Philip Neville Arps is a New Zealand white supremacist best known for being jailed after publicly sharing the livestream of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings.
[4] His most prominent offending before 2019 occurred in 2016, when he pleaded guilty to charges of offensive behaviour after being part of a group that delivered pigs' heads and offal to Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch.
Beneficial Insulation used a black sun symbol (designed by Heinrich Himmler) as its logo on company vans, charged prices in multiples of $14.88, dressed staff in camouflage uniforms, and had a web address that alluded to Auschwitz concentration camp.
[11][12] In the wake of the terrorist attacks of March 2019 the company was reported to police, removed from review websites like Builderscrack, and delisted by the Insulation Association of New Zealand.
[19] In June 2019, Arps was sentenced to 21 months in jail, with Massey University distinguished professor Paul Spoonley describing him as "an unrepentant, hardcore white supremacist".
[22] His sentencing and unsuccessful appeals were later referenced by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack as part of its paper on hate crime.
"[24] Arps was called a "white supremacist" in a television piece filmed by Newshub journalist Patrick Gower and broadcast on 30 June 2019.
[29] Arps was given release conditions including wearing a GPS monitor, making no contact with members of the Muslim community, and not owning or using firearms.
[30] He unsuccessfully appealed against these conditions with a judge noting Arps's "deep-seated enmity towards people of the Muslim and Jewish faiths" as a reason to retain them.
[31] In August 2020 he was arrested and appeared in court after visiting a home brew store next door to Linwood Islamic Centre (Mosque).
[29] Reported quotes from the "tame end" of Arps's "barrage" of messages to his parole officers included the insults "worthless", "fat", "piss-weak" and "violently disgusting".
"[37] The sentence came over a year after a judge-alone trial on 18 February 2022, when Arps appeared in the Christchurch District Court having refused to wear a mask or take a rapid COVID test, and saying he was unvaccinated.
)[38] In August 2022, in between his trial and conviction for breaching release conditions, Arps protested in support of Counterspin Media founders Kelvyn Alp and Hannah Spierer as they appeared in Christchurch District Court.
According to media reports he had told people at a Christchurch petrol station that he was on his way to a "public execution", and that “I’ve been promising it, I’ll see you in seven to 10 years”.
[42] As the protest continued Arps was an active participant on Telegram, calling for contractors who helped police install concrete blocks to be named and added to the "Nuremberg list".
His social media posts, made under the username "Antisemite", claimed that his son had attracted the attention of security by asking whether Ardern would be protected by bulletproof glass.
Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti sought urgent advice on an incoming code of conduct, people's eligibility for board positions, and her legal ability to intervene if Arps was elected.
The judge heard that Arps' relationship with Corrections had broken down, and that he would not comply with conditions that were set for him, or wear an electronic tracking bracelet.
[59] Hernandez, who went on to become a Member of Parliament the next year, called himself "a proud citizen of Aotearoa New Zealand" and Arps "the CEO of racism".
In July the Christchurch District Court found that Clark's evidence had not directly stated that he feared for his own safety, and so dismissed his request.
Clark, who had filed his request without a lawyer, thought that his fear ought to have been evident as his affidavit documented years of harassment and intimidation that he had endured from Arps.