[The far right in Aotearoa has been driving an organised attack on the discipline of Communication and Media Studies. This opinion piece is part of a five-part series on the organized attack of the far right on Communication and Media Studies pedagogy and research. Recently, this ecosystem has picked me as a poster child for the discipline, pushing forth a conspiracy about a sinister "Left Woke Agenda." The first two of the pieces in this series are responses to targeted attacks on my research programme, and the next three pieces will offer disciplinary analyses. Such attacks from the far-right, through mobilization of othering discourse, rendered virality through digital platforms, are integral to the mobilization of violence targeting academics. As a member of the Board of the International Communication Association, I think it is critical that we take the time to debunk the conspiracy theories being built around our discipline by the far-right hate ecosystem.]
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| Karl du Fresne, a key propagandist in this attack (Taken from Stuff website) |
I had not earlier heard the name Karl du Fresne, who is apparently a New Zealand journalist and blogger writing opinion pieces for the digital space, The Platform, that has in the past circulated misinformation, hosted conspiracy theories, and participated in practices that might be considered unethical by journalistic standards.
Earlier this month, a journalist reached out to me on Twitter, sharing that du Fresne had written a hit piece for The Platform targeting me. The journalist commiserated with me, sharing how they were the target of an attack carried out by du Fresne, directed at his employer and attacking his livelihood (for someone who is propped up by the Free Speech Union as a vocal advocate for free speech).
I was fairly certain what the attack might look like, given the organised campaign by the far-right hate machine targeting the academic freedom of scholars writing on issues of social justice (particularly racial and gender justice) and global challenges that fall under the umbrella of sustainable development goals (specifically inequality and climate change). This organised attack on intellectuals is being witnessed globally at an exponential scale, having been seeded in the early 2000s by the right-wing evangelicals in the U.S., multiplied manifold as racist pushback to the election of Barack Obama, and given expansive fuel by the US-based Bannon-Trump-DeSantis-Tucker Carlson propaganda network. I was curious to explore what a New Zealand take on this ecosystem would look like.
What I found when I dug up the article was a shabby hit piece, thoroughly unresearched, replete with its uninspiring tediousness, parroting the far-right conspiracy themes from the U.S.-Trump-Bannon universe, and demonstrative of the organised attack on critical literacy by the far-right media infrastructure (the far right's obsession with the education of the youth in critical concepts that question power; that du Fresne has dedicated opinion platforms on mainstream media is concerning). What I thought I will do here is offer for Mr. du Fresne an exemplar of critical pedagogy and hopefully open up a space for learning. My analysis is specifically focused on the discourse evident in the article.
Let's begin with the title of the article, "A blank canvas for stokers of the culture wars." The framing of the title, portraying Aotearoa as a blank canvas, juxtaposed against the "stokers of culture wars" phrase gives away the racist ideology that drives it.
To frame Aotearoa as a blank canvas for supposedly imported conspiracists like me (more on this later), du Fresne has to erase tangata whenua and the history of Māori activism against colonization, racism, and white supremacy. The suggestion that stokers of culture wars are bringing in "outsider" and therefore, impure (that are disturbing the purity of Aotearoa) ideologies of social justice into Aotearoa is racist, both in erasing long-held Māori leadership in struggles for justice here in Aotearoa and globally, and in labeling me, an ethnic migrant, as the wrong kind of migrant bringing in dangerous ideas that are corrupting Aotearoa by "stoking culture wars."
Note here the slippery slope du Fresne embarks on, placing me as part of an elite group and implying that this group is part of a global conspiracy to uphold and perpetuate power. By extension, in du Fresne's concocted world, pretty much every academic discipline with its use of jargon is cooking up conspiracies to mislead the impressionable. This elite group uses propaganda in coded language that ironically can't be deciphered!
Let's begin with the title of the article, "A blank canvas for stokers of the culture wars." The framing of the title, portraying Aotearoa as a blank canvas, juxtaposed against the "stokers of culture wars" phrase gives away the racist ideology that drives it.
To frame Aotearoa as a blank canvas for supposedly imported conspiracists like me (more on this later), du Fresne has to erase tangata whenua and the history of Māori activism against colonization, racism, and white supremacy. The suggestion that stokers of culture wars are bringing in "outsider" and therefore, impure (that are disturbing the purity of Aotearoa) ideologies of social justice into Aotearoa is racist, both in erasing long-held Māori leadership in struggles for justice here in Aotearoa and globally, and in labeling me, an ethnic migrant, as the wrong kind of migrant bringing in dangerous ideas that are corrupting Aotearoa by "stoking culture wars."
In erasing Māori activism for justice and framing an ethnic migrant as bringing in trouble, du Fresne strategically obfuscates his own familial history as Tangata Tiriti, as manuhiri to this land.
As the article rolls on with its rhetorical fallacies, it seems obvious that what du Fresne seems to have an issue with is the fact that I teach and research at a University in Aotearoa. As a way to set up his attack, he takes issue with the language that describes my programme of research on the Massey University website, suggesting the language used on the website is part of a radical conspiracy. He cuts and pastes the description of my research programme from the website to then accuse the website of using incomprehensible language, stating that the description is "written in a dialect that most people would find almost incomprehensible."
As the article rolls on with its rhetorical fallacies, it seems obvious that what du Fresne seems to have an issue with is the fact that I teach and research at a University in Aotearoa. As a way to set up his attack, he takes issue with the language that describes my programme of research on the Massey University website, suggesting the language used on the website is part of a radical conspiracy. He cuts and pastes the description of my research programme from the website to then accuse the website of using incomprehensible language, stating that the description is "written in a dialect that most people would find almost incomprehensible."
Academic websites are largely written for other academic audiences spread globally, as well as for key stakeholders outside the academe such as funding agencies and partner organisations (at least those are the key audiences I envision reaching out to through my webpage). Similarly, academic work is largely written for other academics within a sub-discipline, and published in peer-reviewed journals (as a social scientist, that is the model I have worked in although I am aware of other models such as publication of books in the Humanities).
In democracies, it is the work of journalists to do the critical work of translating scholarship for the public. For bloggers such as du Fresne interlocuting with a right-wing conspiracy web while posing as a journalist, any serious engagement with scholarship would require doing actual journalistic work. Such work would entail doing research and learning, calling on critical pedagogy that is cultivated through rigorous journalism education, grounded in communication and media theory, carrying critical analyses of power, and drawing on critical engagement with questions of ethics in reporting (by his own admission, du Fresne is not trained in a journalism school, something we will explore in depth in a later blog post).
Suggesting that making the language incomprehensible on the Massey website is purposeful and part of a larger conspiracy, du Fresne then goes on to write:
"Elite groups have always used their own coded jargon to project (and protect) their power, to enhance their aura of exclusivity and to impress the impressionable. The object is not to explain, as most language strives to do, but to obscure, presumably in the hope that no one will detect its phony portentousness. No one does this stuff better than neo-Marxist academics."
Suggesting that making the language incomprehensible on the Massey website is purposeful and part of a larger conspiracy, du Fresne then goes on to write:
"Elite groups have always used their own coded jargon to project (and protect) their power, to enhance their aura of exclusivity and to impress the impressionable. The object is not to explain, as most language strives to do, but to obscure, presumably in the hope that no one will detect its phony portentousness. No one does this stuff better than neo-Marxist academics."
Note here the slippery slope du Fresne embarks on, placing me as part of an elite group and implying that this group is part of a global conspiracy to uphold and perpetuate power. By extension, in du Fresne's concocted world, pretty much every academic discipline with its use of jargon is cooking up conspiracies to mislead the impressionable. This elite group uses propaganda in coded language that ironically can't be deciphered!
In the conspiracy web that du Fresne serves us, this elite group seeks to establish a Marxist global order, and it does so through the use of "coded jargon."
The conspiracy web constructed by du Fresne aligns well with the conspiratorial discursive frames weaved by the Alt-Right. In this conspiracy web woven together by white supremacists, a global Communist conspiracy is being ushered in by Neo/Marxists, working alongside and/or being funded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or George Soros (take your pick!), and intertwined with the agendas of the World Economic Forum, United Nations, etc. Consider for example the language of conspiracy directed at scientists, science communicators, policymakers and the World Health Organisation (WHO) that forms the ideological infrastructure of the QAnon universe.
Critical to the propaganda woven by the far-right is mobilisation against knowledge and the university, and by extension, academics. Also worth noting is the specific targeting of social justice scholarship within the academe as a Neo-Marxist conspiracy. The Neo-Marxist conspiracy currently in vogue across far-right mobilisations globally is a regurgitation of the Red Scare conspiracy during the Cold War that was systematically organized to silence critical academics, albeit accelerated through networks of hate on digital platforms and incorporated into white supremacist organising of violence targeting academics.
The conspiracy web constructed by du Fresne aligns well with the conspiratorial discursive frames weaved by the Alt-Right. In this conspiracy web woven together by white supremacists, a global Communist conspiracy is being ushered in by Neo/Marxists, working alongside and/or being funded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or George Soros (take your pick!), and intertwined with the agendas of the World Economic Forum, United Nations, etc. Consider for example the language of conspiracy directed at scientists, science communicators, policymakers and the World Health Organisation (WHO) that forms the ideological infrastructure of the QAnon universe.
Critical to the propaganda woven by the far-right is mobilisation against knowledge and the university, and by extension, academics. Also worth noting is the specific targeting of social justice scholarship within the academe as a Neo-Marxist conspiracy. The Neo-Marxist conspiracy currently in vogue across far-right mobilisations globally is a regurgitation of the Red Scare conspiracy during the Cold War that was systematically organized to silence critical academics, albeit accelerated through networks of hate on digital platforms and incorporated into white supremacist organising of violence targeting academics.
For the far right, the framing of the teaching of theories of social justice in the academe as a Neo/Marxist conspiracy works to silence the voices of Indigenous, Black, and migrants of color communities raising claims for justice. The white supremacist hegemony of the far-right sees the organising for justice from the margins of settler colonial societies as threatening to the white status quo (see how this manifests in the Great Replacement theory). The far-right conspiracy web therefore communicatively inverts materiality, inverting historic processes of racist marginalisation on their head to portray voices advocating for social justice as elites occupying power.
Another communicative inversion performed here by du Fresne is the framing of social justice scholarship as an imported idea while reproducing imported American far-right talking points. The actual "culture wars" that are imported into Aotearoa are the far-right mobilisations of white supremacist cultural nationalism to attack academic freedom, in direct violation of Education Act 1989, section 268 of the Education and Training Act 2020, and in continuity with the racist settler colonial infrastructure of Aotearoa.
du Fresne goes on, "The university system is awash with this gibberish – a fact that would be comical if we weren’t paying for it."
Accountability to the taxpayer is one of the key resources in the mobilization of the far-right. Designating themselves as gatekeepers, as representatives and advocates of the voices of the taxpayer, far-right propagandists launch and mobilise their attacks on academic freedom by claiming that the research and teaching on questions of social justice are a waste of taxpayer money.
In portraying entire bodies of scholarship (in this case, my research programme exploring the structural determinants of health inequalities and the communicative strategies for addressing these inequities: I don't think du Fresne is able to decode this from the description he posted) as gibberish, du Fresne demonstrates his lack of credibility as a journalist. He doesn't really understand the scholarly process, much like other demagogues in this category who seek to find relevance through organised attacks on intellectuals based on shallow heuristics.
The process of academic peer review, albeit with its multiple limitations, based on the participation in a rigorous evaluation process by a community of scholars, establishes the credibility of knowledge. Within the academic community of experts, knowledge is contested, theories are offered and tested, and concepts subjected to empirical examination in an ongoing process of scholarly engagement.
Any journalist wanting to seriously write about academic research programmes is expected to do the homework to understand how scholarly knowledge is produced, be ready to study the research programme, and equip oneself then to report on it. This process of translating scholarship for public consumption calls for deep engagement, based on rigor. Of course, for bloggers such as du Fresne, this sort of painstaking and rigorous work is not conducive to generating superficial tropes for the conspiracy web.
du Fresne then cherry-picks some examples from my research programme:
"The second conclusion we can reach on the basis of his profile is that Dutta is adept, like many of his ilk, at tapping into public funds – in this case from the AHRQ, which is part of the US Department of Health, and the National University of Singapore (NUS). The poor working schmucks whose taxes fund these institutions have no knowledge of, and even less control over, the radical agendas they enable."
Once again, to comment upon specific research projects would call for du Fresne to actually educate himself on the nuts and bolts of the research (not just google a webpage!). The US$1.5 million grant, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, that he refers to, built on my research programme on the culture-centred approach, a framework I have developed over two decades of community engaged-research, was designed to co-create a framework for disseminating evidence-based comparative effectiveness research on heart health treatments among two underserved African American communities in Lake and Marion Counties of the U.S. It was funded after having been ranked highly in a competitive process of scientific peer review.
du Fresne then cherry-picks some examples from my research programme:
"The second conclusion we can reach on the basis of his profile is that Dutta is adept, like many of his ilk, at tapping into public funds – in this case from the AHRQ, which is part of the US Department of Health, and the National University of Singapore (NUS). The poor working schmucks whose taxes fund these institutions have no knowledge of, and even less control over, the radical agendas they enable."
Once again, to comment upon specific research projects would call for du Fresne to actually educate himself on the nuts and bolts of the research (not just google a webpage!). The US$1.5 million grant, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, that he refers to, built on my research programme on the culture-centred approach, a framework I have developed over two decades of community engaged-research, was designed to co-create a framework for disseminating evidence-based comparative effectiveness research on heart health treatments among two underserved African American communities in Lake and Marion Counties of the U.S. It was funded after having been ranked highly in a competitive process of scientific peer review.
The programme, developed through community leadership, engaged African American churches, gospel singing groups, community fairs, schools, barber shops etc., reaching over 500,000 community members over its three-year span. It's an intervention that seeded multiple other interventions, including African American school children participating in prevention programmes around heart health, community food gardens, and community initiatives around healthy lifestyles. It's one of the earliest examples of the power of culture-centered interventions in creating practical impact on the health and wellbeing of systematically disenfranchised communities through community empowerment.
African American communities in the US experience disproportionate burdens of heart disease. In this backdrop, the community-led culture-centered intervention, co-created through partnerships with African American organisations, and evaluated through a quasi-experimental community-based design, was effective in building community knowledge of heart health prevention and treatment. This intervention is an example of the sort of social impact generated by theory-driven research addressing societal challenges.
It is, therefore, both ironic and reflective of the marginalising agenda of whiteness that du Fresne would target the AHRQ-funded programme, framing it as being driven by a radical agenda (more on this in a follow-up piece).
For propagandists in the Alt-Right ecosystem, community-led health initiatives led by racially marginalised and historically oppressed communities are reflective of a radical agenda. For these propagandists, reducing inequities in health outcomes at the raced margins of settler colonies is radical agenda. For the propaganda infrastructure of hate, historically marginalised communities having a voice in decision-making processes about their health and well-being is reflective of a radical agenda. Most importantly, the improvement in actual health outcomes of communities experiencing health inequities is reflective of a radical agenda.
All this is radical because the fundamental structures of white privilege that maintain and perpetuate health disparities in settler colonies are disrupted and threatened.
White supremacy continually explores strategies for silencing the voices of marginalised communities. Doing so enables white supremacy to continue perpetuating its power and control, uncontested and unchallenged (the good old days!).
As I noted earlier, such propaganda in Aotearoa also has to erase the history of organising against health inequalities by Māori and the extensive body of Kaupapa Māori-based literature challenging these health inequalities to make up the narrative that anti-racist ideas of health justice are imported from the U.S., all the while parroting the U.S.-based white supremacist talking points.