"When Rubio Cried "Left," Fifty-One Māori and Muslim Dead Went Unmentioned" - 18 July 2026
A white-supremacist-adjacent neoliberal coalition sent New Zealand's flag into a Washington summit built on a fifty-year-old statistic, while the actual killers of Christchurch keep organising, unwatched, in our own backyard.
Kia ora koutou. Ko Ivor Jones tēnei, te Māori Green Lantern, and I want you to picture a marae on fire.
Not metaphorically
— actually burning, timbers cracking, smoke thick enough to choke a tamaiti.
Now picture the fire brigade arriving, walking straight past the flames, and setting up a hose pointed at a puddle across the road because someone important told them the puddle was the real threat.
That is precisely what happened this week in Washington, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted a summit on political violence — and Aotearoa sent a diplomat to hold the puddle-hose steady.
Jamie Ensor
Background: The Fire That Actually Burned Here
On 15 March 2019, a white supremacist murdered 51 people at two Christchurch mosques, an attack the Royal Commission of Inquiry tied directly to a global surge in far-right, alt-right ideology.
That Commission documented widespread racism and discrimination shaping targeted communities' lives before and after the massacre.
Since then, Action Zealandia — a white nationalist group — has kept organising on our soil, with Newsroom investigations confirming direct contact between the group and the Nordic Resistance Movement, a Scandinavian outfit tied to bombings and assassination plots.
The Hidden Connections
New Zealand confirmed it would send Daniel Mellsop, deputy head of mission in Washington, to a US State Department symposium framed explicitly around "far-left terrorism," an event that expanded to more than 65 countries after "overwhelming interest".
Rubio told the assembled ministers that far-left political violence was a global "blind spot," while Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller warned that left-wing terrorism "always ends in bloodshed, misery and suffering."
Cui bono — who benefits?
A Trump administration heading into midterms, manufacturing a global consensus to justify surveilling protesters and dissidents under cover of "counter-terrorism," while the movement that actually murdered 51 people at two Christchurch mosques in 2019 barely rates a mention. Confidence: Verified, fetched directly from Washington Post and Al Jazeera event coverage.
The Deep Dive Podcast
A short scripted conversation unpacking this essay's sources — apologies in advance for the AI voice engine's mangling of te reo Māori. Kia kaha, don't shoot the messenger.
YouTube Video
A short video companion piece summarising the summit, the CSIS data, and Christchurch's legacy — again, forgive the AI narration's pronunciation of reo Māori.
Koha Consideration - Rangatiratanga In Practice
Fifty-one whānau died here at the hands of a documented, transnational, far-right ideology. Groups carrying that same ideology still organise in this country with links to overseas bombers. This government's diplomats went to Washington to help legitimise a summit built on a fifty-year-old statistic and a domestic American political vendetta
— while staying silent about what our own intelligence service actually says.
Mana motuhake means naming that in public, every time, with the receipts attached.
Every koha for this essay signals that whānau are ready to support the accountability that Crown and corporate structures — MFAT included — will not provide themselves. It signals that rangatiratanga includes the power to support our own truth tellers when our government would rather nod along in Washington than defend the memory of Christchurch. Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you are able, consider a koha to ensure this voice continues.
If you are unable to koha, no worries! Subscribing, following, or sharing this essay with your whānau and friends is koha in itself.
- Koha — support this mahi directly
- Subscribe to The Māori Green Lantern
- Direct bank transfer: HTDM, account number 03-1546-0415173-000
- Follow on Facebook
Deconstructing Rubio's Blind Spot
The State Department's own justification leans on the claim that "historically, most politically motivated terrorism in the West has been carried out by violent far-left groups"
— true only of the 1970s, before right-wing and jihadist violence eclipsed it for the next fifty years.
The trigger for this crusade traces to Trump signing an executive order in September 2025 formally branding Antifa a "domestic terrorist organisation", despite no such legal category existing for domestic groups under US law. The underlying presidential memorandum, NSPM-7, directs federal task forces to investigate "networks, entities, and organizations" behind political violence — language the ACLU has warned "could be used to target lawful protest activity and political opponents rather than genuine security threats."
Even the research the administration leans on refuses to hand it the conclusion it wants.
CSIS director Daniel Byman states plainly that right-wing terrorism "could easily return to previous high levels" and warns the 2025 dip may reflect the administration embracing former right-wing grievances rather than genuine ideological retreat.
Analysts at Just Security argue a companion report suffers from "fatal analytic flaws" and risks "feeding false narratives about political violence and polarization." Confidence: Verified for CSIS and NSPM-7 (both fetched in full); Corroborated for the Just Security critique, not independently cross-verified against a formal CSIS rebuttal.
What Aotearoa's Own Spies Actually Say
The NZSIS's 2025 Security Threat Environment report states there is "a roughly even spread of violent extremist ideologies" here and explicitly concludes "no one ideology currently stands out as presenting a greater threat."
MFAT sent a diplomat to Washington anyway, framing it as a chance to discuss New Zealand's "coordinated, effective counter-terrorism system" — without publicly flagging that our own agency does not share Washington's premise.
Three Examples For The Western Mind
Example One — The Body Count Gap
Right-wing terrorism has killed 112 people in the US over the past decade, versus 13 from the left — right-wing violence is roughly 8.6 times more lethal, calculated directly from those figures (112 ÷ 13 = 8.6).
To the Western, individualist mind, this reads as a "numbers" argument.
To tikanga Māori, it is a question of mauri: a summit inflating the smaller harm while ignoring the larger one is mauri-depleting, draining collective wellbeing by misdirecting protective resources from where whānau actually die.
Solution: resource counter-terrorism proportionate to verified fatality data, not political convenience. This mirrors what The Māori Green Lantern documented in "The Taiaha in the Kill-Web," where security infrastructure gets rebranded as sovereignty while real power sits offshore.
Example Two — The Curriculum Of Erasure
Just as Rubio's summit erases the far right's documented body count, Erica Stanford's curriculum rewrite erased Te Tiriti o Waitangi from classrooms while claiming to add "knowledge," the same rhetorical trick of naming a manufactured threat to justify removing real protections.
To Western liberal logic these look like separate policy areas; to tikanga, they are one mauri-depleting pattern — institutions renamed, threats reassigned, Māori and marginalised communities left absorbing the cost.
Solution: demand named ministers and diplomats justify threat prioritisation against their own agencies' published data, publicly, every time.
Example Three — The Media Enabler
Sean Plunket's on-air dismissal of tikanga Māori and the slow regulatory response created the permissive climate in which state institutions can now adopt a foreign government's manufactured threat narrative without domestic pushback.
To the Western mind trained to see media regulation as technical and apolitical, this is invisible; to tikanga, it is mauri-enhancing accountability being deliberately starved — the same starvation now playing out at
MFAT. Solution: independent, funded Māori media oversight with enforcement teeth, not toothless "standards" panels.
Implications: Quantified Harm, Named Beneficiaries
Every hour MFAT spends nodding along to a Washington narrative its own NZSIS data contradicts is an hour not spent interrogating Action Zealandia's confirmed overseas terrorist links, or the racism the Royal Commission found still shaping Muslim and Māori lives in this country.
The named beneficiaries are the Trump administration, ahead of midterms, and any New Zealand official who gets to look like a compliant ally without defending, on the record, why we lent credibility to a threat hierarchy our own spies reject.
Māuri Ora!
Ivor Jones The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right
Right of reply: MFAT, the NZSIS, the US State Department, and named officials (Rubio, Miller) are addressed here in their public capacity on matters of significant public interest; correction or right of reply is welcomed within 48 hours from any named individual or agency. Opinions are flagged as such throughout, resting on the cited factual base above. Disclaimer: current as of 18 July 2026. The Just Security methodological critique is corroborated via citation, not independently cross-verified against a formal rebuttal, and is flagged at reduced confidence. No malice — pattern of harm only.
