In the nightmare which unfolded in a quiet Swedish village, a father allegedly pumped bullets into his two young daughters before blowing his own brains out. One girl clings to life in hospital. The other is critically wounded.
The perpetrator? A man with the unmistakably Māori name Maui Koopu: a double-barrelled cultural calling card if ever there was one.
However, New Zealand’s precious media, those tireless champs of indigenous visibility, suddenly went colour-blind.
“Kiwi man.”
That’s the sterile, gutless label they slapped across headlines. Not Māori. Not even a whisper of his heritage. Just another generic Kiwi bloke who happened to try murdering his own children.
Poof. Ethnicity erased the moment the story turned ugly.
This is the same rotten press that creams itself with glee whenever a Māori does anything remotely positive.
“Māori All Black stars again!”
“Trailblazing Māori CEO smashes barriers!”
“Proud Māori artist decolonises whatever.”
”42-year-old Māori bloke buys first house”
They can’t inject the word “Māori” fast enough when it flatters the sacred narrative of indigenous excellence. It’s virtue-signalling catnip.
But let a Māori-named man with a documented history of aggression against his ex-wife commit unspeakable horror against his own flesh and blood, and suddenly identity politics takes a tactical siesta.
“Kiwi man,” they whimper.
How whākn’ convenient.
Māori identity is a shiny PR asset when it props up grievances, demands, or feel-good diversity porn. When it risks highlighting the epidemic of family violence, child murder, and fatherless carnage that disproportionately scars certain communities in New Zealand, that identity is memory-holed faster than a politician deleting old tweets.
Koopu’s ex had reportedly warned social services about his aggression just days earlier. Police had sniffed around domestic abuse claims before. The divorce had been finalised a mere two days before he allegedly turned the family home he built into a shooting gallery.
These aren’t irrelevant details. They’re the grim context the media prefers to neuter by calling him a neutral “Kiwi”.
New Zealanders aren’t stupid. They see the pattern: amplify ethnicity for Olympic-level mental gymnastics about systemic racism and Māori achievement; suppress it when the story involves another Māori man exploding in domestic carnage.
The statistics on family violence in New Zealand are brutal and uncomfortable. Pretending every offender is a deracinated, culture-free “Kiwi” is journalistic malpractice that protects no one, least of all the next little girls in the firing line.
If Koopu had scored a winning try or opened a trendy Māori business, the media would have been all over his rich cultural heritage, his unbreakable ties to the whenua, and the warrior spirit of his ancestors.
Instead, they scrubbed him into bland universality to avoid “stereotypes.”
Translation: they’re happy to stereotype when it’s flattering, but terrified of the truth when it’s damning.
This selective racial filter is pure intellectual cowardice dressed up as compassion.
It infantilises Māori by implying they can’t handle honest scrutiny. It insults the public by treating us like children who must be shielded from patterns that don’t fit the approved script.
And most of all, it spits on the victims: those two girls in Sweden whose lives were shattered by their own coward father.
Media outlets can’t keep playing these identity games only when the outcome makes them feel morally superior. Either report ethnicity consistently and honestly in every case: positive or horrific, or drop the performative Māori cheerleading entirely.
Until then, they’re not journalists. They’re propagandists with bylines, complicit in a sick double standard that serves ideology over truth, and virtue over the dead and maimed.
Perhaps the most fitting way to end this essay is with a quote from Greens co-leader Marama Davidson, who famously declared:
These aren’t irrelevant details. They’re the grim context the media prefers to neuter by calling him a neutral “Kiwi”.
New Zealanders aren’t stupid. They see the pattern: amplify ethnicity for Olympic-level mental gymnastics about systemic racism and Māori achievement; suppress it when the story involves another Māori man exploding in domestic carnage.
The statistics on family violence in New Zealand are brutal and uncomfortable. Pretending every offender is a deracinated, culture-free “Kiwi” is journalistic malpractice that protects no one, least of all the next little girls in the firing line.
If Koopu had scored a winning try or opened a trendy Māori business, the media would have been all over his rich cultural heritage, his unbreakable ties to the whenua, and the warrior spirit of his ancestors.
Instead, they scrubbed him into bland universality to avoid “stereotypes.”
Translation: they’re happy to stereotype when it’s flattering, but terrified of the truth when it’s damning.
This selective racial filter is pure intellectual cowardice dressed up as compassion.
It infantilises Māori by implying they can’t handle honest scrutiny. It insults the public by treating us like children who must be shielded from patterns that don’t fit the approved script.
And most of all, it spits on the victims: those two girls in Sweden whose lives were shattered by their own coward father.
Media outlets can’t keep playing these identity games only when the outcome makes them feel morally superior. Either report ethnicity consistently and honestly in every case: positive or horrific, or drop the performative Māori cheerleading entirely.
Until then, they’re not journalists. They’re propagandists with bylines, complicit in a sick double standard that serves ideology over truth, and virtue over the dead and maimed.
Perhaps the most fitting way to end this essay is with a quote from Greens co-leader Marama Davidson, who famously declared:
“I am a prevention violence minister, and I know what causes violence in this world and it’s white cis men.”
Given the facts of this case, readers can decide for themselves how well that statement has aged.
Matua Kahurangi is just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes. He blogs on https://matuakahurangi.com/ where this article was sourced.
10 comments:
The media love putting tribal affiliations in for puff pieces but never mention them when crimes are committed. Would be interesting to see the stats that show which tribe has the highest convictions or highest welfare levels.
You miss the point. He is only partly Maori, which is the good part. He also has dirty, white colonial genes. It is this part that overrides his Maori amazing ness and causes him to do bad things.
Anyone with the brain switched on sees the pattern.
It is tokenised virtue signalled BS designed to engender division.
The question is really, just why?
When the MSM report a violent crime, I skip through to the name of the person - inevitably there is a hint of enough Maori DNA to qualify for the Maori roll, and perpetual rights to a privileged life.
The editors of the MSM refuse to acknowledge that a disproportionate number of reports of crime are by Maori either men with violence, or woman by theft.
It's a fact - don't gloss over it.
Knowing right from wrong is instinctive for most of us - except for Maori who from the earliest European contact have shown themselves to have little respect for the norms of civilization.
Yes, it’s entirely typical of our media and the double standards they operate under.
Take also, for example something closer to home, the recent damning reportage of the police and medical treatment dispensed to the Hamilton bridge-wandering autistic, non-verbal, 11-year-old child. The outrage was almost palpable and even an Associate Professor of Medicine (Iwi affiliated) got in on the act - damning all those involved and supporting the calls for apologies to the child and whanau from everyone in the Health and Police services including, no less, the Prime Minister!
Yet, despite all the analyses of the systemic failures, including all the usual culprits like racism (but in this case more particularly so given the child’s purported ‘indigeneity’), not once was it mentioned that the primary failure was on account of the child’s caregiver(s) and that, first and foremost, if any apology was due to be forthcoming it certainly should have included one from them - and not only to the child for creating all the regretted and inappropriate anguish to it, but to the general public, who've have had to foot the bill for all the cost and inquires subsequent.
Oh, and naturally true to form, the child’s whakapapa/tribal affiliations remained unstated.
It is noticeable that whenever the media report the achievements of Maori in a positive light, their geneology is alway prominently featured (Ngati Whatua, Ngati Huaere, Ngati whatever). What I'd like to see is more consistency. The next time the media report on a delinquent who's just been convicted of armed robbery, and happens to be Maori, I'd like to know their geneology too.
Media lying, nothing new as you note - this time by omission. But whatever, because in MSM-land Truth is well out of fashion and, being a purely colonial construct, must be inherently racist anyhow. The tension between reporting Maori-wonderfulness and business runaway success (usually with our money but whatevs), on the one hand and the equally politically convenient stories around social disadvantage on the other is becoming highly palpable! Perhaps Maori are just ordinary people after all?
What I found repellent with media was the coverage given to the funeral for the Maori king some time back. Every TV station in the land sent its people to the gathering to interview any Maori who turned up, plus his dog. It was totally unnecessary, but virtue signalling is rampant these days.
How about the media reporting on the truly shockiing rate of small children and babies killed and abused by their Maori family members, who then refuse to say anything that might incriminate them. The maori child murder/abuse rate is 1.5 times that of the non-maori rate. And it has nothing to do with "colonization", and everything to do with maori culture being inherently violent and agressive. "Once Were Warriors". Yeah put em in the dryer and watch them spin around.
Matua mentions Marama Davis's statement about 'cis white men'. I recall Donna Awatere saying on a TV interview a few years ago that "Maori men weren't violent towards their families before colonization" (or words to that effect)
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