Recently, ACT party leader David Seymour half-earnestly plead to Parliament that they recognise the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a move which was blocked by The Greens and Te Pāti Māori.

During a free Palestine march in Auckland, counter protestors from Destiny Church held a vigil for Charlie Kirk, including parading around framed photos of the Turning Point USA founder, while their leader Brian Tamaki was in London to give a speech calling for Christian Nationalism.

Winston Peters made frequent use of the word ‘woke’ during his tenure as Deputy P.M., even declaring a war on Woke Ideology and D-E-I, playing hard into a smug and inflammatory demeanor instantly recognizable as being airlifted from the 47th POTUS.

Why does the New Zealand Right love to cosplay as Americans so much? You would think that, maybe, they would be interested in tailoring themselves to Kiwi specific problems… And it’s there that the problem arises:
During the initial covid lockdowns we were encased in the internet which is, by and large, an American ecosystem. There are politi-cultural strands which run as common threads between countries in The West, and there is the idea of ‘The West’ as a unified force in the first place, coming under threat. It is advantageous for talking heads on the Right to continue perpetuating totally farcical and useless narratives about what Charlie Kirk means for New Zealand because it herds discussion away from the things which actually matter.