Us vs. Them: A Subcultural Analysis of Violent Extremism within New Zealand’s Telegram Conspiracy Community

This research explores violent extremism during the COVID-19 pandemic within Aotearoa New Zealand’s conspiracy community. Previous academic research has identified the conspiracy community on Telegram as an emerging locus for extremism. However, there has been no Telegram-specific research focusing on violent extremism within the conspiracy subculture in New Zealand. To address this literature gap, I conducted digital ethnographic research, collecting and analysing content (n = 12,000) from a major conspiracy channel within New Zealand’s Telegram ecosystem. My research focused on the prevalent conspiracy narratives, the push and pull factors driving community involvement, and how the community’s subcultural dynamics and rhetoric foster violent extremism. This research found anti-authority narratives to be a central feature of New Zealand’s conspiracy community. Furthermore, I identified the nuanced interplay between the push drivers: existential fear, identity strain, negative emotions, status frustration, socio-economic precarity, and the pull drivers: community, existential meaning, and hope that drove continuous engagement with the conspiracy community. The group’s subcultural dynamics encouraged the adoption of various norms and beliefs, including the rejection of traditional sources of knowledge, immersion in conspiracy narratives, adopting a conspiratorial worldview, anti-authority beliefs, and a zero-sum us-versus-them mindset. Founded on these beliefs, many members of the conspiracy community tacitly accepted, encouraged, and engaged in extremist and violent extremist rhetoric. Furthermore, a small subset of the conspiracy community is evidenced to have adopted a violent extremist worldview, coming to view coercive violence against the government as urgent and necessary. This thesis concludes that the normalisation of violent rhetoric within the conspiracy community fostered an online environment highly conducive to anti-authority politically motivated violent extremism. This research provides an understanding of why individuals engage in conspiracy communities and how their involvement can foster violent extremism, contributing to an understanding of emerging extremist threats within New Zealand to inform policy responses and future academic research.