Entrepreneur and – if the US government is to believed – internet piracy kingpin Kim Dotcom is planning another run at politics.
The founder of New Zealand’s Internet Party on Wednesday tweeted an image of the Beehive – the building which houses the executive wing of the country’s government – shining the party’s logo in the Wellington sky, like a bat signal.
“2024,” the German-born Megaupload founder commented. “In the Beehive 2024… that’s the plan,” he clarified in follow-up tweets, despite the next New Zealand general election due to take place in 2023.
Dotcom funded the Internet Party’s first iteration, which was led by left-wing activist and former Alliance MP Laila Harré. It contested that year’s election in an unexpected partnership with Mana, a far-left party led by Māori rights firebrand Hone Harawira, but narrowly failed to enter parliament despite Dotcom reportedly pouring $3.5 million into the campaign.
At the 2017 election, without Dotcom’s profile to boost it, the Internet Party received the lowest number of votes of any registered party. Its leader at the time was a self-described citizen journalist living in Moscow, claiming she’d been persecuted at home by intelligence agencies.
The party was deregistered in 2018 after its membership dropped below 500. Its leader stepped down after becoming ineligible for parliament, having been living outside New Zealand for three years.
Asked for a 2023/4 campaign slogan, Dotcom said “F them”.
Despite a decade of international legal troubles stemming from his online activities, including guilty pleas from his Megaupload business partners, Dotcom remains a free man in New Zealand. His recent Twitter activity suggests he’s bought into conspiracy theories around COVID-19, and believes a massive economic crash is imminent, which will drive uptake of cryptocurrencies.
