Among the throngs of tourists in cowboy attire who flock to Nashville’s famed downtown honky-tonks, a small but unsettling group has distracted locals and visitors from the neon lights lately with Nazi salutes and white supremacist rhetoric.
For weeks, neo-Nazis have livestreamed antisemitic antics for shock value in Nashville – waving swastika flags through crowded streets, singing hate songs on the downtown courthouse steps, and even briefly disrupting a Metro Council meeting with jeers.
Their continued presence has sparked hard questions about why Music City is attracting groups amplifying Nazi beliefs and what, if anything, can help stop them.
“What’s significant is that so many of groups feel so emboldened,” said Jon Lewis, a George Washington University Program on Extremism research fellow. “They’re a symptom of the broader disease that is mainstreaming.”
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 on a dorm at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
But in Nashville, the groups have stuck around, peppering neighbourhoods with propaganda leaflets. Dozens of masked white nationalists marched through downtown early this month, and Republican Gov. Bill Lee condemned the group for its antisemitic views. The uptick in activity comes after Neo-Nazis also marched downtown in February.
Rabbi Dan Horwitz, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville, said the city is an amazing place for the Jewish community, and a unity rally Sunday drew hundreds of supporters. Yet part of the reason neo-Nazis have picked Nashville could simply be its draw for tourists, he said.
“I’m not surprised that white supremacists would also say, ’Hey, this seems like a great fun place that we can go and meet up and get to do our honky-tonking at night,’” Horwitz said.
Nashville’s touristy attraction may be a factor, but the state’s embrace of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-immigrant policies may also play a role, Lewis said.
Tennessee’s GOP lawmakers have enacted more anti-LGBTQ+ laws more than any other state since 2015, including banning gender-affirming care for minors, limiting drag performances in public spaces and allowing LGBTQ+ foster children to be placed with families that hold anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs.
Separately, Tennessee has aligned with other Republican-led states that have tasked their authorities with more immigration duties. And a 2023 failed mayoral candidate in a city near Nashville made national news for her white supremacist supporters, including a couple who openly signalled their embrace of Nazism.
“When there are local and state lawmakers using language that it is not out of place in any of the chats for any groups that are coming to the city, that’s always going to be a concern,” Lewis said.
The neo-Nazis didn’t provide much clarity when several gathered outside Nashville’s courthouse last week and a WTVF-TV journalist asked, “Why did you guys choose Nashville?”
“It’s the only place that respects freedom of speech,” said Nicholas Bysheim, a member of neo-Nazi Goyim Defense League.
City leaders are poring through regulations to see which, if any, may apply to extremist gatherers. Some include limitations on wearing masks in public to conceal someone’s identity or require permission for larger groups to march through the city. But Mayor Freddie O’Connell stressed that any ordinance enforcement would need to withstand a possible court challenge, with delicate implications on constitutional free speech rights.
“These groups, obviously, they are sophisticated in their awareness of where the boundaries of their protections are, and we want to make sure that if we are challenging their testing of those boundaries that we’re going to pass that test,” O’Connell told reporters.
According to Nashville police, the most recent faction of neo-Nazis largely travelled from outside Tennessee.
Known for using the public comment period of local meetings to spread anti-Jewish hate messages, some signed up to speak at the Nashville council meeting last Wednesday.
“I want to say to all these visitors from out of town: You’re not welcome here,” council member Zulfat Suara said. “You have the right to march, but there is no room for hate here.”
Suara’s remarks drew jeers from the neo-Nazis, who hurled racist and sexually explicit comments before the audience was temporarily booted. When the public was allowed back into the meeting, the neo-Nazis had left.
A few days earlier, a neo-Nazi had been charged with using his flag to attack a downtown bar worker, who also is charged in the tussle.
Roberta Kaplan, who represented plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit that secured a US$26 million verdict against two dozen white nationalists and organizations in the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia, demonstrations, said she sees parallels between between that city and Nashville.
Kaplan said the Charlottesville demonstrations – where a white supremacist deliberately drove his car into counter-protesters, killing one person and injuring dozens – were preceded by dress rehearsals organized by various white nationalist groups starting earlier that spring. Both cities are progressive surrounded by deep-red countryside, which could aid their ultimate goal to provoke violence and start a “race war,” and have large groups of visitors, some of whom they hope will be receptive to their views, Kaplan added.
“What’s truly frightening is that we as a nation do not seem to have learned any lessons from the death of Heather Heyer or the injuries of my clients,” Kaplan said. “To the contrary, white Christian nationalists now feel emboldened, encouraged by the ‘coded’ or not-so-coded statements of elected officials.”