Solidarity holds us: a culture-centered note on community, critique, and the work of being held
By Mohan J. Dutta, Dean's Chair Professor of Communication, Massey University, and founding Director of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE).
I want to write this post as a record. Not the analytic record, which I have built across white papers and journal articles on the Free Speech Union, Family First NZ, the Hindutva infrastructure in Aotearoa and the broader far right pipeline. This post is the record of solidarity. This post is the record of who has held me up, household by household, when the targeting has arrived in waves since September 2025. This post names them. The naming is the work.
The pattern: not one incident, a sustained campaign
In September 2025 I wrote, on X and on my CARE blog, that Charlie Kirk was a white supremacist far right figure, and that the attempt by the Deputy Prime Minister to memorialise him in the New Zealand Parliament should give us a full list of who the backers of the far right are in our mainstream politics. Within hours, National Party MP Joseph Mooney posted that "New Zealand doesn't need a 'Professor of Communication' at one of its universities encouraging this kind of divisive and hyper-politicised rhetoric, and you should find yourself another job." A sitting MP of the ruling coalition publicly called for my dismissal from a university for performing the statutory function of academic critic and conscience.
In May 2026, eight months later, I wrote a Massey opinion piece in support of transgender whānau, arguing that the two-sex, two-gender binary that the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill wants to write into law is a colonial artefact, tied to whiteness, to Christian theology, to the consolidation of property and patriarchal lineage. Within hours, Bob McCoskrie of Family First was on his platforms calling me a "radical activist," telling prospective students to "think twice before enrolling" at Massey. The script was familiar. The pipeline was the same. The targeting was the same. And so, blessedly, was the solidarity.
This is what I want to name first. The targeting is not an event. The targeting is a pattern. The culture-centered approach (CCA) reads it as structural work performed by the organised far right and its parliamentary allies. The targets are academics, journalists, activists, and community organisers who name structural violence in public. Each wave tries the same thing. Each wave is met by the same infrastructure of community that has been built, one relationship at a time, over years of work in Aotearoa and across the moana.
The wāhine Māori who held the line
When the Mooney attack came in September 2025, the first voices that rose were wāhine Māori. They named the targeting as a Tiriti issue. They named it as a sovereignty issue. They named it as a democracy issue. They named it as a racist intimidation by the Crown of a tāngata moana scholar working in solidarity with Māori communities through the CCA.
Tina Ngata of Ngāti Porou wrote, organised, and held the longer analytic frame, naming the white supremacist infrastructure operating through coalition government channels. Bianca Ranson, the Te Tiriti educator and Māori sovereignty organiser, named the connection between the targeting of an Indian academic and the coalition's wider war on Te Tiriti. Sina Brown Davis spoke from the moana, naming the targeting within the broader colonial pattern of silencing tāngata moana voices. Marise Lant from Hamilton wrote directly to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, in a letter dated 13 September 2025 that I have permission to share, calling on the Prime Minister to publicly reaffirm academic freedom and to address Mooney's conduct directly. Her letter remains in the public record as evidence of what citizen democratic accountability looks like.
When the McCoskrie attack came in May 2026, the same wāhine Māori community rose again. The pattern of solidarity has memory, because community has memory, because Te Tiriti has memory, because the work of holding the line for one another is intergenerational and embodied.
This is what kotahitanga looks like in practice. This is what the Kaupapa Māori infrastructure of solidarity holds up. The CCA framework I have developed over two decades describes this in academic language as voice infrastructure. The Māori women who held me up in September 2025 and in May 2026 do not need the academic language. They are the infrastructure.
The Indian diaspora that organised
The Mooney attack was racialised. It was an Indian academic being told by a white settler-state MP that he should leave the university. The script of "go back to where you came from" was barely concealed beneath the language of "divisive rhetoric." The targeting tried to mobilise the model-minority script against me, to isolate me from the wider Indian diaspora by framing my work as embarrassing to the community.
The Indian diaspora in Aotearoa, blessedly, did not accept that script. The Aotearoa Alliance of Progressive Indians named the Mooney attack as racist intimidation and refused the model-minority framing. The Bhagat Singh Charitable Trust, holding the anti-colonial, anti-fascist legacy of Bhagat Singh himself, stood for the academic critic and conscience function. The Indian Association of Minorities spoke for the Muslim, Dalit, Adivasi, queer, and minority voices the targeting tries to silence, refusing the Hindutva diaspora script that has been organising in Aotearoa in parallel with the global Hindutva infrastructure I have documented in my research on platforms of foreclosure.
This solidarity matters because the targeting wants to produce a particular kind of Indian voice in Aotearoa, the dutiful, depoliticised, model-minority voice, and to mark all other voices as illegitimate. The progressive Indian diaspora refused to produce that voice. They named the racism. They named the Hindutva script. They named the connections between coalition government targeting and the broader transnational far right. The diaspora that the targeting wants quiet, organised.
The union and the formal solidarity
Solidarity is also institutional. On 28 October 2025, the Tertiary Education Union Massey Branch wrote to Vice-Chancellor Professor Jan Thomas, on a letter signed by Co-Presidents Te Awatea Ward and Dr Ang Feekery and Co-Vice Presidents Dr Matthew Russell and Georgia Davey. The letter named the Mooney attack as an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of my academic role and, by extension, the role of universities in a democratic nation. The letter quoted Massey's own Academic Freedom Policy on the meaning of speaking truth to power. The letter called for joint action with the Minister of Tertiary Education and the Prime Minister demanding an apology from Mooney and an assurance from the Crown that there would be no political interference in the exercise of academic freedom.
The TEU letter connected the targeting to the broader assault: David Seymour's repeated "RSA derangement syndrome" interventions against academics, and the coalition government's proposed amendments to the Education and Training Act 2020 mandating state-directed "freedom of speech" policies for universities. The TEU named these amendments as a direct threat to academic freedom because they override the existing statutory framework, conflate academic freedom with unbounded free speech, and undermine the autonomy of universities to fulfil their legislated role as critic and conscience of society under section 267 of the Education and Training Act 2020.
I want to name what the TEU letter did, in plain words. It made the targeting institutionally visible. It produced a paper trail. It put the Vice-Chancellor on record being asked to act. It moved the question from "an academic is being attacked" to "the university is being asked, formally, what it will do about the political targeting of its staff." This is what union solidarity does. It converts individual exposure into collective bargaining position. The TEU Massey branch executive and the wider TEU national leadership deserve named gratitude. I will name them again: Te Awatea Ward, Dr Ang Feekery, Dr Matthew Russell, Georgia Davey. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou.
The citizen letter to the Prime Minister
The Marise Lant letter to Prime Minister Luxon, sent on 13 September 2025, is its own piece of solidarity infrastructure. It is the work of an individual citizen, written in her own time, on her own initiative, naming political intimidation of academic staff as a threat to New Zealand democracy. Marise wrote that the Mooney statements represented "a dangerous escalation in political interference with our educational institutions and academic freedom." She named a petition titled "Protect Academic Freedom from Political Intimidation in New Zealand" that called for parliamentary condemnation, clear boundaries on political interference in universities, a public apology from Mooney, and reaffirmation of New Zealand's commitment to academic freedom and institutional independence.
What the Marise Lant letter did was build the public record. The CCA reads this as voice infrastructure work. A wāhine Māori citizen in Hamilton typed a letter to the Prime Minister, signed her name and address, asked for a response, and put on record that "New Zealanders expect better from their elected representatives." This is what democratic accountability looks like. It is not done by op-ed writers. It is done by citizens who refuse to let the targeting be normalised. The letter joins the wider white paper documentation of the Free Speech Union infrastructure as part of the public archive that future scholars and organisers will use to understand this moment in Aotearoa.
The May 2026 wave: the same community rises again
When McCoskrie and Family First came for me last week, the community rose again, in some cases the same voices, in many cases new voices, in every case the same infrastructure of solidarity that has been built and held since September 2025 and long before.
Catherine Delahunty, longtime Green movement leader and tireless Te Tiriti advocate, wrote: "Dr Mohan Dutta is a world renowned prize winning academic doing his job as a critic and conscience of societies, and you are a fundamentalist trying to silence him because of your personal beliefs. It's not going to work." Mark Graham named the function: "If Bob is complaining about him, then @mjdutt is having effect, keeping the fascist and fascist-adjacent accountable." plainjane wrote of the targeting infrastructure that the religious bigots cannot leave me alone because I break down the rationale of their bigotry. James Noble noted that McCoskrie marshalled no actual argument. Samuel Hudson, a prospective student, wrote that he could not wait to study at Massey and meet the undefeated Mohan Dutta. Ngā mihi to each of them, and to the dozens whose posts I am still working through.
The wāhine Māori voices rose again. The Indian diaspora organisations rose again. Union colleagues across Massey, across Aotearoa universities, across the Pacific and South Asia and the global CCA network rose again. The infrastructure of solidarity that was built in September 2025 was not consumed by the September 2025 wave. It was strengthened. It was tested. It held. And when the May 2026 wave arrived, the infrastructure was ready.
A culture-centered reading of what solidarity actually does
The CCA reads communication through the dialectic of structure, culture, and agency. Structure is the configuration of resources, rules, and material conditions. Culture is the meaning-making practices through which communities interpret those conditions. Agency is the everyday work of communities negotiating, resisting, and reconfiguring structures from within their cultural lifeworlds.
A targeting campaign is structural work. McCoskrie does not run Family First as a personal feeling. Mooney did not post as a private citizen. Both are agents of organised infrastructures, Family First, the Free Speech Union, the ACT Party communicative apparatus, the National Party's parliamentary platform, the Hindutva diaspora network, the transnational far right that connects Charlie Kirk's American operations to the targeting of Indian Muslim scholars to the targeting of transgender whānau in Aotearoa. The targeting is the visible tip. The infrastructure is the iceberg.
The CCA reading of solidarity reads it as the corresponding structural work of community. Solidarity is the infrastructure that makes voice survivable. Without solidarity, the targeted academic absorbs the full structural force of the far right pipeline as an individual. With solidarity, the force is dispersed, refracted, returned, named, and made costly to the attacker. The Marise Lant letter to the Prime Minister is structural work. The TEU letter to the Vice-Chancellor is structural work. Tina Ngata's writing is structural work. The Bhagat Singh Charitable Trust's organising is structural work. Catherine Delahunty's posts are structural work. Each of these moves a piece of the political economy of voice in Aotearoa. Each makes the next targeting more difficult. Each makes the next academic, the next journalist, the next activist, more likely to survive what comes for them.
This is why the CCA has, for two decades, centered the construction of voice infrastructures in subaltern communities. The migrant worker speaking from a Singapore dormitory, the Adivasi community member speaking on dispossession in Jharkhand, the Māori community member speaking on Treaty breach in the Manawatū, the transgender whānau member speaking on the violence of the colonial gender binary, and the academic speaking in solidarity with all of them, need the same thing. They need a structure of being heard that does not collapse when the attack arrives. The structure is built by community. The structure is built by the people I have named in this post and by many I have not named.
The personal and the household
I want to write the personal part. The targeting weeks are hard. They are hard in ways that do not always make it into the analytic posts. The notifications start in the morning before the children are at school. The inbox fills. The strangers arrive. The body absorbs the work of being a target, and the body remembers. I grew up in Kharagpur and Kolkata in the communist and social justice traditions of Bengal, where the price of speaking was understood as part of the work. My family carried that understanding. The understanding does not make the body's response disappear, it teaches you to recognise it.
What solidarity does, materially, is reorganise the morning. The notifications still arrive. But threaded through them now are the posts and letters and emails from Tina, Bianca, Sina, Marise, Catherine, Mark, plainjane, James, Samuel, the TEU executive, the Aotearoa Alliance of Progressive Indians, the Bhagat Singh Trust, the Indian Association of Minorities, and the dozens of others who took the time to type something into the public record. Each post is a brick in the structure that holds the work. The structure is built one post at a time. I read each one. My wife Debalina reads them with me. My parents in the house ask who has written today. My children, Trisha, Shloke, and Soham, sense the household's shoulders settle. This is what community solidarity does. It restores the household. It returns the academic to the work.
The call: keep building, name names, hold the line
If you have read this far, this is the part I am asking you to take with you. The infrastructure of solidarity is built by people, post by post, conversation by conversation, complaint by complaint, public letter by public letter. It is built by communities deciding that the academic critic and conscience function is worth defending, and acting accordingly. It is built by students choosing to enrol at universities that hold the line and saying so publicly. It is built by colleagues writing the small posts and the larger letters. It is built by iwi and hapū and community organisations naming the targeting of academics as a Tiriti issue, a free speech issue, a democracy issue. It is built by the Human Rights Commission, Netsafe, and New Zealand Police being engaged when the targeting crosses the threshold of the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, as it often does. It is built by the press refusing the framing that treats an organised far right targeting campaign as a "debate."
And it is built by naming names. The infrastructure of solidarity becomes visible when we name who builds it. The infrastructure of targeting becomes accountable when we name who runs it. The CCA insists on this naming. Subaltern voice is not abstract. It is specific. It belongs to people with names and addresses and households and whakapapa and whānau.
To Tina Ngata, Bianca Ranson, Sina Brown Davis, Marise Lant, Catherine Delahunty, Mark Graham, plainjane, James Noble, Samuel Hudson, Te Awatea Ward, Dr Ang Feekery, Dr Matthew Russell, Georgia Davey, to the Aotearoa Alliance of Progressive Indians, to the Bhagat Singh Charitable Trust, to the Indian Association of Minorities, to the TEU Massey Branch executive and the TEU national leadership, to the CARE team in Palmerston North who hold the day-to-day with extraordinary care, to the community partners across our seventeen-country network, to my colleagues at Massey who have shown up quietly and publicly, to every voice not named here, ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa.
You have done the structural work of community. You have made the next opinion piece possible to write. You have held the household. You have held the role. The critic and conscience function in Aotearoa is held by you. It has always been held by you. The statute is the floor. You are the ceiling.
Kia kaha. Kia māia. Kia manawanui. The work continues, because you make the work possible.
Mohan J. Dutta is Dean's Chair Professor of Communication at Massey University and founding Director of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE). His scholarly work develops the culture-centered approach across more than fifty community partnerships in seventeen countries, centering subaltern voice, structural violence, and communicative inequality.
To support the work of CARE, follow @CAREMassey on social platforms, subscribe to the CARE newsletter, and share this post with colleagues and community members who are building the infrastructure of solidarity in their own contexts. Documentation of the September 2025 Mooney targeting and the May 2026 McCoskrie targeting is available through the CARE white paper series.