Residents of Tamatea, Napier, found offensive material from a white supremacist group distributed in their letter boxes over the weekend. Photo / Paul Taylor
Residents of Tamatea, Napier, found offensive material from a white supremacist group distributed in their letter boxes over the weekend. Photo / Paul Taylor
Two wāhine "startled" a pair of men they spotted delivering offensive neo-Nazi pamphlets in a Napier suburb by heckling them out their car window.
Several residents of Tamatea received the offensive material with white supremacist themes in their letterboxes, but it could have been distributed even further were it notfor the actions of Naomi Wharehinga and her sister.
The brochure contained an image of a swastika and promoted conspiracy theories about the Holocaust, with links to a website for an American neo-Nazi group which further promotes white supremacist ideology and conspiracies.
Wharehinga lives in Taradale, but saw the two delivering the pamphlets between 9pm and 10pm on Sunday night while she was visiting family.
"It was automatically suspicious, two people dressed all in black at night just stopping randomly, then walking, then stopping, then walking," Wharehinga said.
"My brain said 'just watch what they are doing, what are they up to?'"
She said she realised they were stopping to put something in the mailboxes and decided to look at what they had put in when they had moved on.
Juliet Moses. Photo / Supplied
Wharehinga said after seeing what the pamphlets were, she and her sister caught up with the people delivering them and heckled them out of their car window.
She said they noticed that the rest of the houses down the street hadn't been delivered to after they confronted them.
"I think we startled them enough to stop their little mission," Wharehinga said.
She said she didn't think the pamphlets had been spread to too many households.
A resident of Tamatea, who Hawke's Bay Today has agreed not to name due to concerns about reprisals, said he found the brochure in his letterbox on Sunday evening after returning home.
"I was pretty lost for words really."
He said he had spoken to his neighbours on either side of his house who had also received the brochure.
"It was a bit of a shock really that it was happening locally."
He said he had lived in Napier for 33 years and had never received anything like that in the mail before.
Juliet Moses, spokeswoman for the New Zealand Jewish Council, said there had been a couple of similar incidents of anti-Semitic material being distributed to households across the country in the last few years, including one in Dunedin in 2018 and another in Remuera.
"It does happen from time to time and it is very concerning and disgusting really," Moses said.
She said continuing to raise awareness and education would help address a rise in neo-Nazi ideology.
"Ideally we would like to see holocaust education, if not compulsory, then taught more in New Zealand schools."
Moses said it was reassuring that people had spoken up about the neo-Nazi material in the community.
"I think it is good that there are people who are willing to stand up against that kind of stuff and say that is not something we want in our letter boxes."
