My commitment to anticolonial work has been forged in the fires of the Global South, where colonialism's scars run deeper than borders.
They have been shaped by my ancestors who committed to resisting the terror of the colonial apparatus, often at great personal cost. One of my grandfathers took the pledge of anticolonial struggle, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent resistance to Britsh colonial terror.
For decades, I've wielded words as weapons against oppression—dissecting Hindutva fascism, white supremacy, far right Zionism and the settler colonial machinery that devours lives from Palestine to Aotearoa.
But since October 8, 2023, when I dared call the breach of Gaza's apartheid wall a "powerful exemplar of decolonising resistance," I've become prey.
Not for celebrating blood—God, no; I condemned the civilian horrors, the rapes, the kidnappings, rooting my analysis in Fanon's rupture of power and Gandhi's non-violent ethos. The very same blogpost expressing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle that the propaganda weaponises goes to excessive length to talk about decolonising as non-violent resistance that rejects the violence of the settler colonial-imperial apparatus.
It is not my celebration of terror as the blog post nowhere "celebrates terror." No, they hunt me for naming the beast: settler colonialism as the architect of terror.
At the heart of this witch hunt squats the Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ), a propaganda mill masquerading as advocacy, mobilizing racist terror tropes to paint me—and every dissenting voice—as a monster justifying slaughter.
Their latest salvo? David Cumin's speech at the Auckland "March Against Antisemitism" on December 21, 2025, where he branded me a "terror-justifier" amid the grief of the Bondi Beach massacre. This isn't mourning; it's weaponized inversion, turning colonial violence into victimhood while unleashing armies to erase those who stand in solidarity (yes, solidarity) with the Palestinian struggle. Examine closely the organizing of this hate infrastructure targeting the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese.
Picture it: Just a week after the December 14 Bondi attack—15 Jewish lives stolen in a synagogue blaze of antisemitic horror—Cumin, IINZ's chair and a Free Speech Union darling, commandeers a vigil in Auckland. The crowd, raw with loss, hears him pivot from solidarity to anger. "When our national counter-extremism research centre appoints a terror-justifier like Mohan Dutta to a key committee," he thunders, demanding "an apology and self-reflection" from scholars like Paul Spoonley and Joanna Kidman.
Me? A "terror-justifier"? For what—my decolonial critique of occupation, my expression of solidarity with the voices of the marginalised or my role on a committee amplifying marginalized voices against extremism? Cumin doesn't say. Instead, he fuses my name with Bondi's blood, implying my public engagement fuels such atrocities.
It's a masterstroke of settler colonial terror tropes: the brown immigrant academic as ticking bomb, his words not analysis but accelerant for "hate." Posted on IINZ's site the next day—complete with video clip—this wasn't rhetoric; it was recruitment.
Each time that the far-right Zionist structure has mobilized its propaganda based on lies, trolls swarmed my mentions, death threats spiked, and deportation petitions resurfaced, all echoing the lies.
This is IINZ's playbook: not defense of Israel, but the mobilization of racist, dehumanizing narratives to silence resistance.
Founded as a "think tank" but functioning as a smear factory, IINZ under Cumin has targeted me, among other critical academic voices since 2019, when he first accused me of "extremism" for tweeting solidarity with Ilhan Omar and Palestinian rights.
Their 2025 screed, "Academic Freedom for Some," escalates: I "glorify the October 7 Massacre," they claim, my CARE centre a den of "ideological" Israel-bashing.
Lies, all—cherry-picked quotes stripped of my condemnations of violence, my calls for ceasefire, my critiques of all supremacies.
But facts don't matter; tropes do. Cumin deploys the "terror-justifier" archetype, a settler colonial staple: the colonized ally as inherent savage, his intellect a veil for bloodlust. As a South Asian migrant, I'm doubly damned— the "ungrateful curry muncher" peddling "toxic ideology," my brown skin proof of disloyalty to the white settler order.
This racism isn't subtle; it's structural. IINZ inverts everything: their harassment is "free speech," my scholarship "hate."
Bondi becomes their prop, a tragedy hijacked to equate my structural analysis with synagogue slaughter, fueling Islamophobic paranoia that Palestinians (and their Global South backers) are the real existential threat.
Gut-wrenching doesn't begin to capture it. That speech? It wasn't abstract. Within hours, X lit up with IINZ-amplified bile.
This is part of a pattern. The settler colonial tropes deployed by IINZ and far-right Zionists in Aotearoa trigger racist violence, including calls to deportation and death threats.
X handles such as @TheConsultant18, their echo chamber ally, tags Massey with "sub-optimal human" rants, calling me a terror-enabler. "Low rent human," they spat, evoking the immigrant-as-vermin trope.
Death threats poured in— my address doxxed in far-right forums. As a migrant, the deportation drumbeat terrifies: calls to deport cite Cumin's words, demanding NZ purge this "terror-justifier" before he "imports" more hate.
My family worries about safety; I've changed locks, routes, sleep. Colleagues offer private nods but public silence—fear of IINZ's next hit piece.
This is terror, settler-style: not bombs, but communicative violence that isolates, pathologizes, erases.
Cumin knows the power of naming—from a podium, it sanctifies the mob. His "apology" demand? Code for cancellation: fire the brown professor, muzzle the decolonial nerve.
IINZ isn't alone; they're the node in a supremacist web.
Dane Giraud's "Jew-derangement syndrome" smears feed Cumin's fire, both laundering racism as "concern." Giraud, a board member and regular host on the Free Speech Union along with Cumin, lobbies my dismissal; IINZ provides the "evidence"—fabricated extremism.
Together, they mobilize settler terror tropes: the "deranged native" (me, loathing "white people" per their amplifiers), the "jihadist sympathizer" whose resistance cheers massacres.
It's colonial DNA—dehumanize to justify erasure, invert the occupier's violence as self-defense. In Palestine, it's Gaza's siege as "security"; in NZ, Māori land theft as "progress."
My crime? Linking them, amplifying subaltern screams.
Cumin's Bondi rant exposes the fragility: over 45,000 dead in Gaza by early 2026, global protests swelling, and they clutch at my scalp to stem the tide.
But here's the truth they dread: this ordeal steels me.
I've stared into the abyss of their hate—sleepless nights parsing threats, heart pounding at every ping—and emerged fiercer.
IINZ's tropes are crumbling relics, their "free speech" a tyrant's fig leaf. To Cumin, Giraud, the troll legions: your racism reeks of empire's rot.
Name me "terror-justifier" all you want; I'll name the terror—settler supremacy, from Gaza to Aotearoa. To my kin in the struggle—migrants, Indigenous, resisters—rise.
Their armies mobilize fear; ours, justice.
Decolonization isn't a blog post; it's the dawn they can't postpone.