Stephen Chernishov is contesting the Invercargill mayoralty and running for seats on Southland District and Queenstown Lakes District councils. Chernishov has been targeted by media and FACT because he attended the big protest rally in Wellington.
Kaipara, Northland, councillor Victoria Del La Varis-Woodcock is another candidate attacked by media for attending the big Wellington protest and thus qualifying for the label “conspiracy theorist”.
Voices For Freedom founder Claire Deeks of with her son on a flight home after addressing a South Island rally. Deeks is vilified across NZ media as some sort of king-pin of the conspiracy theorists.

By TONY MOBILIFONITIS
SEVENTY-seven government-funded “principal researchers” in the so-called The Disinformation Project, mainstream media and “grassroots activists” in New Zealand are going after council candidates accused of spreading “conspiracy theories”.

It’s part of a global campaign against “disinformation and hate speech” instigated by the alleged ultimate source of truth, the World Economic Forum. There’s even a 4-Corners-style documentary to go with the Kiwi campaign, complete with deep, sinister background sounds and clips some inflammatory comments from the darker side of “far right politics”.

One of those 100 or more targeted candidates is Victoria Del La Varis-Woodcock, a sitting councillor from Kaipara District Council in Northland, who is running for mayor. According to Stuff.co media, her sin was going to New Zealand’s big anti-Covid occupation protest in Wellington in February-March this year and using a megaphone (!) to tell people Covid lockdown legislation was “draconian” and should be repealed.

That supposedly shocking statement at the protest, according Stuff.co journalist Andrea Vance, constitutes the candidate being a “conspiracy theorist”. The accusation would be laughable, if it were not the serious threat it is to free speech.

The campaign is also being assisted by a “grassroots” (most likely NZ Labor Party-initiated) organisation on Reddit called FACT (Fight Against Conspiracy Theories), formed in the lead-up to the 2020 election, apparently to dissuade the average Kiwi punter from voting for any of the multiple alternate parties that sprung up against Jacinda Ardern’s globalist agenda and spread “conspiracy theories” about mass lockdowns and mass vaccination with dangerous shots that can (and did) injure and kill people.

“A councillor who spent days at the occupation of Parliament’s grounds, and who repeatedly shares Covid-19 disinformation wants to be Kaipara’s mayor,” Vance writes. Apparently, the reader is supposed to gasp in shock and horror at such a prospect. “Victoria Del La Varis-Woodcock has served for six years on Kaipara District Council and is one of six candidates vying to replace outgoing mayor Jason Smith,” she continued.

“In February, she travelled to join the protest that disrupted the capital for three weeks and ended in fire and violence. Del La Varis-Woodcock addressed protesters through a megaphone, calling Covid-19 legislation ‘draconian’ and demanding it be repealed. She is one of multiple conspiracy theorists standing for election in the district.”

Cairns News wonders whether this journalist came down to earth in a shower of fairy dust. But seriously, what other term would one use to describe legislation that forces people into home detention and forbids them to travel, in many cases against their will? The legislation is bordering on the criminal act of false imprisonment. And then the mandates that violate the right at common law to informed consent to medical treatment.

Cairns News also wonders what Stuff.co, The Disinformation Project and FACT consider suitable adjectives to describe Covid lockdown legislation and mandates. “Tough but compassionate”? “Kind and caring”? Something that would fit with the media’s view of their political idol Jacinda Ardern, no doubt.

Ms Vance’s Stuff.co-endorsed naivety continued with another ridiculous critique of another Kaipara council candidate: “Chris ‘Worzel’ Sellars writes a local newspaper column in which he espouses theories about a ‘new world order’, and spreads false rumours about the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its ‘Great Reset’ initiative, and Covid-19 vaccinations. He is one of four standing for two positions in the Otamatea general ward.”

Again Ms Vance, what bubble have you been living in? Just so you know before you go writing such arrant nonsense again, ‘new world order’ is a well-known phrase repeatedly used by presidents, prime ministers and other prominent people, particularly during the late 1990s. A quick online search will confirm that it refers to a future world operating under global governance, which is the very objective of the WEF’s so-called great reset.

And we gather from your hit piece you see the “great reset” merely as an innocent WEF “initiative”. Oh, we’re so relieved that is what it really is! We were under the misapprehension that the great reset was all about having a digital ID, no cash and digital currency with China-style facial recognition technology to daily monitor and track our movements and to ensure we didn’t overspend our carbon footprint!

And did Mr Sellars say nasty things about Covid vaccines, like they injure and kill people and don’t work after all? Oh silly us! I guess now Cairns News will have to contact our fellow conspiracy theorists over at Voices for Freedom and tell them to stop publishing all those charts and data that points to that very same conclusion.

Upon listening to Stephen Judd, a spokesman for FACT, it becomes very clear that this “anti- misinformation” campaign is about imposing political correctness, enforcing certain approved narratives, in particular believing in climate change, that vaccines are always safe and effective and that the Covid narrative is just as it was relayed to us by global media.

We’re not sure yet, exactly what role those 77 academics play in the campaign, but no doubt they are on call (for a fee?) to put up an argument for the correct party line on the above narratives.

In a community radio interview on August 19, Judd reveals in his own words the nasty strain of leftist political correctness that runs through this campaign. “People have been sending us names of candidates that they have been concerned about. And in terms of reports, we’ve had over 130 people reported to us. Of the ones that we have spent at least half and hour looking at, more than half of them do turn out to have unusual beliefs, let’s say. Some of the people we’ve looked at have since been reported by mainstream news media who have taken those investigations further, as you would have seen in Stuff.co in the last couple of days.”    

Judd accuses the “conspiracy theorist candidates” of attempting to hide “online evidence of what they think” from the public because some of them have scrubbed certain things from their social media. The truth more likely is that they scrubbed certain comments or links that could be construed as being “too out there” to avoid being harassed by the media’ and being portrayed as sinister or weird.

And what exactly are those “unusual beliefs” that Judd and company are referring to. Again, he answers in his own words midway through the interview when asked what kind of groups these conspiracy theorist candidates come from: “I put them broadly in two groups, one of them is affiliated with Voices For Freedom … one of the largest conspiracy-minded groups in New Zealand, and they maintain a very respectable outward appearance for recruitment purposes, while internally they are spreading conspiracy theories to their members, for example masks are part of a plot by the government to soften us up for totalitarian rule.”

But of course Mr Judd, what would the mass wearing of masks, whose effectiveness is rejected by many in medical science and epidemiology, have to do with social engineering and making “normal” the idea of fine-enforced mandatory medical treatment?

He then accuses Voices For Freedom of dishonesty by suggesting people run in elections, but telling them not to affiliate with them. And why shouldn’t VFF do that? Running council candidates is obviously the job for the candidates and their local supporters.

Judd goes on about the other group who subscribe to “a whole variety of conspiracy theories such as vaccines being a plot to poison the kids to Agenda 20-30 being part of a plot to bring in one world government and to depopulate the earth and all kinds of things like that”.

Judd and his Labor/Green party drones are living in mythology. Informed people know very well and can prove on personal and statistical levels, that vaccines do cause children harm as shown by the tens of thousands of injuries reported annually through the US VAERS system. Judd would say those reports are “mere correlation” but statistically there are far too many to disingenuously dismiss as “chance happenings”. And that’s not including mRNA vaccine injury and death statistics, that are another horror show altogether.

Judd then suggests that there can’t be a vetting system for who gets to be a candidate “because it is everyone’s right to run”. But in the same breath he says media, citizens, and civil society organisations need to “provide scrutiny and inform the public who people really are”. It would seem to Cairns News that there is in fact a vetting system in operation which demonizes, through media, people who hold “unusual beliefs”.  

So what should innocent Kiwi voters do about this evil plague of conspiracy theories? Judd, of course has a simple answer at the end of his interview: “Get in touch with your candidate and ask them what they think. Most people do not want to tell straight-up lies so ask them straight-up questions about whether they think vaccination works, whether they think climate change is real, that kind of thing. They should be able to give you a simple answer.”

Judd and his ilk apparently believe that there are simple “yes” answers to both questions, because journalists, academics and others say so. Unfortunately for them, a growing number of people don’t fall for this mass media mind conditioning to “acceptable narratives” with their attached business and political agendas. Yes, voters should ask their candidates what they believe and vote for those who dare to think against the grain.