FROM QUIET CHRISTIAN TO RADICAL SABOTEUR
Last week, Graham Philip became New Zealand’s only convicted saboteur. Charlie Mitchell traces how the pandemic sent a devout family man down a rabbit hole.
Years before he would become New Zealand’s only convicted saboteur, Graham Philip – a mildmannered IT professional who enjoys table tennis and trout fishing – boarded a plane to visit his cannibal brother.
In 1988, David Philip was living in a disused Melbourne warehouse when he murdered Kyung Eup Lee, a Korean fisherman. He dismembered Kyung’s body, some of which he cooked in a wok and ate, he later told police. Other body parts he distributed around the Melbourne railway station; the
alarm was raised when a dismembered penis was found in a women’s bathroom.
Philip was found guilty by reason of insanity and remains in a high-security prison.
More than three decades later, it is David’s only sibling, Graham, who faces imprisonment for an unprecedented crime.
Last week, Graham Philip unexpectedly pleaded guilty to seven counts of sabotage, an archaic law dating to World War II. The law was meant to protect against spies, but will have its first application against a devout Christian and family man who came to be radicalised online.
A wide-ranging suppression order prevents publication of the specifics of his crimes, other than to say it involved a series of attacks on critical public infrastructure in late 2021, which – if successful – could have had grave consequences.
It is unclear if details of the crimes can ever be published. But for the first time, the radicalisation of Graham Philip, and how he became New Zealand’s only saboteur, can be revealed.
‘Political prisoner’
In February this year, an account named Free Media NZ – linked to former broadcaster Liz Gunn – claimed on the messaging app Telegram that a man named Graham Philip had been arrested months earlier.
A follow-up post described Philip as a ‘‘political prisoner’’, who had committed the crime of ‘‘speaking freely in modern NZ’’.
It was half true. Philip had indeed been arrested at his home in Acacia Bay, Taupō, on December 8. Police had taken his electronic devices and his vehicle, and Philip had been in Springhill prison ever since.
But his alleged crime was not related to speech, but a series of attacks on critical public infrastructure in late November.
It would not have been difficult for police to connect Philip to the attacks. He had already been on their radar.
In August 2021, he was issued an infringement notice for breaching lockdown restrictions during a public protest in Taupō. Weeks later, police visited his home, claiming he had failed to stop at a police roadblock the night before.
In a third incident, police were called after Philip was denied entry to a bank – he was wearing a lifejacket and a snorkel at the time, as part of a public objection to mask mandates.
More significantly, he had an active online presence, in which he expressed paranoid and apocalyptic views about Covid-19 vaccines and other matters.
In the days before the attacks, an account controlled by Philip made a series of posts about public infrastructure, including pinpointing specific locations he believed were vulnerable.
Even more damning was a modestly popular radio show he hosted on Telegram. Recordings are not publicly available, but a recorded copy obtained by Stuff shows he clearly telegraphed his actions.
The suppression order restricts quoting from the recording at length, but Philip said ‘‘it would be perfectly legitimate’’ to carry out the type of action he ultimately undertook, and that he had been ‘‘investigating that as a possibility’’.
‘‘It’s something I’ve been exploring as a civil rights protest, not as an act of terrorism,’’ he said.
Down the rabbit hole
Graham Philip, 62, was born in England and moved to Wellington with his family as a young child.
His father, John, was a welder and a figure in the union movement. In his self-published autobiography, Graham described his father as a tyrant. He also wrote that he believed his upbringing contributed to his brother’s actions.
When he was 19, Graham became a devout Christian, which he later claimed had cured him of schizophrenia. He returned to the UK to work, but has spent most of his adult life in the Bay of Plenty area, where he worked as a teacher and in IT. He is married to Marta, originally from Brazil, who since his imprisonment has been his chief public advocate.
Before 2020, there was little public information about Philip. Until recently, his online presence was similarly thin. He posted occasional videos of himself fishing
for trout, and short animated videos of biblical concepts for children. He rarely commented on political issues, except for his opposition to abortion.
That changed with the pandemic.
Marta Philip, in an interview with Counterspin Media in May, said Graham had opposed the Covid-19 response from the beginning.
‘‘After the first lockdown . . . he immediately thought that something was not right,’’ she said. ‘‘I was made redundant because of that lockdown, which didn’t help him being angry about it and very upset about it.’’
Philip’s online presence has since become unusually voluminous. Until his arrest, it spanned thousands of posts on numerous social media sites – some of which he posted to many times a day – and hours of video and audio.
The type of content, and how rapidly it shifted towards extremism, is emblematic of the online radicalisation some people experienced during the pandemic.
The first subject of his anger was the results of the 2020 US presidential election, which he believed had been stolen from Donald Trump. It quickly shifted to a range of topics, mostly concerning American political figures and celebrities.
In one Facebook post, Philip claimed Joe Biden was a paedophile; multiple posts touched on the core conceit of QAnon – that Trump was heading a secret mission to bring down a cabal of child predators in the global elite.
But it was Covid-19 vaccines that became an all-consuming issue. In one early post, Philip commended Trump for the quick development of a vaccine; but within months, he had become convinced vaccines were deadly, and falsely believed they were causing mass death as part of a concerted depopulation plot.
In an April video, he claimed vaccines were ‘‘designed by the Satanic cabal to kill off 90% of people in the world’’, and feared his adult children would die once they were vaccinated. In a post on Gab, a social media website, he said the vaccines would ‘‘kill billions’’.
Nearly a year before protesters occupied Parliament
grounds, Philip floated the idea of arriving at the Beehive en masse.
His views were bleeding into offline activism. He set up a stand at a market with a sign saying ‘‘Change my mind: Covid-19 is fake’’. He started referring to himself as a journalist and filmed himself walking up to a vaccination clinic and attempting to interview a security guard.
It even manifested in his fiction. Under GJ Philip, he has authored and self-published numerous books, including a trilogy of Star Wars fan-fiction novels. Several of his books written in 2021 incorporate widespread vaccine deaths as a plot device; he has claimed online that his books are an effort to ‘‘red-pill’’ unsuspecting readers.
In the span of six months, Philip appeared to have developed a sincere belief that society would soon collapse, which led him to set up a Telegram channel devoted to ‘‘prepping’’, a subculture of people preparing for the end of the world.
Much of his advice was mundane: what plants are edible, how to grow a garden, tips for preserving fruit.
But some posts were more sinister. One laid out how to make your own explosives, suggesting the reader start ‘‘buying the innocent raw materials now while you can’’.
Others point to key pieces of infrastructure that, if damaged, would cause societal chaos.
In the months before his arrest, Philip appeared to be openly advocating for violent retribution against those he deemed responsible for genocide.
In one post on his verified Gab account, he said about Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: ‘‘The military ought to form tribunals and sentence her to death for treason against every Kiwi’’ – accompanied by a picture of noose. In another post, he offered to volunteer for a firing squad.
His extreme views extended to his Telegram radio show. In one episode, he hosted a group discussion in which he and others collated a list of people who would be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity.
The recording obtained by Stuff includes Philip typing into a spreadsheet, asking for a list of names that would be subject to his ‘‘war crimes tribunal’’.
‘‘We’re preparing the lists for war crimes trials when proper authorities take over this country from the communist children who are destroying us and killing us and murdering us with their poison,’’ he explained.
After a brief discussion, the group agrees to include all MPs. They go on to list various journalists, academics and health bureaucrats by name. ‘‘It’s an absolute, complete abomination,’’ Philip said. ‘‘For me, the trials can’t come soon enough.’’
Online fame
After his arrest, Philip picked up a staunch online following.
The early silence about his case was likely due, at least in part, to the unique charges he was facing. It took several months for charges to be laid – a period in which he was kept in a high-security prison.
The case was blanketed with suppression orders, preventing the publication of his name, the charges he was facing, and details of what he was alleged to have done.
In May, the conspiracy-fuelled show Counterspin Media appeared to breach the suppression orders by publishing an interview with Marta Philip.
Two days earlier, Marta had spoken at a public Counterspin event, claiming she did not know why her husband had been arrested.
‘‘It’s not very clear,’’ she said. ‘‘Probably he’s been charged with wearing a snorkel.’’
In the subsequent interview with Counterspin hosts Kelvyn Alp and Hannah Spierer, she reiterated her explanation. ‘‘The police came and took him away . . . based on goodness knows what. I think he was too vocal on social media.’’
She did, however, allude to the crime he has since admitted, and acknowledged the police had told her not to talk about the case.
She had nevertheless approached Counterspin to tell her story. ‘‘I thought, I wonder why I should have to be quiet about it,’’ she said. ‘‘He’s a political prisoner . . . They want us quiet, and that’s when I decided enough is enough, I’ve been quiet long enough.’’
The interview was met with a flurry of concern about Philip’s arrest. Unaware of the details of his crime, many took at face value the claim that he was a political prisoner jailed for his views.
His case became a cause céle`bre online, particularly on Telegram, where Philip had been a mildly prominent figure before his arrest.
A family friend created the Free Graham Philip page, which has thousands of followers and solicits donations for Philip and his family. The page posted letters purportedly written by Philip from prison. Supporters showed up outside his court appearances in person, wearing T-shirts and waving signs referring to him as a political prisoner.
When Counterspin hosts Alp and Spierer were arrested in August, the Free Graham Philip page posted a message of support: ‘‘[T]heir fight is our fight,’’ it said.
Name suppression was lifted in July, allowing the case to be reported for the first time. But details of what he allegedly did remain suppressed, leaving a vacuum of information filled with speculation and online rumour-mongering.
When Philip pleaded guilty to the charges last week, it came as a shock to some of his supporters, some of whom continue to defend his innocence against a crime they knew nothing about.
Graham Philip will be sentenced on December 1.