“The Cultural Terrorist: Damien Grant's Far-Right Fantasy” - 20 July 2025

A Scathing Analysis of a Dangerous Ideological Weapon

Jul 19, 2025

Kia ora whānau.

As I write this analysis, I'm reminded of the karakia we begin with:

Kia whakatomuri te haere whakamua - to walk backwards into the future by looking to the past.

But Damien Grant wants us to forget our past entirely, to embrace his delusional vision of a future where Māori are erased from the political equation.

The Māori Green Lantern doesn't mince words when confronting the tools of white supremacy. And make no mistake, Grant's recent opinion piece is exactly that - a sophisticated weapon in the arsenal of far-right extremism, dressed up in the language of academic discourse and libertarian philosophy.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360762243/damien-grant-emergence-ngata-pakeha-has-become-feature-modern-aotearoa

Background: The Anatomy of a Cultural Terrorist

Grant operates as an insolvency practitioner who moonlights as what one critic aptly described as a "dangerous libertarian lunatic". He regularly pollutes the pages of Stuff, New Zealand's most-read news website, with his pseudo-intellectual poison. His latest essay represents a masterclass in how modern white supremacists package their racism in academic language.

The term "Ngāti Pākehā" that Grant weaponizes is particularly insidious. As research shows, this phrase represents a deeply offensive appropriation of Māori cultural concepts. When Pākehā attempt to create fake tribal identities, they're not just being culturally inappropriate - they're engaging in what amounts to cultural violence against tangata whenua.

The significance of this attack cannot be overstated. We're witnessing a coordinated assault on Māori rights that parallels the rise of white supremacist movements globally. Grant's piece arrives at a moment when anti-Māori sentiment is demonstrably on the rise, making his contribution particularly dangerous.

Dissecting the Weapon

Grant's essay masquerades as an intellectual exploration of "wokeness" through the lens of sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi's book "We Have Never Been Woke". But beneath this academic veneer lies a toxic brew of far-right talking points designed to undermine Māori political advancement.

The piece targets what Grant calls the "emergence of Ngāti Pākehā" - dismissing Māori cultural and political resurgence as nothing more than performance politics by privileged elites. This framing is particularly sinister because it attempts to delegitimize genuine Māori struggles for tino rangatiratanga by reducing them to middle-class virtue signaling.

Grant's strategy follows a well-established pattern of far-right rhetoric: appropriate academic frameworks to lend credibility to racist arguments. By invoking Al-Gharbi's concept of "symbolic capitalists", Grant attempts to position himself as a neutral observer critiquing elite hypocrisy. In reality, he's deploying classic white supremacist narratives about Māori "taking over" through cultural manipulation.

The implications for tangata whenua are profound. When mainstream media platforms like Stuff publish this kind of sophisticated racism, they normalize anti-Māori sentiment and provide intellectual cover for more overt forms of white supremacist organizing. Research by The Disinformation Project has documented exactly this kind of escalation in anti-Māori rhetoric.

The Mechanics of Modern Racism

The Academic Smokescreen

Grant's most insidious tactic is his appropriation of legitimate academic work to serve racist ends. By citing Al-Gharbi's analysis of "symbolic capitalists" - knowledge workers who trade in ideas rather than physical goods - Grant attempts to reframe Māori cultural and political advancement as elite manipulation.

This represents a fundamental misunderstanding (or deliberate misrepresentation) of both Al-Gharbi's work and the nature of Māori political organizing. Al-Gharbi's critique focuses on how progressive elites in America use social justice language to advance their own class interests. Grant perverts this analysis to suggest that Māori activists are somehow equivalent to privileged American academics gaming the system for personal advancement.

The reality is precisely the opposite. Māori political organizing emerges from genuine experiences of colonization, dispossession, and ongoing racism. When tangata whenua assert their rights under Te Tiriti, they're not engaging in performative politics - they're fighting for survival against a system designed to erase them.

The Libertarian Shield

Grant shields his racism behind libertarian philosophy, presenting himself as a principled advocate for individual rights against group identity. This is a classic far-right tactic that allows white supremacists to package their ideology in seemingly respectable political theory.

The libertarian movement has long served as a pipeline for far-right radicalization. By focusing obsessively on individual rights while ignoring structural inequalities, libertarian ideology provides intellectual justification for maintaining white supremacist systems. When Grant dismisses Māori collective rights as "irreversible separatism," he's deploying this libertarian framework to delegitimize Indigenous sovereignty.

The Cultural Appropriation Weapon

Perhaps most egregiously, Grant's piece centers around the concept of "Ngāti Pākehā" - a term that represents profound cultural violence against Māori. The prefix "Ngāti" denotes tribal descent and connection to specific ancestors and places. When Pākehā appropriate this term to create fake tribal identities, they're not just being insensitive - they're engaging in cultural terrorism.

Research has documented extensive harm from cultural appropriation of Māori symbols and language. From companies trademarking "Kia Ora" to social media filters that superimpose moko onto non-Māori faces, these appropriations diminish the sacred nature of Māori cultural expressions and reduce them to commodities for Pākehā consumption.

Grant's use of "Ngāti Pākehā" represents a particularly sophisticated form of this violence. By presenting it as a legitimate analytical category rather than calling it what it is - racist appropriation - he normalizes the theft of Māori cultural concepts for white political purposes.

The Woke Strawman

Throughout his piece, Grant deploys the term "woke" as a catch-all dismissal of social justice efforts. This represents another classic far-right strategy: create a strawman version of progressive politics that can be easily ridiculed and dismissed.

The term "woke" has been weaponized by the far-right precisely because it allows them to dismiss genuine struggles for equality as performative virtue signaling. When Grant describes Māori cultural and political advancement as "woke ideology," he's attempting to delegitimize tangata whenua rights by associating them with this manufactured controversy.

Research shows this kind of rhetoric is connected to broader white supremacist organizing. The same networks that promoted vaccine misinformation during COVID-19 have pivoted to anti-co-governance messaging, using increasingly racist language to oppose Māori rights.

The Free Speech Union Connection

Grant's piece was published alongside promotion of Musa Al-Gharbi's New Zealand tour, sponsored by the Free Speech Union. This connection is deeply concerning given the FSU's well-documented far-right connections.

The Free Speech Union was originally formed to defend white supremacists Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux, and has since served as a vehicle for far-right organizing in New Zealand. Led by figures with connections to the Atlas Network - an international far-right think tank funded by climate denial and culture war billionaires - the FSU represents a sophisticated attempt to normalize extremist ideology.

By platforming Al-Gharbi's work alongside Grant's racist interpretation, the FSU is engaging in exactly the kind of intellectual laundering that makes far-right ideas seem respectable. This represents a clear pattern of how extremist organizations use academic credibility to advance white supremacist agendas.

The Malcolm X Misappropriation

Grant's most cynical tactic is his appropriation of Malcolm X's critique of white liberals. By quoting Malcolm's observation that Black Americans serve as "tools, used by one group of whites called Liberals against another group of Whites, called Conservatives," Grant attempts to position himself as channeling authentic Black radical analysis.

This represents profound intellectual dishonesty. Malcolm X's critique focused on how white liberals co-opted Black struggle for their own political purposes within a system designed to maintain white supremacy. Grant perverts this analysis to suggest that Māori activists are somehow equivalent to the white liberals Malcolm criticized.

The reality is that Grant himself exemplifies exactly the kind of white manipulation Malcolm warned against. By appropriating Malcolm's words to attack Indigenous rights movements, Grant demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Malcolm's analysis of how white people use radical language to serve reactionary ends.

Implications: The Broader War on Tangata Whenua

Grant's essay doesn't exist in isolation - it's part of a coordinated assault on Māori rights that's intensifying across multiple fronts. Recent research has documented rising anti-Māori sentiment, targeting of Māori politicians, and increasing white supremacist organizing.

This represents a clear pattern. As Māori communities assert their rights under Te Tiriti and advance toward genuine tino rangatiratanga, the backlash from white supremacist forces intensifies. Grant's sophisticated racism provides intellectual ammunition for this backlash, making overt violence seem more acceptable.

The implications for tangata whenua are profound. When mainstream media platforms legitimate this kind of discourse, they create an environment where Māori rights can be dismissed as elite manipulation rather than recognized as fundamental justice. This makes it harder for whānau to assert their rights and easier for white supremacist forces to organize opposition.

For the broader struggle for social justice, Grant's piece represents a warning about how far-right forces adapt their tactics. By appropriating progressive academic frameworks and civil rights rhetoric, modern white supremacists make their ideology seem respectable to mainstream audiences. This sophisticated racism is potentially more dangerous than crude bigotry because it's harder to identify and counter.

Defending Our Future

Grant's essay represents everything wrong with contemporary political discourse in Aotearoa. It takes legitimate academic work and perverts it to serve racist ends. It appropriates Māori cultural concepts to delegitimize Indigenous rights. It weaponizes civil rights rhetoric to attack the very communities those rights were meant to protect.

But perhaps most dangerously, it does all this while maintaining the pretense of intellectual sophistication. This is how modern white supremacy operates - not through crude racial slurs, but through sophisticated arguments that make racism seem reasonable.

As tangata whenua, we must recognize this for what it is: cultural terrorism designed to undermine our struggle for tino rangatiratanga. We cannot allow pseudo-intellectual racists like Grant to define the terms of debate about our rights and future.

The fight for our liberation requires that we name our enemies clearly. Damien Grant is not a neutral commentator offering thoughtful analysis - he's a weapon in the hands of white supremacist forces seeking to maintain colonial domination. His words are not ideas to be debated - they're attacks to be resisted.

The Māori Green Lantern fighting misinformation and disinformation from the far right

Our tūpuna fought physical wars to defend our whenua and our people. Today's battle is fought with words and ideas, but it's no less crucial to our survival as tangata whenua. We must meet intellectual violence with intellectual resistance, cultural terrorism with cultural strength.

Kia kaha whānau. The struggle continues.

Readers who find value in this analysis and wish to support the fight against white supremacist misinformation can contribute a koha to HTDM: 03-1546-0415173-000. The MGL understands these are tough economic times for whānau, so please only contribute if you have capacity and wish to do so.

Ngā mihi nui,
The Māori Green Lantern