Neo Nazi Puppetmaster hides in Taranaki

No one is ever free of a past they might regret (Courtesy of the Taranaki Daily News)
17 June 2006

Colin Ansell, reformed Nazi, has been keeping good company this week, writes the Taranaki Daily News. He shares a span of headlines with Lisa Lewis and Heather Mills McCartney – all of whom prove that no one can ever be totally free of their past. Bikini-streaker Ms Lewis got a tad more exposure than she expected when she galloped through last Saturday's All Blacks-Ireland test in a tiny two-piece: a former husband and a more recent lover revealed she, variously, owed them money, had breast implants, was an attention-seeker with expensive tastes and had worked as a stripper – none of which she counted on when she put the bikini up for a windfall auction on Trade Me. In comparison, the embarrassment of the freshly estranged wife of Sir Paul McCartney must be multiplied by about a million. She is accused of everything from being a porn-film actress and prostitute a couple of decades ago, to being responsible for the former Beatle's aubergine hair dye.


Mr Ansell, however, adds a serious note to the raking of history. His past is infinitely more ugly, as New Zealand's most notorious Nazi cheerleader and Holocaust denier. His involvement with, and leadership of, groups worshipping Adolf Hitler and white supremacist policies spanned more than 30 years from the late 1960s, and included a jail term for trying to burn down a Jewish synagogue and another conviction for inciting racial hatred. He gloried in offending both his targeted ethnic groups as well as the vast majority of normally eccentric-tolerant Kiwis – his two 1970s attempts to enter Parliament under the National Socialist Party banner drew barely more votes than could be mustered among friends and family. His pro-Nazi career culminated in the 1990s mentoring of a skinhead group calling itself Unit 88, which was so radical and aggressive that it eventually frightened Mr Ansell himself. He has apparently had no further active interest in the hateful and lunatic philosophies of racial purity – whatever that might be – since the late 1990s, and moved to Hawera and provincial anonymity two years ago.

The trouble is he chose not to keep a low profile, instead stepping forward in the local business scene and becoming chairman of the council-sponsored lobby group, Progress Hawera. Not everyone knew about his sordid past, and those who did – including Mayor Mary Bourke – felt constrained by some sense of etiquette and the curious national habit of giving a bloke a chance, be it second, third or fourth. It is to be hoped Mr Ansell appreciated the irony of being the recipient of such courtesies and fair play, given the sickening creed to which he adhered for much of his life – and against which 12,000 of his fellow New Zealanders died fighting, 17,000 suffered injuries and everyone else the grief of six years of privation and terror. His exposure through a recent TV programme should serve as a warning that criminal records and grossly anti-social behaviour might be forgiven, but are never entirely forgotten. Communities have the right to know who lives among them – and who purports to speak for them.