Review 23.1
1 February - 17 February, 1998

The powerful film Once Were Warriors buried New Zealand's image as a peaceful idyll. Now, extremist racism has emerged in the form of neo-Nazi skinhead gangs spreading racist and anti-Semitic material, including exhortations to "waste" non-whites and promoting books on how to make bombs and disposable gun silencers.

In the spotlight is the Auckland-based Unit 88 gang, which also allegedly has groups in the South Island provincial cities of Nelson, Christchurch, Timaru, Dunedin and Invercargill. Meeting weekly in an Auckland warehouse, about 100 members have been observed giving Nazi salutes and vowing to be warriors dedicated to Adolf Hitler. Their literature predicts eventual government breakdown - "We need to be prepared, to bear arms, to be able to survive and protect our families."

Unit 88's name is derived from the eighth letter of the alphabet, H - 88 is code for Heil Hitler - a common practice in neo-Nazi groups worldwide; as is their motto "Blood and Honour" (used by British and Australian neo-Nazis and associated rock bands) with a wing known as Hammer Skinheads. A co-founder, known as Karl Warlock, said recently of young members: "We teach them to keep their blood lines pure, to keep ancestral lines pure. This is not racist - this is purist." The exposure of Unit 88 comes in the wake of a series of violent racially-based attacks and acts of intimidation in New Zealand over recent months.

Last November, a black Englishman was taunted and attacked by skinheads in front of his wife and children on a Christchurch beach; only two people in a crowd of 300 had the courage to intervene and help save the man - one of the pair had lost his Maori cousin to a racist knife attack. In the same week, three skinheads attacked a young Pakistani mother, ripping off her traditional headwear, and stole her baby before being apprehended. In another instance last year, four Iraqi refugee families were forced to leave their homes after months of racial abuse and harassment. And only last week a man appeared in court for allegedly torturing a fellow gang member - who wished to leave the Fourth Reich gang - by cutting off his finger with a knife.

Anti-Semitic views are also commonly held, most notably in the skinhead Road Knights gang, also known as Bandenkreig (Gang-War), and the smaller Fourth Reich gang, both based on the South Island. In 1996, the Mayor of the southernmost town of Invercargill, David Harrington, sought to quell local gang activity and visited the Road Knights headquarters - he was distressed to find them covered in White Power insignias and swastikas. Some time later, local residents and the Jewish Community in Christchurch expressed alarm at the sight of a swastika flag flying above a gang headquarters, which was then taken down by order of the local council. Police have voiced concern that younger members of the Road Knights were recruiting school students. While Nazi-style symbols predominate for South Island gangs, Maori gangs feature on the North Island.

Despite these incidents, the New Zealand Jewish Community has not been directly threatened or intimidated in recent times. "We've been standing on the sidelines," the President of the New Zealand Jewish Council, David Zwartz, told the Review. "We have come out and said we deplore this sort of activity, but as far as I'm aware there has been no direct impingement upon the community." In fact the most likely recipients of gang violence are the gang members themselves. Unit 88 was recently forced to flee its Auckland headquarters after visits from rival gangs. Its members dispersed around the country, staying with a network of associates, before returning to Auckland and severing ties with their former mentor Colin Ansell.

Ansell shared some resources and helped finance a building leased by the young skinheads of Unit 88. Set in a rundown industrial area in west Auckland, the building has barbed wire around its entrance and boards blocking all the windows. When Unit 88 received negative exposure in the national press, Ansell dissociated himself from the group and warned "they are going to start a war if they keep doing what they are doing." Unit 88 members have allegedly sought revenge by destroying printing presses at Ansell's home.

Ansell is now seeking to establish his New Zealand Fascist Union, founded in March last year and said to count several white supremacist groups among its membership. Advertisements were placed recently in Wellington papers seeking further adherents to its brand of fascism, which an anonymous spokesman described as more akin to that of Mussolini of Italy and Peron of Argentina than to Nazism. "There's more of an economic and social emphasis in our ideology. Neo-Nazis don't give much consideration to economics," he explained.

The group is planning to run for Parliament and claims it has considerable support, including the 500 financial members necessary to register as an electoral party. Ansell claims regional leaders have been drafted to a national Senate of the union, which meets regularly and is controlled by three-member council - Ansell and two others whom he refuses to name because "some of them have jobs." It is a line he has used before, in earlier political incarnations.

Ansell, formerly known as Colin King-Ansell, was imprisoned in 1968 for maliciously damaging a synagogue. Upon his release the following year, he founded the National Socialist Party of New Zealand and advocated the establishment of a private army of stormtroopers. For a brief period during the early 1970s Ansell became involved in Australian neo-Nazi groups, notably the National Socialist Party of Australia, but soon returned to New Zealand where he was a candidate in successive

elections. By 1978, he was leading a National Socialist White People's Party, which was affiliated to the US party of the same name founded by the infamous American, George Lincoln Rockwell. Shortly afterwards, Ansell was found to have breached the Race Relations Act by distributing a pamphlet with intent to incite ill-will against Jews, but his prison sentence was commuted to a substantial fine. During the 1980s he demonstrated in support of South African rugby tours and attempted to promote his views by seeking (unsuccessfully) the Presidency of the Auckland Printers Union.

Now Colin Ansell's Fascist Union has garnered its own notoriety through a pamphlet distributed to Christchurch letterboxes. Featuring an illustration of a hooded paramilitary figure it calls for "young patriots" to form a fascist youth group. "If you love your race and nation and have the courage to defend your homeland... Join now!" Post Office boxes were given for regional branches in Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. In the same week, Christchurch MP and former Prime Minister Mike Moore was delivered a leaflet showing him wearing a Jewish skull-cap and the Star of David, ripping the New Zealand flag in two with a hammer and sickle. It also sneered at his anti-racism stance and condemned homosexuals and communists. He then had his electorate office plastered with posters depicting immigrants as rapists and child molesters.

In a further twist, it has been revealed that a former employee of the New Way Trust, created by the government in 1984 to rehabilitate skinheads and alleviate racial tensions, has been collecting mail from a Post Office box listed by the Fascist Union. Kyle Chapman, a former skinhead with a criminal record and now a self-proclaimed "voluntary social worker", denied he was a member of the Fascist Union but acknowledged he has friends in the organisation, which he considers neither racist nor Nazi.

Currently, the public incitement of racial disharmony is outlawed under the Human Rights Act and can attract a $7000 fine or three months' jail. Investigating these breaches is the task of the Race Relations Conciliator, Dr Rajen Prasad. The Unit 88 literature breached anti-discrimination laws and prompted investigations with a view to prosecution, but the literature was found not to have been publicly disseminated under the provisions of the Act. Dr Prasad has also launched an investigation, as have police, into the Fascist Union's posters and leaflets, which he described as "racism in its most blatant form."

The investigation of neo-Nazi groups is not a straightforward process, Dr Prasad told the Review, but he has no doubts of the need of doing so. "It's sometimes difficult to know whether they are distinct groups or a loose collection of people which belong to different groups at different times. But the skinheads have certainly been involved in attacks on minority groups and more recently they've begun to talk about racial purity." He believes that the groups acquire much of their literature, paraphernalia and encouragement from neo-Nazi internet sites worldwide. Dr Prasad says New Zealand's problem is relatively minor in world terms but reaffirms that it must be countered. "It's a bit like child abuse - we cannot have any tolerance for racism."

Labour MP Mike Moore has also spoken out, referring particularly to the Road Knights gang. "If gangs such as this ever get politicised, then we will have civil disorder. It is so sick for brain damaged people with IQs less than a cabbage to say they are genetically superior because they are white." He said racism has been an issue in New Zealand for years and that he was drafting a Race Hate law to reinforce the Race Relations Act, introducing stiff penalties for racially motivated violence. In an article for the Christchurch daily The Press, Mr Moore said such a law "would far better reflect ordinary New Zealanders' absolute disgust than charges of simple assault or disorderly conduct. Having a conviction for race hate would be a badge of dishonour for the villains."

With the weight of criminal charges building up against gang members, the national parliament has had to rush through legislation - the Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Amendment Act - allowing the testimony of anonymous witnesses. Many such cases have stalled in recent years when witnesses have refused to appear, fearing later reprisals against themselves and their families. Recently, a member of the Mongrel Mob was beaten senseless after failing to carry out a shooting on a rival gang's headquarters, but the case never got to court as the witness suddenly left town, fearing for his life.

The escalation in gang activity and racist attacks has been largely attributed to changes in New Zealand's social fabric since the mid-1980s; prompted by further developments regarding Maori claims, a greater influx of immigrants (particularly from Asia and the Pacific islands) and dislocation associated with large scale economic reforms. Dr Prasad observes that concerns over these issues in New Zealand are largely voiced through mainstream channels (witness the emergence of Winston Peters' New Zealand First Party) but they are also taken up by "malcontents" who form gangs. "They tend to be nomadic, unstructured, small bands and very localised... It's not highly visible, but they do pop up from time to time."