Neo-Nazis and Pseudo-History

The Scoop Review of Books has published my open letter to the editors of Franklin E Local, a free magazine based in Pukekohe, in the heart of the Franklin District where I was born and raised.

Franklin E Local specialises in advertisements for farm bikes and reports on the feats of pig hunters, but lately it has also been running a series of articles on the 'secret pre-history' of New Zealand. These pieces argue that a conspiracy of academics, museum workers, Maori radicals, and shadowy, very sinister international forces is working methodically to suppress the evidence that white people lived in New Zealand thousands of years ago.

The powers that be don't want you to know that our 'white tangata whenua' lived peacefully for centuries, before 'savage' Polynesian invaders killed their men, made their women into sex slaves, and stole the beautiful carvings they had made in wood and greenstone. The articles are unsigned, but end with the recommendation that readers visit the Celtic New Zealand website 'for more information'.

Franklin E Local boss Mykeljon Winckel has used his latest editorial to enthusiastically endorse the pieces his magazine has been running, and to rail against the 'political bias' of most of those who study New Zealand's past. Unfortunately for Mykeljon, the Celtic New Zealand circle he has chosen to embrace has its own rather unpleasant political bias. Read about it over at the Scoop Review of Books.