From today’s Sunday Star-Times:

National Front angers Anzac vets

The National Front plans to attend Anzac services around the country tomorrow, outraging the Returned Services Association.

RSA chief executive Pat Herbert has received emails from members who were angry and upset that the neo-fascist organisation would attend Anzac ceremonies.

“The RSA would be obviously appalled and it would disgust most New Zealanders. New Zealand does not need groups like these,” Herbert said.

The RSA could not stop National Front members attending services but “they certainly will not be welcomed if they come flying their colours”.

Herbert said the National Front represented everything Anzac soldiers had fought against.

“The incongruity of this is that those who belong to this organisation with its warped ideals and statements about supremacy also claim they’ll be there remembering family members and relatives who put up the supreme sacrifice fighting the ideals they espouse.”

[...]

[F]ascist and white supremacist views are commonly posted on websites by New Zealand National Front members and sympathisers.

One person from Waikanae calling themselves waffen-ss-panzerkommando, after a WWII German tank unit and the Nazi secret service agency, says “not only is Anzac Day a time to honour our men who died bravely defending their nation from the Yellow Scum in the Second World War, but I also believe it creates a bond between Australia and New Zealand - two white brothers who share a lot of things in common”.

RSA members said they found such views abhorrent and an insult to fallen soldiers.

Wellington man Barrie Sargeant, whose grandfather fought in World War II and spent years in German POW camps, said he was deeply offended by the presence of the National Front at services.

“I am sure that many will share my revulsion at this attempted desecration of a national day of remembrance for the thousands of soldiers who lost their lives fighting fascism.”

Let’s just hope Kyle keeps his Iron Cross tattoo covered up.

ANZAC Day commemorates the deaths of all Australians and New Zealanders who fought and died in all conflicts on all fronts. During WWII, many of those fronts were in places like Tobruk, El Alamein and Normandy.

And guess what: the enemy in these titanic battles was not the imperialist Japanese. The enemy of the ANZACs in their European, Mediterranean and North African campaigns were Nazis.

They were the sort of people who now line up with the National Front.