From potential environmental activist to conspiracy theorist: What happened to Hannah Spierer?

Friday, 2 September 2022

Sina Brown-Davis, of Anti-Fascists Aotearoa, says a group were outside the Christchurch courthouse on Wednesday to show solidarity with the Muslim community.

She was once Auckland University’s campus co-convenor of the Green Party who spoke out about Islamophobia – so what happened to Counterspin co-founder Hannah Spierer? NADINE PORTER investigates.

“Let’s raise our girls to be mothers,” the eloquently spoken voice says to a large crowd in Wellington.

“And to want to be homemakers and be family orientated,” the woman continues. “Because at the end of the day that’s what all this gender confusion is about.”

The audience welcomes Hannah Spierer’s speech, especially the many middle-aged women.

“I personally think it’s time we stopped pushing feminism,” the 37-year-old proclaimed earlier in her speech, glancing over at her assenting partner Kelvyn Alp before going on to denounce Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as a toxic feminist.

* Disillusioned QAnon supporters in the US reaching out for help

Any mention of Ardern elicits the biggest applause, and prompts Alp to further denigrate the PM and suggest New Zealand’s “woke” military leaders should be decapitated. He then clarifies he meant this figuratively – due to the danger of being arrested.

Hannah Spierer centre in 2000 with her lecturer Paul Buchanan (right) who described her as a “bright enthusiastic” student.

In all of it, Spierer stands beside her man, nodding as she has done on their Counterspin Media platform for over a year.

There the pair have been vocal spreaders of misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Hannah Spierer and Kelvyn Alp are co-hosts on Counterspin Media.

It’s a disturbing departure from Spierer’s youth and the “excited bright” student she was described as by a former lecturer.

Studying politics at Auckland University, Spierer’s leadership ability came to the fore. In 2006, she became the International Affairs Officer for the university’s student association. A year later she began to make her mark as the association’s environmental affairs officer and the Green party’s co-convenor on campus.

In June 2007 she was vocal against Islamophobia and co-signed a letter to Investigate magazine criticising a piece by Ian Wishart alleging, without evidence, that some of the world’s most extreme Islamic preachers had infiltrated New Zealand’s Muslim community.

Yet 16 years later, Spierer found herself in a Christchurch courtroom being dragged to the dock on charges believed to be related to Counterspin sharing “objectionable material”.

It is unclear if the charges relate to Counterspin’s publication earlier this year of excerpts from the March 15 terrorist’s livestream as part of a documentary making false claims about the terror attack .

Counterspin founders Kelvyn Alp, centre, and Hannah Spierer enter the Christchurch District Court in late August to face a charge of distributing an 'objectionable publication'.

Little is known of the intervening years between university and Spierer reemerging as Sarah Smith in 2019 except that she worked as an assistant at a Rudolf Steiner kindergarten.

Considered a special character school, Steiner practices anthroposophy, a “spiritual science” in the education of children.

However, Spierer’s transformation is most likely to have come at the hands of QAnon – an American conspiracy that began in 2017. Believers thought President Donald Trump was fighting a secret society that included Democratic politicians and Satan-worshipping paedophiles who trafficked children.

The group was initially a far-right internet forum but grew in scope as it graduated to mainstream social media platforms and peddled disinformation including the nonsensical conspiracy theory that 5G towers were spreading coronavirus and that Covid-19 was pre-planned or a hoax.

Some New Zealanders starting heading down the QAnon tunnel of misinformation in 2018 and began adapting it on these shores. By 2020, and on the back of Covid-19 lockdowns, the movement adopted an anti-authority, anti-Government view.

Spierer appears to have been one of the early local adopters, judging by her Twitter social media posts. It almost certainly laid the path towards far-right activism for her and many other Kiwis.

Spierer remained defiant after her court appearance, although she was visibly nervous during proceedings.

“QAnon has always been an umbrella for all conspiracy theorists,” a Fight Against Conspiracy Theories Aotearoa spokesperson told Stuff.

Spierer quickly became prominent under her alternative name Sarah Smith in the Mothers Who Stand For Freedom (MWSFF) group, as the pandemic wore on. Once a self-described “leftie” who had considered joining a feminist movement, Spierer may have carried her anti-vaccination views from her past.

A decade ago, people against vaccinations were often left leaning, but the pandemic and QAnon quickly amalgamated them into a melting pot of conspiracies – and it seems Spierer suffered the same fate.

Hannah Spierer admonishes journalists after her court hearing.

After this week’s Christchurch court appearance, Spierer’s QAnon based beliefs were evident. She told supporters the Great Awakening was coming – a conspiracy theory that incorrectly forecast that Joe Biden and other politicians would be arrested before his inauguration and Trump reinstated as US President. Then she claimed the real pandemic was child trafficking and child abuse – the initial QAnon conspiracy.

In the MWSFF group that was heavily supportive of Voices for Freedom, Spierer openly shared her negative views on transgender issues, calling today’s reality “an insanity taking our children’s minds”.

The group also pushed the disproven satanic ritual abuse conspiracy that has lingered since the 1980s – and forms part of Spierer’s child trafficking views.

In December 2020, Alp spoke to the group, but it is unclear if the pair met before that.

Two months earlier, Spierer, as Smith, posted an eight-part YouTube series on “the flaws of feminism”.

In it, she derides her mother and grandmother as being women who enjoyed “wearing the pants” in their relationships and claimed feminism was making men and young boys less like alpha males and “more like women”.

Spierer has also proclaimed herself a sovereign citizen – a fringe movement that began in the United States in the 1970s. It believes ultimate power is vested with individuals, and the state and its institutions are illegitimate. The pair tried to claim this status at their Christchurch District Court appearance, to no avail.

In the early days of Counterspin – Alp’s far right platform – Spierer has connected and praised known white supremacists and racists including Lee Williams and Kyle Chapman.

Spierer has been enthusiastic about Christchurch’s far-right fraternity and has termed the city an “inspiration” in a social media post. That welcoming audience may explain why the pair were in the city when they were arrested.

Now bailed to a Woolston house that also hosts a commercial alternative medicine practice, Spierer will face her second court appearance on September 21 where she will enter her plea.

If found guilty she and Alp could face up to 14 years in jail and a significant fine.

For well-known lecturer and former friend Paul Buchanan, the change from a bright young energetic student who looked likely to become an environmental activist, to the conspiracy theorist Spierer is today, is unfathomable.

“What happened to her?… It’s deeply disturbing.”