellectual so the arguments she was making on my posts - while completely wrong - seemed to anyone who glanced that they could be plausible. These “teachings” have been repeated to them and backed up with misrepresented evidence and false credentials to the point where they can’t believe anything official anymore. It’s so sad and frustrating.
Lockdown hugs to you! We have 2 young kids also and feck me it’s HARD. I wish you well in deciding what to do. The RHR crew are always here for a DM anytime 🥰
I will always and forever refer to these 'people' as dot dot people now - coz that fits. :-D Thank you. May the ...people fall into the pits of the very Hell they fear - just saying..... x
Hehehe 😊 ❤️
I mean at the heart of it, it's systemic racism right? Billy TK and Brian Tamaki are not white, Sue Grey and Peter Mortlock are. White people are more likely to excuse the behaviour of other white people, while condemning non-white people who are doing the exact same thing (or worse).
Yes. It's systemic to its core.
If someone gets fired for refusing to be vaccinated and procedural fairness wasn't followed by the employer then absolutely they have a legal right to file against the employer. But Sue is nothing more than a grifter who is exploiting people's ignorance and fear. I've just been following what Sue is doing since she started kicking off, and her behavior is beyond reproach. Oh and she is funded by Voices of Freedom, a white supremacist group.
Thanks Chloe for the mahi you do, too.
Honestly, I bloody love your writing and your own media advocacy. Slay all day David. X)
She's also funded by a lot of donations from individual people, quite often a call is put out saying that she needs to pay legal fees...to herself *ahem*...and people dutifully donate. I'm a big fan of paying people fairly for their work but something about this always strikes me as disingenuous and lacking transparency.
Yeah, I know she gets a fair amount of crowdfunding and she's also wasting so many publicly funded resources at the same time. She's a deeply problematic person.
It makes me sick that people can be so unkind to others going through a tragic loss just to promote their “causes”. I can’t even imagine how terrible it must feel to have people willingly spreading mis truths and to frame it as “just asking questions” like they have a right to do it. Thanks for sharing these awful people, their actions need to be made known and challenged.
Also how great is this placard behind Brian Tamaki, his eyebrows are truly creepy. I love our kiwi humour. https://twitter.com/gregpresland/status/1450669721422946306?s=21
Great sign, great placement. Subtle but clear.
*the placement was subtle - not the message!
The message was on point, so proud of that guy 😂
that sign made me giggle. Good on you west auckland!
That sign made me think someone had been reading webworm, since David had pointed out Brian's bouffant brows right here. But then maybe great minds just think alike :-)
In defense of Brian, many have probably yelled at him and he misheard and thought they were saying 'go and get plucked'
😂😂 oh yes, ole Bri-brows certainly made a few front pages!
People who are narcissistically organised can often enjoy both adulation and criticism - since it's makes them feel important. But laughter and mockery, not so much :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_supply
Oh yes, Kiwi humour......love it.
This Sue Grey stuff is bonkers - it may be worth forwarding this to the Law Society for further investigation - would be interested to see if she’s broken any lockdown laws etc… which would be a breach of her overriding duty to uphold the law.
Power, validation and relevance.
Please keep raising this and bringing these awful people to light.
Appreciate what you are diving into David. Hope you get some sleep ❤
I sleep when I'm dead! (that sounds way more emo than it is!)
Even if you were unrelatedly growing your fringe and listening to My Chemical Romance, there would be no judgement in this climate 😊
I genuinely love The Black Parade. No lie. Great record!
Sue Grey is absolutely vile. I've reported her Facebook page for false information so many times yet it's still there. Her followers seem to be pretty unhinged too, there are a lot of comments about government control, depopulation, mass coverup of vax deaths etc.
Reporting is a thankless task, but thanks for doing it :)
Facebook is so useless in acting on things. An awful place.
Same... two of my friends who are anti-vaxxers are adherents of hers. They keep sending me BS from her which isn't ever verified. It's frustrating she's allowed to continue spreading her crap.
Sue gets plenty of kudos from the White Rose NZ group on Telegram. I follow it for laughs and to get an idea of how the conspiracy crowd think. I get the feeling from many of them that they enjoy the theatre of it all. Kind of like " live action role playing". Anyway you'll be pleased (maybe?) to know David that you were recently mentioned by name as "filth/scum" for being part of the media landscape in NZ.
The LARP aspect is something I've noticed amongst my conspiracy theorist family, too. For them at least, I think it's a way of feeling like they have power and special knowledge when in reality they are not well educated and can't control their future any more than you or I.
You're totally right about the powerful feeling of being involved in an important struggle with like-minded others. Humans are fundamentally social animals. But don't think we're immune because we're feeling that too being on webworm in a way, right?
I also need to push back on the idea that the conspiratorial are uneducated or stupid. It's an emotional phenomenon and completely independent of intelligence or education.
In fact, the more educated you are as a conspiracist, the better you are at constructing and reinforcing your argument. Sure, the evidence is all biased but the web of belief is strong and resists being dismantled. The less educated conspiracists will then pick up the arguments built by the more educated and feel supported by it and will spread them. Hence how the top 80% of anti-vaxx content comes from the 12 individuals - the 'dirty dozen' as they are called.
It’s just like one big MLM scheme.
https://onevaxxednurse.com/2021/03/anti-vax-propaganda-is-the-ultimate-mlm-pyramid-scheme/
Yes. Yes it is.
Yes, there are grifters at the top for whom it is all about the money and influence e.g. Ron Watkins, Alex Jones, Mike Adams… Just like it is for Grey and Mortlock.
It does seem to be a social imperative for many of us to feel like we're part of something important in some way. Thank you for the reminder!
Conspiracy theorists come from so many backgrounds, so many walks of life, and some of them are searingly intelligent and well-educated. Those are definitely the most frightening!
Indeed, Shame and pride are the master social emotions and link directly into human instincts for physical and social survival.
I talked a bit about this Larp thing here, with someone who helped make an ARG for Nine Inch Nails: https://www.webworm.co/p/as-new-zealand-gets-new-covid-19
For a deep look at the larp aspect "A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon" https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5
Did you catch this? I talked to Rob Sheridan about the ARG design for NIN: https://www.webworm.co/p/as-new-zealand-gets-new-covid-19
Sue Grey has been active for ages in the anti 1080 camp. There is a pipeline from anti 1080 to anti vax. Sue Grey was behind the campaign that put a dead Kereru on the steps of the beehive. She was vocal in turning every issue to that of 1080, for example, : ‘ Jacinda is in Vietnam on trade talks right now: What is she telling the Vietnamese about 1080?’ I often talk about ideas that are not necessarily congruent but that hunt together. The underlying ideology is that of purity. What is natural is pure, what is sovereign is pure, what is spiritual etc. You find these ideas in organic food markets and yoga studios all over. What scares me is that they seem fine mixing with the genuine fash. No one bothers about 1080 now, the talk has moved on. But you can trace anti vax ideas back to the 90’s and similar ideas, like fluoride in water, back to the 1960’s. Btw if you have time I recommend the podcast ‘Yeah nah pasaran!’ By Andy Flemin (Slackbastard) and Cam Smith. A show about fascism and its grave diggers
Thanks for this. She was very effective in how she changed the 1080 debate. Awful tactics, fairly average human being.
That purity/sanctity dimension is very well noticed and is one of the six pillars in moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s work on moral foundations theory https://moralfoundations.org/
Strong feelings (Haidt calls them ‘moral intuitions’) around purity/sanctity don’t just apply to the religious but underpin many other anti-science positions like wellness, anti-1080, anti vaxx, homophobia, etc.
And…….purity of ‘race’, nativism, ‘the west’. Yeah air quotes, I know
Exactly.
'Purity' taps into the primal emotion of disgust. It's deeply visceral since the first organisms (bacteria) had to avoid consuming substances that would contaminate and harm or kill them.
As higher order and social animals are also preoccupied with *social* contamination which is avoiding being seen to be associated with others who are undesirable from the point of view of our in-group.
Disgust is essentially fear of 'bad thing getting inside me' hence the powerful almost nausea-like response. The slightly less intense social emotion of contempt is physically linked to smell i.e. 'bad thing over there' - which I'm keen to wrinkle my nose at and stay away from *before* it can contaminate me. In fact, psychologist and emotion researcher Paul Ekman calls it 'Dissmell' to highlight that link, an observation originally made by pioneering psychologist and psychoanalyst Silvan Tomkins.
https://www.paulekman.com/universal-emotions/
http://www.tomkins.org/what-tomkins-said/introduction/nine-affects-present-at-birth-combine-to-form-emotion-mood-and-personality/
My ideas about purity come from ‘Purity and Danger’ by Mary Douglass. Transgression is an interesting idea here that does not quite fit Haidt’s five. I’m very attracted to transgression - but so is the far right! The word ‘rebel’ now bothers me just in itself. It’s interesting and worrying how the language has been appropriated
Thanks for the reference - another book for my reading list.
You're correct that transgression doesn't fit in Haidt's model of moral *restrictions*. But we're (almost) all attracted to transgression - it's the basis of sexuality and desire.
Desire functions to counter disgust so it's temporarily more powerful. Sharing closeness and bodily fluids with others is normally something we strenuously avoid, but to procreate, nature needs to impel us to.
Desire facilitates this transgression - the breaking of boundaries and blending of essences - which we would normally avoid. It's partly why society is scared of desire and tries to regulate it so much - especially women's desire - because it's powerful enough to inspire transgression.
The sting in the psychological tail is that sometimes, once the sexual moment has passed, desire's enabling job is complete and our innate disgust can return sooner than we would like and what we were totally into moments before can now make us feel somewhat squicky.
This is the dual control model of sexuality. https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/dual-control-model.php
I can recommend Emily Nagoski's book 'Come as you are' as the best popular exploration of the model and it's implications, especially for women. https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-surprising-transform-ebook/dp/B00V58R0ZE
Thank you that is interesting. Transgression means to carry across and I think of it as breaching eg the boundaries of the body, which is more porous than we think it should be. Blood is fine in my body but not on the floor. Sartre has an essay on stickiness which is problematic because it’s neither fluid nor solid - we don’t know what to do with it. Some of us have more rigid intuitive stances than others. I think of problems of orthorexia in the wellness community, like poor Jordan Peterson living on meat and water, and a woman I knew who was a breatharian. I bet she is anti vax! Thanks for the book reference
I remember when she and her posse were protesting about the 1080 drops in the Brook Sanctuary. Total zealots
This is such a telling piece, I am not at all surprised by the story of Sue Grey or white conspiracy theorists barging around unchecked, but I am incredibly grateful to you David for writing about this, we need more journalism like this. I like to think I am quite careful with what media I consume (pretty much just articles and podcasts from Radio New Zealand, the odd article from the Guardian) but I would never ever have known about Sue Grey, whereas Billy TK and Brian Tamaki are regular butts of jokes in my friend circle. . . How do we, as consumers of news articles, digest our news with a sensible and logical lens? When I read an article about Brian Tamaki, how can I elbow my brain in the side and say to it 'now, do you think this article was written because he's brown and could there be worse people out there who are inconspicuous because white?'
What skills do we need as consumers to be able to identify these nuances in the articles we read? Is there a list of questions I should always be asking myself when I read an article? E.g.
"is this person's race mentioned and relevant to the story?" "is this person powerful/influential, so do their views matter to the community?" etc.
I'd be really curious to know what the New Zealand Law Commission makes of Sue Grey's Facebook posts. Surely this isn't consistent with their code of ethics?
Thank you SO much for looking into Sue Grey. She has been worrying me for quite some time. I know some of the people sucked in to her cult. She is a dangerous, evil woman. She is a ghoul sending her members out to look for any death or collapse to be used as evidence not to get the vaccine. Chris Cairns heart episode was put down to the vaccine by her. And the latest is a person in Takaka on Saturday who had a medical event at a pharmacy. Posted by one of her minions, with photos. The pharmacy put out a statement saying it wasn't due to vaccine but the damage had been done and the post was shared widely. Sue Grey needs to be stopped
There is so much to say on her, but I wanted to keep it simple: Her doing after people who have died. It's pretty clear what sort of person pulls that shit.
It’s almost like people don’t die of heart disease every 90 minutes in NZ 😤
Sue has been around for a while, usually in the Ban 1080 scene. The media used to talk to her a lot, 10 years ago, or so. In the beginning she was rational and made good sense. Over the years she has made less sense and made some odd choices. I