As Christchurch Call enters 5th year, the information environment (globally, and in New Zealand) linked to what it is designed to respond to is far more complicated, and violent than in 2019.
One predominant aspect of this is the role, reach, and relevance of Twitter (I refuse to call the platform X). Pre-Musk Twitter was an early, enthusiastic signatory of the Call. It’s now led by man who promotes white supremacy, as Dr Caroline Orr Bueno highlighted on, well, Twitter.
Twitter is a ‘reach multiplier’ for violent extremist content. Nearly five years after the Christchurch Call was established, it remains a sui generis platform to address seed, & spread of TVEC online, & esp on social media. The issue is, since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter/X, one of the worst amplifiers of violent extremism is a signatory… In my daily study, & analysis of online harms at The Disinformation Project, which now includes explicit TVEC seamlessly shared across continents, contexts, & countries over platforms that aren’t signatories to Christchurch Call, it’s clear that Twitter/X is a really unique ‘reach multiplier’ – by which I mean it amplifies TVEC, & aids discovery.
Mainstream media in New Zealand don’t seem to want to ask hard questions from the Call, perhaps shying away from grounded critique out of deference to country’s Chief Envoy, & former PM, Jacinda Ardern – who is, on an almost daily basis, subject to the most unspeakable hate online.
But this is more than just her.
Musk is a clear, present, and growing reputational risk to the Christchurch Call, & his control of the platform, a threat to democracy globally. He promotes the same violent extremist ideology that the Christchurch killer reflected in his screed. As Dr Orr Bueno went on to flag, “…Elon Musk is literally one of the biggest proponents of the great replacement conspiracy theory. He’s obsessed with it.”
5 years on, the Christchurch Call’s mission, mandate, & mahi (work) isn’t just important – it’s unique. But most press releases, & pronouncements since 2022 have been increasingly out of sync with domestic, & transnational information flows in anti-government, anti-establishment, anti-authority, disinformation, and far-right online ecologies, now inosculated with violent extremism (in what The Disinformation Project bears witness to as an unprecedented growth in mixed, unclear, and unstable violent extremism, in what were once more clearly defined as domestic anti-vaxx, or anti-mandate networks).
This wasn’t the way Twitter was when the Christchurch Call launched, as my own doctoral research was the first to study. As I noted last month,
For PhD, studied 819,813 tweets, & around 14 million words in them produced after March 2019’s Christchurch massacre. Immediately evident is how Twitter today is unrecognisable from what the platform was then, & especially around discourse framing an unprecedented act of terrorism in New Zealand.
But a lot has changed since.
The Great Replacement theory, and white supremacism on Twitter
Today, Twitter’s owner amplifies exactly same white supremacist, violent extremist ideology that the Christchurch killer framed as what motivated him, in the screed which was released at the time of the massacre. The screed is banned in New Zealand.
But what does that really mean in 2024, with Christchurch Call, GIFCT, NZ Police, DIA, Netsafe, and the rest of the acronym soup in New Zealand all working on the reduction of, and responses to online harms?
Relatedly, the Call had reached out to Australia’s government after recent acts of terrorism. As media reports noted,
“The Christchurch Call secretariat contacted Australian officials early on Tuesday morning to offer our support,” it said. We remain in contact and are discussing with Australian officials and our civil society advisory network what advice and practical support the Call community can provide.”
But what really can the Call do in today’s information environment beyond the most obvious gore, and graphic harm?
An answer lies in what I studied today.
Viewed over 40 million times at the time of writing this, a tweet featuring a video of a speech by Eva Vlaardingerbroek – a Dutch far-right activist who is prolific on social media, including Twitter – at CPAC Hungary this year publicly, and explicitly promoted The Great Replacement theory. This is the same white supremacist ideology the Christchurch killer also promoted in his screed, and is a violent extremism he remains completely committed to five years later.
The ISD (Institute for Strategic Dialogue) has a very good, easy to understand primer on The Great Replacement theory. Readers will be able to appreciate why the Christchurch killer’s screed was banned in the country.
In the video Vlaardingerbroek notes that the “Great Replacement” is actively occurring in Europe, with the native white Christian European population being replaced by migrants from non-Christian, Western, African, and Middle Eastern countries. She believes this is being driven by a “corrupt elite” who have invited the “enemy” in and are making the native population pay for it. She cites statistics showing that the native white Christian European population is outnumbered by migrants in major cities across Europe, such as Amsterdam (56% migrants), The Hague (58% migrants), Rotterdam (almost 60% migrants), London (54% migrants), and Brussels (70% migrants). Vlaardingerbroek argues that if this trend continues, other European cities will soon follow suit. Vlaardingerbroek claims that the “establishment” either denies the existence of the “Great Replacement” or, when they admit to it, they say it is a good thing that the native European population will soon no longer be a majority on its own continent. She references Frans Timmermans, a Dutch politician, who stated in 2015 that diversity is humanity’s destiny and that Europe will be diverse. She argues that the underlying sentiment of the “establishment” is that white people are evil and that European history is fundamentally different from that of others. Vlaardingerbroek believes they have adopted the “anti-white dogmas” of neo-Marxist critical race theory.
There are 7,000+ replies to her tweet. I studied 200 of them – a sliver, but all academics now have access to, after the platform stopped academic, and public API access (which is another story). But in just those 200 tweets – all public, all discoverable – a few take her points even further, calling for deportations, border closings, and more extreme anti-immigrant stances, including thinly veiled instigation of violence. Some promote related conspiracy theories about “replacements” being orchestrated by shadowy global cabals.
Based on the ISD’s briefing note, Vlaardingerbroek’s tweet with the video of her speech, and just the tweets which responded openly embody key elements of The Great Replacement theory, asserting that native white Christian Europeans are being deliberately replaced by non-white, non-Christian immigrants, threatening European culture and identity. Vlaardingerbroek cites cherry-picked crime incidents and demographic statistics to paint a dystopian picture, blaming a “globalist elite” for orchestrating a “replacement.” Her speech frames it as a Manichean, civilisational struggle to defend a pure Christian European identity against Islam (and Muslims), tapping into fears of “Eurabia” and “Islamification.” Migration and diversity are portrayed as inherently negative, fuelling xenophobic attitudes. The speech pushes a nativist view of European identity centred on whiteness, with some tweets referencing white nationalist concepts like miscegenation, and white genocide.
As the ISD briefing notes, these narratives have led to real-world violence, including the March 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre. And yet, Twitter platforms all this discourse, and the open invocation of white supremacist ideology. Despite the ban on his screed, all the aspects of the Christchurch killer’s violent extremism is, through Twitter alone, freely accessible from within New Zealand.
By the end of the day, Vlaardingerbroek’s tweet had been featured over a dozen times in leading anti-government/establishment/authority Telegram groups studied. One distributed Vlaardingerbroek’s video natively – meaning that it played back on the app itself, and didn’t require a subscriber to go to Twitter. This also means that if the tweet is taken down or the account is suspended, what Vlaardingerbroek said would still be freely accessible, and discoverable on Telegram.
A co-architect of one of New Zealand’s leading disinformation, and far-right networks retweeted Vlaardingerbroek, further ensuring the video’s reach with a domestic (New Zealand based) audience through Twitter alone. In the nearly 100 replies to this tweet (which must be appreciated as providing a pathway to white supremacism, and potential radicalisation), responses portrayed immigration to European countries as a form of “colonisation” or “invasion” threatening white cultures, by seeking to somehow “erase” them. Some tweets suggested the existence of a deliberate agenda by elites or institutions, such as a “New World Order,” to undermine and replace white populations in their native countries. Fear-mongering about demographic shifts, changing population statistics, and the idea of white people becoming a minority is prevalent, with one tweet specifically mentioning “majorities lost.” Birth rates are also referenced as evidence of this supposed “replacement.” The tweets equated multiculturalism, diversity, and immigration with an existential threat to white identity, framing it as an attack on all white European cultures and countries, rather than a single nation – meaning, that what Vlaardingerbroek said was true of Europe, was true of, and happening to New Zealand too.
Back in 2021, when I started working with The Disinformation Project, it was the case that Telegram was about as far removed from Twitter as one could imagine, in every way. Today, it is almost a distinction without a difference. Every thing I study on Telegram, is present in some form on Twitter. And it’s now Twitter that’s feeding Telegram’s far-right networks with original content.
This is a simplified presentation of a more comprehensive study, and analysis of information ecologies penned today. On many days, the discourse on just Twitter is much worse, and especially when it comes to women, and minorities. Twitter’s toxicity after Musk’s acquisition is well-studied, and growing. What’s trans-nationally starkly evident, has a major, daily impact on New Zealand’s information integrity as well, but is ironically much less acknowledged within the country – including by the Christchurch Call.
Concluding thoughts
Five years after its establishment, the Christchurch Call is a network acutely aware of, but hasn’t yet publicly acknowledged that a constituent member is seeding, spreading, sustaining, and strengthening at significant scale the very things the network is supposed to stop or stymie the growth of.
This is untenable. It can’t, and mustn’t continue.
I look forward to Christchurch Call’s reflections 5 years on to more meaningfully embrace the nature of what was at inception, & much more so now is the ‘wicked problem‘ of addressing online harms. This work is vital, and must continue, but only meaningfully dealing with Musk’s Twitter will determine the Call’s future, & how those who want to see it succeed, appreciate it.
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First published on LinkedIn.
Sanjana Hattotuwa 