A couple of days ago, I listened to an interview that blew me away. It was with a guy in the States who’s vehemently opposed to Joe Biden, because he thinks Biden is implicated in a ludicrous conspiracy.

You might have heard about the conspiracy a bit – it’s generally known as ‘Pizzagate’. It was pushed through conspiracy circles back when Hillary Clinton was running for President in 2016.

The conspiracy is actually incredibly complicated depending on who’s pushing it at any one time but the basic premise is this: A group of global elites have been running a paedophile ring out the basement of a Washington D.C pizza parlour. In 2016 the conspiracy alleged Hillary Clinton was somehow involved.

Even though the whole thing has been widely debunked time and time again, Pizzagate is having resurgence. QAnon, the massive conspiracy, has contributed to Pizzagate taking off once again. And there are plenty of people who now think Joe Biden is somehow linked.

For anyone with even a slim grasp of reality, it’s clearly, demonstrably absurd. But the nature of conspiracies and the way they spread and morph through the internet, are one of the most worrying curiosities of our time. Of course, we had seen it here: Perhaps on a smaller scale than in the United States, but the rise of Advance NZ has illustrated more plainly than any time before just how many Kiwis are open to wild conspiracies.

In my other job, as host of TVNZ’s Q+A programme, we thought very carefully about how to handle Billy TK and Advance NZ. They’ve pushed Qanon theories, 5G conspiracies, and suggested the pandemic was planned by global elites, without ever offering credible evidence. We debated what to do with them from right early on, when Billy TK was just starting to draw a big Facebook audience and get people to turn out at Town Hall Meetings. It’s a bit of an interesting phenomena, because your base journalistic instinct says ‘Cover it! Go there! A) It’s a new party and a charismatic man pulling big numbers of followers out of nowhere. And B) Crazy makes for good TV.’

We didn’t cover the Billy TK or his party. We chose not to and I’m glad we made that decision. I felt there was a good chance Billy TK would manipulate any interview platform to further push misinformation. You give him a hard time, and he says the media’s conspiring against him. You let him his share his ideas and you run a serious risk of legitimising them amongst his followers.

There was one interview Billy TK did that in my view got it right. That really exposed him. Paula Penfold did an excellent job of threading the needle, confronting him on his BS and his manipulation of vulnerable people. She and her colleagues exposed him as a conman, plain and simple.

And yet, a few days later, almost 21,000 New Zealanders voted for Billy TK and his mates. The provisional vote shows almost one percent of voters supported that party. What’s happened for them to be so drawn to him? Is it just human nature? Or does it say something more sinister about our society, the decaying trust in our institutions, and the role of social media?

There were many people who saw that result and laughed it off. One percent?! That’s hopeless. Goodbye Billy TK! I don’t feel that way. I look to the States, where four years since the Pizzagate conspiracy first started, it’s still going. I wonder what we have to do to bring those 21 thousand people back into reality. As tempting as it is to write them or laugh at them or say they’re all nuts and crazy, that isn’t the solution.

But just because Advance NZ failed at the election, there’s no reason to believe that Billy TK and his mates are done. 

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