In this day and age, it is shocking to see avowed Neo-Nazis and white supremacists marching in the United States, even after the horrors in Charlottesville in 2017 and at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Another march took place in Nashville, Tennessee this past week at the State Capitol. On February 17th, a group of men wearing masks and red t-shirts and carrying swastika flags marched through the streets of Nashville. The group gave “Sieg Heil” salutes and hurled racial abuse at Nashvillians who shouted for the group to show their faces before making their way to the Tennessee State Capitol and waving their flags on the steps. 

The particular organization that organized this display is known as “Blood Tribe”, a Neo-Nazi organization that has appeared in marches in the Midwest and Florida. The group is extremely racist, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-Semitic, and has promoted Wotanism, a white supremacist interpretation of Norse Paganism. The group has promoted violence against minorities and is self-described as an “End of the pipeline group” (referring to the alt-right pipeline). The group has received criticism from other groups and persons associated with the American far-right, who deride the group’s aggression and have accused them of being “feds” who are meant to corrupt the image of the alt-right.

While Tennessee House Majority Leader William Lamberth (Rep) tweeted “Go away Nazi thugs,This is Tennessee and you are NOT welcome here”, many lawmakers have criticized the Tennessee GOP for not effectively standing against extremist rhetoric that has grown within the state and the country as a whole. State Representative Aftyn Benh (Dem) said, “These groups, once relegated to the dark corners, now feel empowered to spew their noxious ideology out in the open due to our state’s leadership refusing to condemn their speech and actions,”. Representative Justin Jones, who was leaving an event and encountered the group, took a video and accused the Tennessee Republican Party of “fostering hate speech” (sic).

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. A number of Neo-Nazi and extremist groups have grown in recent years as have been documented by groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The hope now is that these groups, like many of the groups preceding them, will collapse internally or are weakened by popular movements against them.