Chemtrails, 9/11 and vaccine nanobots: The digital trail of NZ First’s could-be MPs

Recent polls show New Zealand First on track for a return to Parliament. As the party increasingly courts the so-called “freedom movement”, the digital footprint of some of its could-be parliamentarians may cause headaches.

For several years, a user currently named “Polly” has been pumping the social media app Telegram with conspiracy content.

Much of it involves sinister global plots, supposedly seeping from groups like the World Economic Forum (WEF) to oppress and control the population.

Polly once shared a post suggesting those who took the “death-shots” are “technically no longer ‘human’”. Another post suggested visiting a cemetery to verify whether “dead vaxxers” emit Bluetooth signals.

She shared a video alleging the Covid-19 vaccines contain nanotechnology, connecting the vaccinated to a centralised 5G smart grid, turning them into “biological robots” branded with a scannable product code.

Another laid out a sprawling theory involving the Knights Templar, Nazis, and the Swiss Government, which claimed nearly all terrorist attacks since 9/11 were false flags undertaken by the New World Order. “People should def watch,” Polly wrote.

Speaking of 9/11 – Polly isn’t sure about that one. “I genuinely thought 911 was real,” she wrote in 2021. “If I can wake up, others will too.”

To Polly, politicians from across the spectrum deserve suspicion.

She had been an ACT supporter until she received an email with the party’s Covid response plan in 2021. “Welcome to Communist China,” she wrote in a reply. “You have lost my vote”.

Dame Jacinda Ardern is “the most evil thing”; when Ardern visited Waitangi in 2022, Polly cryptically posted: “Cindy is at Waitangi. You know what to do.”

Even Donald Trump is deserving of scorn.

“Zionist. Trump tower. The 7 pillars. Inverted triangle with trees planted 6 x 6 x 6. No one is coming to save us,” Polly posted alongside an image of Trump Tower.

An anonymous Telegram poster isn’t typically worth covering in a news article. But Polly was recently announced as a candidate for NZ First.

Kirsten Murfitt is a property and commercial lawyer in Tauranga. She had been a candidate for Democracy NZ before leaving as part of a candidate exodus.

Soon afterwards, she attended a public speech from NZ First leader Winston Peters. She went through the selection process and was recently listed as the candidate for Bay of Plenty.

“I feel like I’ve found my political home at long last,” she said in a recent interview on Reality Check Radio (RCR).

In public, Murfitt had been a vocal critic of the pandemic response, expressing her views through open letters to authority figures. She was part of a group called New Zealand Lawyers Speaking Out with Science (NZLSOS) alongside Sue Grey.

Some of those views have been controversial. An open letter to police she co-authored asked for an investigation into whether the vaccines contained “microscopically visible artificial technology”, drawing on debunked claims made by Dr Matt Shelton.

Online, her views appear to be much more expansive.

Stuff has matched Murfitt to the Polly account, which featured her full name and profile picture until around the time of her political candidacy. The account has posted videos seemingly taken by Murfitt and has referred to Murfitt in the first person.

Stuff sent a list of questions to Murfitt asking for her views on 9/11, nanotechnology in vaccines, and other matters raised by posts from the Telegram account, but did not receive a response.

‘Led to the slaughter’

Murfitt’s candidacy highlights NZ First’s growing support amongst the so-called “freedom movement”, which has coincided with an apparent surge in popularity for the party.

In her RCR interview, Murfitt said people had been “speaking with Winston” about vaccines, including a well-known figure within the “freedom movement”.

She alluded to the likelihood that her views would draw media attention but appeared sanguine.

”That was one of their concerns about me being a candidate, a potential hit piece … but that’s okay, it will be 24 hours of news. Most people can see past that.”

Two polls this week have shown NZ First above the 5% threshold required to enter Parliament. If matched on election day, it would deliver the party seven MPs.

Peters has ruled out working with Labour. ACT has ruled out joining a coalition that includes NZ First, but National leader Christopher Luxon has not. It opens the possibility of a National/ACT coalition, with NZ First providing confidence and supply if necessary.

In response to a request for comment for this article, Peters said the announced candidates were provisional.

“NZ First candidates are selected after a process of investigation as to their qualifications and suitability and will not be finalised or released until nomination day on 14th September,” he said.

“For over 30 years, we have followed that process and have had to in the past remove some from our final list who did not survive the closer scrutiny of the party organisation during the campaigning period and prior to nomination day.”

He said the views of the announced candidates were not relevant until the final electoral list was confirmed next month.

“In the meantime, every candidate is provisional only and is subject to ongoing scrutiny as to the information they have provided us with and their present and ongoing performance.”

(The party’s website is less ambiguous: They are described as “our 2023 suite of candidates”, and Murfitt’s candidate profile says she “will stand for New Zealand First in the Bay of Plenty electorate this year.”)

Stuff has identified several other announced NZ First candidates who have shared false or extreme views about the pandemic and other topics.

They include Auckland consultant Janina Massee, who formed her own political party last year called NZ STRONG but folded it last month to join New Zealand First. She has since been confirmed as the party’s Whangaparāoa candidate.

On social media last year, Massee shared a post that asked: “Why are we still being led to the slaughter like so many to the gas chambers[?]”, in a seeming reference Covid-19 vaccines. It is unclear if she wrote the post or simply shared it.

She elsewhere shared links to a “grand jury” that sought to hold criminal trials for various figures involved in the pandemic response. Another shared post alleged that the Government imported Covid-19 PCR tests in 2018, implying the pandemic was staged.

In a recent post on her former party’s since-deleted website, Massee criticised spending on climate change, which she suggested was “assisted by Governments via weather modification, geoengineering, chem trails and cloud seeding”.

(Massee did not respond to a request for comment.)

Other candidates have posted views outside those typically expressed in mainstream politics.

The party’s announced Coromandel candidate, Caleb Ansell, is a councillor in the Matamata-Piako district and stood for the New Conservatives at the last election.

Stuff has connected Ansell to a since-suspended Twitter account that once tweeted “WWG1WGA” – standing for “where we go one, we go all” – the catchphrase of the QAnon movement. (It was a reply to another tweet that was deleted, meaning the context is unclear. Stuff requested clarification from Ansell but did not receive a response.)

Another tweet responded to news the Archbishop of Canterbury had criticised a church in Uganda for supporting the world’s harshest anti-gay law, which imposes the death penalty for some homosexual acts: “Defrock this heretic,” Ansell’s account said.

Kevin Stone, the party’s Hamilton West candidate, has stood for the party in previous elections. He shared a post in May 2020 alleging the pandemic was a “plandemic” orchestrated by multiple governments at the behest of a global financial cartel, which wanted a “great reduction in the population of the developed world and the virtual enslavement of the remainder”.

The post “sums the situation up quite succinctly”, Stone added. (In another post, he said he was vaccinated. He did not respond to a request for comment.)

It suggests a shift in the make-up of NZ First.

Peters has studiously avoided making definitive statements about Covid-19 vaccines other than reiterating his long-held view that they should not have been mandated.

Previous attempts by Stuff to solicit his specific views on whether vaccines are causing large numbers of deaths have been unsuccessful. He told Stuff his views on the pandemic had not changed since 2020, “except my desire to learn from the investigations proceeding elsewhere in the world as to the propriety of the measures taken at all times to deal with Covid”.