Senior NZ First youth figure linked to neo-Nazi group

“It’s a loser of a journalist who thinks it’s ok to attack a young party member and member of the public just for biased clickbait gain - and that somehow any of this is the party’s responsibility,” he wrote

“News flash: we have thousands of members and we don’t hire a private investigator to interrogate them before they sign up.”

Peters did not address Newport’s former identity or directly address the evidence connecting him to the accounts and protests.

Young NZ First did not respond to the questions and did not make Newport available for comment. Efforts to contact him independently have remained unsuccessful.

Posts from the accounts included explicit praise for Hitler and an Australian neo-Nazi.

In September 2024, the X account praised Australian neo-Nazi Nathan Bull as a “true hero of the White Race”.

When another user described a Coalition Government policy as fascist, the account replied: “As a Fascist I don’t appreciate you comparing this liberal government to me. Hail Hitler.”

Responding to a post by a Holocaust Museum, the account referred to "wooden doors" — an apparent nod to a claim used by Holocaust deniers to dispute the existence of gas chambers. The account also regularly shared material from New Zealand First.

In March 2023, a group of five masked men walked through a crowd protesting the British anti-transgender activist Posie Parker in Auckland.

One wore a jacket bearing the words “Bad Boys, Good Habits”, a slogan used by the Rise Above Movement, which was labelled a “white-supremacist organisation” by the US government. A badge on his other arm featured imagery associated with the Boogaloo Boys, an “anti-government extremist” movement.

Anti-fascist researchers identified the man at the time as Wells. The Press independently compared footage from the protest with a more recent recording of Newport, which suggest their voices are highly similar.

Messages on the encrypted app Telegram provide a further connection.

In a channel used by NSN supporters, an account named “Gerard” appeared to identify as one of the masked men, using a racial slur to describe a non-white person who had accompanied the group.

Elsewhere, the account disclosed personal details matching Wells: his Waikato hometown, his ethnic background, and his connection to the Society of Saint Pius X, a traditionalist Catholic organisation.

In a since-deleted Substack post, a former friend who attended the protest with Wells identified him as the person behind “Gerard” and a related account on X. The two had met at university before falling out.

The former friend described Wells as a supporter of Nazism and said he had spent Australia Day with NSN members — a claim The Press has not independently verified. The Gerard account, however, described a 2023 plan to travel to Australia and train with NSN members.

The Gerard account accused the former friend of “doxxing” him by exposing his identity. The account said there had been no consequences from being identified, and that employers didn't care "if you are a Nazi" — except at organisations it described using a homophobic slur.

Wells surfaced again in early 2024, when a group of men disrupted an event featuring a transgender artist at a Hamilton library. After police removed them, the men displayed a banner accusing transgender people of paedophilia, alongside a slur.

Some people inside were concerned for their safety. A witness later said staff escorted a pregnant woman and several children into a bathroom, where they stayed behind a locked door until the confrontation ended.

Photographs and video footage show Wells among the protesters.

The white nationalist organisation Action Zealandia later claimed responsibility and published an altered image from the protest. It showed one man making an “OK” gesture, an otherwise commonplace sign that has also been used in white supremacist circles. A portrait of Reinhard Heydrich, a senior Nazi official and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust, had been superimposed over the man’s face.

The Press compared the altered image with uncensored photographs from the protest and identified the man as Wells.

Eight months later, Young New Zealand First published a photograph identifying him as executive committee member Nicholas Wells. He subsequently changed his name to Newport.

It is not known why he changed his name or whether he remains associated with the groups and people documented in his earlier activity.

Under his current identity, Newport has continued to express strongly anti-immigration views. In one Instagram comment, he claimed immigration from India would cause an “explosion in sexual related crimes”.

In another, he wrote: “Mass immigration will kill our country.”