NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Amid the hordes of cowboy-clad tourists who flock to the famous honky-tonks in downtown Nashville, a small but disturbing group has lately been distracting locals and visitors from the neon lights with their Hitler salutes and white supremacist rhetoric.
For weeks, neo-Nazis have been livestreaming anti-Semitic antics in Nashville to shock, waving swastika flags through crowded streets, singing hate songs on the steps of the downtown courthouse and even briefly disrupting a Metro Council meeting with booing.
Their continued presence raises difficult questions about why Music City attracts so many groups that espouse Nazi beliefs, and what, if anything, can be done to stop them.
“What’s important is that so many groups feel so emboldened,” said Jon Lewis, a researcher at the George Washington University Program on Extremism. “They’re a symptom of the broader disease that’s becoming mainstream.”
Elsewhere in the country, white supremacist groups have made similar — but often isolated — appearances this year. Some have rallied at the South Dakota Capitol, rented billboards in the Detroit area to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday and projected a swastika onto a dormitory at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
But in Nashville, the groups have stuck around, littering neighborhoods with propaganda leaflets. Dozens of masked white nationalists marched through downtown earlier this month, and Republican Gov. Bill Lee condemned the group for its anti-Semitic views. The surge in activity comes after neo-Nazis also marched through downtown in February.
Rabbi Dan Horwitz, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville, said the city is a great place for the Jewish community, and a unity rally Sunday drew hundreds of supporters. Still, part of the reason neo-Nazis chose Nashville may simply be its appeal to tourists, he said.
“It doesn’t surprise me that white supremacists would also say, ‘Hey, this seems like a really fun place where we can go, meet up and party at night,’” Horwitz said.
According to Lewis, Nashville’s tourist appeal may be a factor, but the state’s embrace of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-immigrant policies may also play a role.
Tennessee’s Republican lawmakers have passed more anti-LGBTQ+ bills than any other state since 2015, including banning gender-affirming care for minors, restricting drag performances in public spaces, and allowing LGBTQ+ foster children to be placed with families who hold anti-LGBTQ+ views.
Separately, Tennessee has joined other Republican-led states who have burdened their authorities with more immigration duties. And a failed 2023 mayoral bid in a city near Nashville made national news for her white supremacist followersincluding a couple who openly declared that they embraced Nazism.
“When local and state legislators use language that is not out of place in any of the chats for any of the groups that come to town, that’s always going to be a concern,” Lewis said.
The neo-Nazis didn’t provide much clarity when a crowd gathered outside the Nashville courthouse last week and a WTVF-TV reporter asked, “Why did you choose Nashville?”
“It is the only place where freedom of speech is respected,” said Nicholas Bysheim, a member of the neo-Nazi Goyim Defense League.
City officials are poring over regulations to see what, if any, would apply to extremist gatherings. Some include restrictions on wearing masks in public to hide one’s identity or requiring permission for larger groups to march through the city. But Mayor Freddie O’Connell stressed that any enforcement of the ordinance would have to withstand a potential court challenge, with delicate implications for constitutional free speech.
“These groups are clearly very aware of the limits of their protection, and we want to make sure that if we challenge their testing of those limits, we will pass that test,” O’Connell told reporters.
According to Nashville police, the most recent group of neo-Nazis came largely from outside Tennessee.
They have been known to exploit the comment period at local meetings to spread hateful anti-Jewish messages, with some signing up to speak at the Nashville City Council meeting last Wednesday.
“I want to say to all these out-of-towners: You are not welcome here,” said Councilman Zulfat Suara. “You have the right to march, but there is no room for hate here.”
Suara’s comments drew scorn from neo-Nazis, who made racist and sexually explicit remarks before the audience was temporarily ejected. By the time the audience was allowed back in, the neo-Nazis had left.
A few days earlier, a neo-Nazi was accused of using his flag to attack a bar employee in the city centre, and the employee is also being charged in connection with the brawl.
Roberta Kaplan, who represented the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit that $26 million verdict against two dozen white nationalists and organizations during the 2017 protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, she sees similarities between that city and Nashville.
Kaplan said the demonstrations in Charlottesville — where a white supremacist deliberately drove his car into counter-protesters, killing one person and injuring dozens — were preceded by dress rehearsals organized by several white nationalist groups that began earlier this spring. Both cities are progressive and surrounded by deep-red countryside, which could aid their ultimate goal of provoking violence and starting a “race war,” and they draw large crowds, some of whom they hope will be receptive to their views, Kaplan added.
“What is truly frightening is that we as a nation appear to have learned no lessons from Heather Heyer’s death or the injuries to my clients,” Kaplan said. “On the contrary, white Christian nationalists are now feeling emboldened, emboldened, by the ‘coded’ or not-so-coded statements of elected officials.”