Williams Corporation managing director and co-owner Matthew Horncastle says when media attack him he imagines he is a Jewish business owner hauled to a Nazi concentration camp. Video / Supplied
The co-owner of New Zealand’s second biggest residential building company has stated on social media that he imagines himself as a Jewish business owner being hauled off to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany when facing “external” issues.
Williams Corporation managing director and co-owner Matthew Horncastle told his Instagram followers, after being asked by a user how he deals with “the media attacking” him, that he employs the “wee mental exercise” and reminds himself that the world is “not just”.
The Holocaust Centre of New Zealand said, in their view, the comparison “belittles the memory of six million people murdered in the Holocaust”.
“These things are not equivalent in any way.”
In Horncastle’s social media story, he said: “For example, the media attacking me or the government doing some form of poor behaviour that affects me or my business. Something external. I have a wee mental exercise and I imagine that I am a Jewish business owner at the same time as you have the Nazis.
“And I imagine if I’d worked so hard my whole life, I’ve done everything right, I’ve followed the rules, I’ve saved my money, I’ve paid my taxes and then I get hauled off to a concentration camp. And I remind myself that the world’s not just and there are bad people that do bad things and all I can control is how I feel about myself and what I do every day and then I just block them out and keep living my life and keep doing me.”
Horncastle told the Herald he did not wish to comment on the Instagram story.
Blair Chappell and Matthew Horncastle of Williams Corporation. Photo / Supplied
Holocaust Centre of New Zealand board chair Deborah Hart said she believes Horncastle was not trying to denigrate the Holocaust and its victims, that is the outcome of comparing the horror Jews and other minorities faced in the Holocaust with a business being scrutinised or criticised by the media or dealing with government actions.
“These things are not equivalent in any way,” Hart said.
In her opinion, Hart said people need to take care referencing the Holocaust.
“Not every perceived injustice is comparable to the Holocaust,” she believed. “Making the comparison, when it is plainly so different, belittles the memory of six million people murdered in the Holocaust and does nothing to further an understanding of the Holocaust. Neither in this case, incidentally, does it further an understanding of what Mr Horncastle and his business are experiencing.”
Hart said the Holocaust was the deliberate attempt to exterminate the Jews, defined by antisemitic ideology, propaganda, legislation, and the systematic implementation of unprecedented extermination techniques.
“The Holocaust did not happen in isolation, and many other people were also persecuted with dedicated measures. Some – such as the Roma people and the disabled – were targeted for extermination alongside the Jews, while many others were also oppressed by the Nazis on the basis of their ethnicity, political ideas, religious beliefs or sexual orientation.”
Earlier this week, Horncastle shared an image of the BCI New Zealand top new house builders, which listed their company as the number two residential builder.
Last year, Horncastle also told social media followers that women should use their “youth and beauty” to get the “best possible man”, but later said the comments were “written in seconds” and that it would be wrong to take them “out of context”.
The property boss said in a now-deleted Instagram story that he believed traditional gender roles worked.
“A woman should use her youth and beauty to get the best possible man. What I have read about having babies (super limited) is that it is more healthy for the mother and baby to do it sooner instead of later. A man should develop himself first, strength, successes, financial security. Then choose the best possible woman. Family and having children is extremely important and should be taken seriously and thought about,” he said in the Instagram story.
In a later post, Horncastle said he removed the Instagram story about “traditional relationships being healthy” because he “can’t be bothered arguing with / being attacked by the left”.
When approached for comment by the Herald at the time, Horncastle said he had been replying to “hundreds of questions” and in that answer he was referring to “tools the different sexes use to attract a partner.”
He told the Herald that women, people, and relationships are more complex than a few words on an Instagram story.
Men, he said, value more than just youth and beauty and “women use more than youth and beauty”.
Horncastle is co-owner of Williams with Blair Chappell and the company’s name is taken from them having identical middle names.
The company is second only to national franchised house builder G.J. Gardener but Horncastle says it’s the biggest privately owned house builder in New Zealand.
Theirs has been an Insta-splashed lifestyle synonymous with wealthy young developers, flush with an annual $520m turnover: a boat, WW brought down from the United States and moored in Viaduct Harbour, and luxury resort stays including at Peter Cooper’s Mountain Landing in the Bay of Islands.
Last year, the Williams staff were chartering a white leather-seat Bombardier Challenger 604 from Christchurch’s GCH Aviation but these days, Horncastle shows his social media followers he’s flying on commercial airlines. He’s also told how WW is being surveyed so it can be chartered.
The business has more than $150m of investors’ money which it is using to supplement bank lending to develop the hundreds of new homes it’s building annually - mainly apartments.
Horncastle and Chappell wrote to investors saying the changing market meant no money would be paid out for a year.
The development business said it needs to keep the money for longer, documentation allows extend timeframes, and it was “prudent” to do so.
Williams Corporation Capital, Williams Corporation Capital Partnership and Williams Corporation First Mortgage Investments hold the funds in a type of quasi-bank arrangement.
