While what police and PM labelled “disgraceful” behaviour at Parliament grounds appears to be causing some at the Wellington protest to rethink their stay, others are deflecting the bad behaviour with theories that point blame away from the protesters.
An early Tuesday morning incident saw a person driving a car into a line of police, while three officers had to be treated in hospital after an unknown “stinging substance” was flung at them.
“That sort of behaviour where there’s an attempt — an intent to throw faeces at police staff, and some other substance that has resulted in three staff in hospital, is incredibly disgraceful and we will deal with that affirmatively,” Assistant Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said.
But, while some on Parliament grounds denounced the behaviour, others are deflecting.
There were hundreds of comments on social media sites aligned with the protest that claimed dangerous or hostile actions were being carried out by “paid plants” and other Government operatives.
It was a claim that Chambers said had no backing.
A woman who didn’t want to be named told 1News that bad behaviour was being carried out by those not linked to the protest
“We know that there are imposters, undercovers, whatever trying to intimidate and scare our people”, she said.
A protest security officer called Brendan said he believed the car incident was a “mock-up”.
“They actually staged someone to run at the police themselves so they could run a squad in with riot shields,” he said. He could not provide any evidence for his claim.
Disinformation researcher Byron C Clark said there were parallels between the rhetoric coming out of this protest and what was claimed during the insurrection of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
At the time, Donald Trump and prominent figures aligned with him suggested the storming of the Capitol was carried out by Antifa counter-protesters, despite overwhelming evidence that the rioters were Trump supporters.
“It’s allowing the more extreme elements to justify what’s happening thereby claiming it’s an outside actor. That’s getting some of the more moderate people believing that nobody on their side is possibly committing violence," Clark said.
He said the emergence of these sorts of claims was not unexpected.
“Even before the protest convoy arrived in Wellington, on Telegram groups and Counterspin Media live streams they were saying if there’s any violence it’s going to be a false flag.
"They were pre-emptively putting the idea out there that if anything violent happened it wouldn’t be one of the protesters," Clark said.
“False flag conspiracy theory is one that’s been around for a while. Alex Jones is a big promoter of that on his web Infowars. Whenever there’s a mass shooting in the US he’s quick to claim it’s a false flag.
“On some of these Telegram groups, there’s a conspiracy theory that the Christchurch shooting was also some sort of false flag. It’s a very common conspiracy theory and we're now just seeing that framework applied to things that are happening at the protest in Wellington.”
On Tuesday, there were fewer protesters and vehicles on the streets surrounding Parliament than there were over the weekend.
The Prime Minister again said it’s time for the protesters to leave.
Assistant Commissioner Chambers said some of the more moderate protesters were going home.
“There’s no doubt that some who have chosen to leave this protest have done so because they are concerned at what they are seeing down there by a number of the protest group. They’ve elected to return home peacefully because perhaps the cause that brought them here has changed.”
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