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A Black Lives Matter t-shirt sparked a fist fight on the steps of a small town New Zealand church.

A strange fracas in the rolling green hills of Te Kuiti as the United States roils in race protests thousands of miles away shows how deep American-style culture wars have seeped into Kiwi lives.

A lone voice startles a congregation at prayer in a Te Kiti church.

It shatters the unconscious silence parishioners kneel within, heads bowed, hands clasped - and into which another man reads a bible passage aloud.

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"Why are you wearing such an offensive T-shirt to mass you fool!" comes the demand.

They shake their heads. How strange to interrupt a reading. Perhaps it's a one-off.

The reader pushes on through the fine print until he reaches the solace of a full-stop and can utter his closing refrain - Lord hear our prayer.

But as he makes towards the pew he's interrupted again.

"Buffoon!" an icy-moustached man from Benneydale called Leo Leitch, yells.

Fellow catholics John Whyte and his wife Jess wore Black Lives Matter T-shirts to church that Sunday in December 2019.

Abigail Dougherty/Stuff

Thousands of protesters marched in Auckland on June 1 in solidarity after the death of African American George Floyd while in police custody.

They believe in the cause, but never expected the trouble.

After the service, congregants mingle outside for chit-chat, but Leitch wants answers.

He claims the parish priest at the time, Father Matt McAuslin, congratulated him on his outburst and shares he views about Black Lives Matter.

"The parish priest said to me, us three are probably the only ones who know the truth about Black Lives Matter."

McAuslin encouraged Leitch to question Whyte about the T-shirt, but to leave him out of it, Leitch claims.

"So I went up to him and demanded to know why he was wearing such an offensive T-shirt to mass."

Whyte was shocked by Leitch's "screeds of vindictiveness".

"My response was I know why I'm wearing the T-shirt, I'm not sure why you're abusing a reader while doing a reading," Whyte says.

The argument escalates.

Christel Yardley/Stuff

St George's Catholic Church in Te Kiti in March, where a scuffle broke out over a Black Lives Matter t-shirt.

Whyte says Leitch pushed passed a person standing between them, prompting a warning from him to back off.

"He used one hand to push my chest which I found to be quite an aggressive response, and then he smacked my wife on the face with his hand," Whyte says.

This is what caused Whyte to push back, with what he says was a single "shove".

Leitch agrees that he walked towards Whyte and challenged him twice, but says he was the one met with a "flurry of punches" to the head by both Whyte and his wife.

Whatever the case, no-one is seriously injured as elderly bystanders throw themselves in to hold the scuffling parties apart.

Both Whyte and Leitch spoke to the police, but the incident was left where it was, on the church steps.

While Whyte strongly supports Black Lives Matter, he is not keen to speak to Stuff further and wants to forget the fracas.

"Although I expect that will not be an easy thing to do," he says.

"Never in my wildest dreams would I expect wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt to mass in Te Kiti would result in this."

But experts studying the impact of extremist views arent so surprised such things are beginning to make themselves felt even in the quietest of places.

As people entrench in increasingly disparate online realities, its only going to get worse, they say.

Christel Yardley/Stuff

Leitch at his Benneydale home. Leitch has no regrets about causing a scuffle over a Black Lives Matter T-shirt at mass.

Leitch sits at his kitchen table one brooding, late summer's morning, explaining why he believes Black Lives Matter is an "evil organisation".

Religious iconography is peppered throughout the house: a crucifix at the doorway, Mary in the kitchen, Pope John Paul II on the living-room side table.

Leitch's house looks like it used to be a corner-store, blue-rimmed, lacy drapes, upright against a sky that rolls about like corrugated iron.

He lives in Benneydale, a lonely King Country settlement hanging off State Highway 30.

Last year, residents defended the pride of its English name: a combination of two government mining officials in the 1940s - Charlie Benney and Tom Dale.

Later, road signs with the town's recently added Mori name - Maniaiti - were defaced by grey and black spray paint.

Inside Leitch's house, light draws inward into a laptop screen, blaring back the blue and red banner of Rupert Murdochs right-leaning Fox News.

Leitch believes Fox is the most balanced and reputable news outlet there is. He also reads a lot from Breitbart, a platform described by its former boss and once-Donald Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon, as a platform for the alt-right.

Christel Yardley/Stuff

Leo Leitch follows world events on the internet primarily through conservative media outlets.

Most people don't know the truth about Black Lives Matter, Leitch says, most people don't know the truth about anything.

"I've seen them, I've seen videos of their behaviour - their behaviour is violent, aggressive, nasty.

"There are some people who would have a superficial knowledge who probably think it's a good organisation.

"They probably think it's standing up against persecution of Negroes by police, and that's the superficial veneer that it stands on.

"On TV news you won't hear anything bad about Black Lives Matter nor in the Waikato Times."

Leitch follows current events and American politics keenly and the internet is his portal. But the keyhole through which he consumes his information has narrowed and now Donald Trump has come to power.

"He's the best president America's ever had."

He maintains he's not racist, Martin Luther King's one of his heroes in fact.

"I believe everyone is equal, one law for all," he says.

The "truth and justice" of his catholicism compelled him to take action against the "offensive" T-shirt all those months ago.

"[Black Lives Matter] is an American organisation that's got nothing to do with us here in New Zealand, let alone in Te Kiti," he says with the laptop on which he consumes right-wing American media sitting open at his kitchen table.

"God knows why the fellow was wearing the T-shirt, why he bought it and has it I don't know."

Win McNamee/Getty Images

The D.C. National Guard stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial monitoring a large crowd protesting against the death of George Floyd, on June 2.

The killing of George Floyd, under the knee of a Minnesotan police officer for nearly nine minutes, continues to horrify over ten days after it happened.

It sparked protests across the U.S, some developing into riots.

A viral video of Floyd pleading, "I can't breathe", echoes the death of Eric Garner, killed in a police chokehold six years before.

Police officer Derek Chauvin has been charged with second degree murder, and three others for aiding and abetting the murder.

Recently streets in Auckland and Wellington were filled with Black Lives Matter protests.

One of the organisers of the Auckland march, Mez Tekeste, said forces are trying to discredit the movement.

"At the end of the day, this is about equality.

"Black people are disadvantaged, systemically and institutionally, especially in America, and to a lesser degree, here."

The protest in Auckland had been nothing but peaceful, Tekeste said, and it was amazing to see thousands of people of different cultures take a stand against injustice.

New Zealand's race relations commissioner Meng Foon said the movement stands against racism and violence and has come about through the legacy of slavery.

"Seeing the livestream of the death really hurt a lot of people."

Abigail Dougherty/Stuff

Thousands people gathered at Aotea Square in Auckland CBD on June 1 in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

New Zealanders are embracing the movement, partly due to compassion, partly due to our own ingrained, institutional racism.

"Racism has happened here, going back to the 1840s - the New Zealand Wars, the legislation against Mori and Chinese, we've had the dawn raids, the Tuhoe incidents and the police armed response teams which are targeting Mori and Pacifika, yet this trial came out of the March 15 murders in Christchurch."

He makes a sharp delineation between the majority of peaceful protestors and looters, whose actions are unjustified.

There's no irony in a scuffle at a Te Kiti church involving two white people fighting over Black Lives Matter, he says.

"I think people generally have some human values. Even in the times of apartheid in South Africa, there were white people standing with black people and fighting apartheid."

But he urges those who hold generalisations about race to question themselves.

"For the person who found the T-shirt offensive, probably he did not know what the notion of the message is.

"It's very important to research and ask what the reason behind it is.

"A lot of hatred of differences occurs because people just don't know, and sometimes people just don't want to know."

Chris Skelton/Stuff

New Zealand's race relations commissioner, Meng Foon, said racial hatred arises through ignorance.

But Waikato University Politics Lecturer Justin Phillips said the internet's reach hasn't helped people to question themselves.

"You've got groups who might be reading material from completely different online sources and in doing so develop completely different online worlds and realities.

"It's really only slated to get worse."

If you follow conservative U.S commentators on social media, you'll see videos of Manhattan being destroyed by rioters right now, Phillips said.

He's not surprised U.S cultural movements have seeped into small town New Zealand.

CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Benneydale Catholic Leo Leitch believes Black Lives Matter is an "evil organisation"

American politics is becoming a game to follow along and participate in, he said.

The internet can make people really feel like they can participate in political change, Phillips said.

"You used to have a real opportunity to meet candidates and participate in a local political process, and this is a return to that.

"I don't know Leo, I don't know him personally, but he might consider himself to be a keyboard warrior, out there trying to fight the good fight - so to speak."

Christel Yardley/Stuff

St George's Church, Te Kiti. The parish priest at the time of the scuffle, Father Matt McAuslin, is no longer serving there.

But what about the shadowy figure of the parish priest, had he quietly shared these deeply divisive views with his parishioner?

Had he covertly agreed with Leitch that Black Lives Matter was "evil"?

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Prayers and a punch-up as culture wars come to NZ - Stuff.co.nz