(NewsNation) — Members of the organization Patriot Front, designated by the Anti-Defamation League as a white supremacist group, were seen marching through downtown Nashville, Tennessee, over the weekend.
More than 100 people marched Saturday through the city’s streets, covering their faces with masks while holding shields and Confederate flags, NewsNation local affiliate WKRN reported.
State Rep. Justin Jones posted a picture on X around 6 p.m. showing the marchers going up to the Tennessee Capitol.
What is Patriot Front?
Patriot Front is a Texas-based group led by Thomas Ryan Rousseau. According to the ADL, it splintered from another white supremacist group — Vanguard America — after the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
Part of Patriot Front’s rebranding in the aftermath of the rally was using the “red, white and blue aesthetic” of “Patriot Nationalism,” the ADL wrote. The point of this, per the ADL, is to package its white supremacist ideology in a way that’s more appealing to a mainstream conservative audience.
However, ADL cites leaked internal messages and the group’s manifesto as proof of its racist and bigoted worldview. Examples include a passage stating that Americans of European ancestry have an exclusive right to live in the U.S.
Patriot Front will target places with “on the ground” activities, according to ADL, including leaving propaganda fliers at Black churches and an LGBTQ+ community center and vandalizing statues and murals memorializing Black Americans killed by police.
“Since 2019, Patriot Front has been responsible for the vast majority of white supremacist propaganda distributed in the United States, using fliers, posters, stickers, banners and the internet to spread their hateful ideology,” the ADL said.
This, the ADL wrote, along with a number of “flash demonstrations,” have made Patriot Front one of the most visible white supremacist groups operating today.
Local leaders denounce Patriot Front
State and local leaders in Tennessee were quick to condemn Patriot Front’s presence in Nashville.
Mayor Freddie O’Connell said in a statement Sunday morning that his first priority was the safety of Nashville residents.
“Just because someone is exercising their First Amendment rights does not mean we must accept someone shamelessly identifying as a Nazi as just another American,” O’Connell wrote. “And in Nashville we won’t.”
Law enforcement was engaged Saturday, and there were no direct threats to anyone’s physical safety, the mayor added.
“Going forward, we’re exploring how we can thoroughly address unlawful activity of the group and prevent it in the future,” O’Connell said.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville said in a statement it has also been in contact with local authorities.
“We condemn this activity in the strongest possible way and denounce the perpetrators as cowards and criminals,” the federation said in a statement to WKRN.
The NAACP’s Nashville branch said it doesn’t want Patriot Front’s actions to be “normalized.”
“As a community that has been directly impacted by historical grief and turmoil from similar white supremacist groups, we stand United against all forms of hatred that they act upon,” the NAACP’s statement said. “These actors of ancestral amnesia are seeking attention while hiding behind the masks of oppression and shame.”
Jones, a Democrat, noted in his X post that Patriot Front’s march comes just months after neo-Nazis rallied in the city.
“Shame on my Republican colleagues who continue to welcome these hate groups to our state with racist laws and rhetoric,” he said.
NewsNation local affiliate WKRN contributed to this report.