Roaring at “Demons”
Brian Tamaki, Strongman Rhetoric, and the Fight for Aotearoa
Key takeaway: Brian Tamaki’s latest “immigration” blast isn’t a one‑off rant; it’s a localised version of the same authoritarian formula used by Modi, Trump, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu and others – and it puts migrants, Muslims and Indigenous peoples in the firing line, not in the name of “freedom,” but to shore up a brittle settler, capitalist order.[opendemocracy]
1. What Tamaki is doing in this post
Here’s the post in question, from 3 News’ leading story slot via X:
I’ve always been crystal clear: mass unvetted immigration without real assimilation will destroy the Kiwi way of life. We must protect this nation for our children and grandchildren…that’s not hate, that’s basic patriotic & parental instinct.
So why are we tolerating this?
Why do we stay silent while Modi’s India burns churches and kills Christians?
Why do we accept child brides in Modi’s India still existing in 2026?God has always been clear: false gods and their religions anger Him, and the land must be purged of them (2 Chronicles 24:3). That’s why I use strong language. When a man sees danger to his women and children, he doesn’t whisper…he roars.
And watch what happens when I speak up, exercising my right to freedom of speech...
The demons come out to play: they attack Kiwis like us, defend the immigrants, and when challenged, they fully manifest through the media…exposing themselves for everyone to see.It’s clearer every single day: politicians, police, and media no longer care about everyday Kiwis or Patriots. Their priority is immigrants and minorities only.
What do you think, New Zealand?
Should we still be allowed to love our country and protect our way of life?
Strip away the piety and patriotism and the structure is very familiar.
He invents a mortal threat: “mass unvetted immigration without real assimilation will destroy the Kiwi way of life.” This is a localised “great replacement” narrative: demographic change is recoded as existential war.[centaur.reading.ac]
He recasts politics as instinct: “basic patriotic & parental instinct.” If it’s instinct, it can’t be racist; it’s just “natural.” That move is central to right‑wing populism, which claims a monopoly on “the people’s” gut feelings against out‑of‑touch elites.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]
He demonises a racialised religious “Other” with imported outrage: “Modi’s India burns churches and kills Christians… child brides… false gods… the land must be purged of them.”
1.4 billion people are collapsed into “Modi’s India.”
Hindus, immigrants, and “false gods” fuse into a single contaminating enemy.
Scripture is drafted as divine licence to purge “them.” This is Christian nationalist eliminationism, not neutral theology.[surface.syr]
He casts himself as persecuted truth‑teller: “When a man sees danger… he roars… The demons come out to play… they attack Kiwis like us… politicians, police, and media no longer care about everyday Kiwis or Patriots.” That’s the standard populist pose: a lone hero “roaring” on behalf of a pure people against corrupt elites and coddled minorities.[tandfonline]
He flips victims and perpetrators: power structures in Aotearoa – Pākehā majority rule, Crown sovereignty, corporate ownership – vanish. In their place, “immigrants and minorities” suddenly become the ones with all the power, backed by media, cops and politicians.[centaur.reading.ac]
The moral universe this speech constructs looks like this:
“Kiwis like us” = pure, endangered, righteous.
“Immigrants, minorities, false gods” = dangerous, coddled, demonic.
Violence (symbolic or literal) is sanctified as self‑defence to “protect women and children.”
That’s not an accident. It’s a formula.
2. The strongman formula: Modi, Trump, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Tamaki
Tamaki is not improvising in a vacuum. Comparative research on Modi, Trump, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Orbán and others shows a shared ideological architecture.[jstreet]
The ingredients
A mythic “people” and “way of life”
Trump talks about “real Americans” vs migrants, Muslims, “coastal elites.”
Modi’s Hindutva project treats “real Indians” as Hindu, with Muslims cast as infiltrators and demographic threats.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]
Bolsonaro moralises “good citizens” against Indigenous land defenders, leftists and the urban poor.[surface.syr]
Netanyahu glues “Jewish state” to “Jewish security,” with Palestinians framed as demographic or terrorist threats.[theconversation]
Tamaki’s “Kiwi way of life” plus “Kiwis like us” and “Patriots” reproduces that structure. The implied default Kiwi is conservative, Christian and Pākehā‑coded; Māori, Pacific and migrant Kiwis become background characters at best.
A constructed enemy within The target shifts by country – Muslims in India, migrants in the US and Europe, Indigenous activists in Brazil, Palestinians in Israel – but the function is the same: an internal enemy who is criminal, culturally polluting, and demographically dangerous.[research.vu]
Criminal: framed as gang members, terrorists, rapists, paedophiles.
Polluting: “won’t assimilate,” bring “alien values.”
Demographic threat: out‑breeding “us,” replacing “us.”
Tamaki’s “mass unvetted immigration” plus the talk of “false gods” slots immigrants and non‑Christians into that enemy role, with “Modi’s India” as a symbolic stand‑in for any brown migrant neighbour.
Anti‑pluralism in democratic clothing Populist scholars call it anti‑pluralism: the claim that only one group is truly the people and everyone else is suspect.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]
Trump and Bolsonaro spoke as if opponents were un‑American and illegitimate.
Modi’s camp brands dissenters, especially Muslims and leftists, as anti‑national.
Netanyahu’s rhetoric dismisses critics and Palestinians who demand equal rights as existential dangers to Israel.[internationalaffairs.org]
Tamaki does a NZ version: politicians, police and media “no longer care about everyday Kiwis or Patriots” because they allegedly prioritise “immigrants and minorities only.” If minorities count, “real Kiwis” supposedly vanish.
Religious or civilisational framing to bless repression
Hindutva ideologues describe India as fundamentally Hindu, with religious minorities as guests who must not overstep.[opendemocracy]
Netanyahu draws on religious parties and a civilisational Jewish‑vs‑Arab framing to justify ongoing occupation and apartheid‑like conditions.[jstreet]
Bolsonaro courted evangelicals and used Christian language to frame Amazon Indigenous territories as obstacles to God‑sanctioned development.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]
Tamaki fuses NZ nationalism with a hardline Christian identity. Quoting 2 Chronicles about purging “false gods” on the same page as immigration panic is not devotional Bible study; it’s ideological construction of a Christian nation that must cleanse itself of wrong religions and their carriers.
Permanent mobilisation through emotion Comparative work on populist communication shows these leaders deliberately saturate politics with fear, disgust, anger and pride to keep their base mobilised and resistant to factual correction.[tandfonline] Tamaki pushes the same buttons:
Fear: threats to “women and children.”
Disgust and demonology: “false gods,” “demons” manifesting in media and critics.
Pride and martyrdom: he “roars” while others “stay silent,” he’s the one brave enough to say what “everyone” supposedly thinks.
What the formula does in practice
This isn’t just ugly language; it clears political space for concrete policies that:
Restrict rights and movement for migrants, religious minorities, and Indigenous peoples.
Criminalise protest and dissent as “extremism” or “anti‑national.”
Expand police, military, and allied militias’ powers.
Funnel public resources to the leader’s base and corporate allies.[research.vu]
Examples:
In Brazil, anti‑Indigenous and “development” rhetoric justified gutting protections for Indigenous territories and opening the Amazon to agribusiness and mining.[surface.syr]
In India, Hindutva messaging has marched alongside discriminatory citizenship laws and mob violence against Muslims and Christians.[opendemocracy]
In Israel, Netanyahu’s security narrative has sustained settlement expansion, dispossession and repeated large‑scale assaults on Palestinians.[theconversation]
In the US, Trump’s anti‑migrant rhetoric underpinned family separations, Muslim‑majority travel bans, and escalated border violence.[centaur.reading.ac]
Tamaki is operating within that same ideological ecosystem, just scaled down for the 6pm news and the X feed.
3. Aotearoa’s landscape: settlers, sovereignty, and “everyday Kiwis”
In Aotearoa, this rhetoric lands on a landscape already shaped by colonisation, Te Tiriti, and a long history of forced assimilation. That context is everything.
“Kiwi way of life” is not neutral.
For two centuries, the dominant “Kiwi” identity has been built by sidelining Māori sovereignty, tikanga and reo, and centring Pākehā norms as common sense. When a Pākehā church leader claims immigration will “destroy” that way of life, he is defending an order born from land theft, broken treaties, and racist law – not some innocent barbecue culture.[nature]Indigenous erasure is baked in.
Tamaki’s “we” – “Kiwis like us,” “Patriots,” “everyday Kiwis” – is opposed to “immigrants and minorities.” Māori are both tangata whenua and, under the settler census logic, a “minority.” His binary pushes Māori out of the “real people” category even when they’re not named. This echoes Bolsonaro’s use of “good citizens” language while treating Indigenous communities as obstacles to progress.[surface.syr]Settler paranoia recycles itself.
Early settlers wrote about “Māori threats” to the colony, then about Māori as wards needing civilising, then as “special interests” getting privileges. Today, the same paranoid style is repackaged: Muslims, Indians, refugees and Māori activists are the new targets. Tamaki’s talk of “false gods” to be purged is an updated version of missionaries demonising tikanga and atua – now with a podcast link at the bottom.[nature]
A socialist, decolonial politics in Aotearoa starts somewhere else:
It recognises rangatiratanga and tino rangatiratanga as foundational, not optional extras.
It sees many migrants as themselves displaced by imperial violence and economic dispossession – potential allies in dismantling capitalism and settler colonialism, not competitors for crumbs.
It focuses fire upwards: landlords, bosses, corporations and state institutions that profit from cheap labour, stolen land and division – not the people stuck at the bottom fighting over rent and groceries.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]
Tamaki’s language tries to lock Pākehā and some Māori into a cross‑class alliance with local capital against migrants and minorities. It’s the oldest trick in the reactionary book: punch down and sideways so nobody punches up.
4. A clear rebuttal, from below
Point‑by‑point, here’s what a working‑class, Indigenous‑affirming response looks like.
Immigration isn’t what destroys lives – exploitation is.
Wages are low, housing is obscene, services are stretched because capital is protected and wealth is hoarded, not because your neighbour prays differently or was born elsewhere. Bosses and landlords gain when workers mistrust each other; they lose when we organise together.[nature]“Assimilation” has meant cultural death for Indigenous and minority communities.
After generations of forced assimilation against Māori – in schools, churches, courts, media – any call for “real assimilation” should ring every alarm bell. The alternative is not chaos; it’s genuine pluralism and power‑sharing grounded in Te Tiriti, Māori self‑determination, and robust protection for all cultures in this place.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]Scripture is no excuse to dehumanise.
Once you start talking about “false gods” that must be “purged,” you are in the rhetorical territory that has justified pogroms, witch‑hunts, crusades and colonisation for centuries. Faith can be a source of solidarity and liberation; it becomes authoritarian when it turns human beings into targets.[jstreet]Free speech is not freedom from consequences.
Tamaki can say what he likes; others can call it racist, eliminationist and dangerous. When he rebrands criticism as “demons” attacking him, he’s not defending free speech; he’s demanding a monopoly on it.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]“Everyday Kiwis” includes the people he’s targeting.
The dairy owner working 15‑hour days. The Muslim nurse on night shifts. The Māori solo parent. The Indian Uber driver. The Pākehā teacher. These are all “everyday Kiwis,” all part of the working class of this place. The people attacking them are not “demons”; they are demagogues doing the boss’s work for free.
A politics worthy of Aotearoa in 2026 refuses the fake choice between “protecting our way of life” and welcoming newcomers. It asks instead: whose life, whose land, whose power? And it answers: uphold Māori sovereignty, dismantle the economic structures that grind everybody down, and build thick solidarity across cultures so imported strongman scripts – from Modi to Trump to Tamaki – find no audience.
Selected sources
Right‑wing populism, nationalism and anti‑pluralism:
Emotional and communicative strategies of populists:
Anti‑Indigenous and far‑right rhetoric:
Global far‑right alliances and Netanyahu:
Background on Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro: