For the second week in a row, neo-Nazis take over the streets of Nashville

Members of the neo-Nazi Goyim Defense League carrying Nazi flags and giving the Hitler salute heckled tourists in downtown Nashville on Sunday. (Photo: John Partipilo) Photograph by John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout ©2024

For the second time in as many weeks, members of a neo-Nazi hate group have gathered in downtown Nashville, accosting passersby in the tourist-heavy Lower Broadway entertainment district.

Members of the Goyim Defense League, some wearing masks and shirts that read “Pro-White,” waved swastika flags and shouted anti-Semitic slurs as they tried to hand out leaflets. Nashville police arrested one member following a fight outside the Johnny Cash Museum on 3rd Avenue, S.

On Monday, the group members have been spotted on a Nashville highway overpass, gesturing toward motorists after dropping a banner to the side.

The protest follows a July 7 march in the same Nashville neighborhood by the Patriot Front, a white nationalist group that shares with the Goyim Defense League a theory of “white replacement” (that immigrants and people of color will outnumber white Americans). It was the second time in 2024 that the Patriot Front has held an event in Nashville, the first in February.

Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell spoke at Sunday’s march in a post on X: “In this moment, however, as we see people struggling to publicly manifest a hateful ideology — including in Nashville — we should all strive to both recognize the incredible power of the First Amendment while rejecting its most hateful and painful possibilities.”

A report released in June by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that white nationalist groups, emboldened by right-wing politics ahead of the presidential election, grew by 50% in 2023.

All photos by John Partipilo for Tennessee Lookout.

Melissa Alveraz, 39, argues with members of the Goyim Defense League who shouted anti-Semitic slurs at her on Lower Broadway in Nashville. (Photo: John Partipilo) Photograph by John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout ©2024

A member of the white nationalist hate group Goyim Defense League attempts to distribute leaflets in downtown Nashville on Sunday, July 14. (Photo: John Partipilo)

A member of the Goyim Defense League yells at a passerby. (Photo: John Partipilo)

A child hides behind her mother, who confronted members of a neo-Nazi hate group. (Photo: John Partipilo)

Ryan Scott McCann, a native of Ontario, Canada, and member of the Goyim Defense League, is arrested by Metro Nashville police on July 14, 2024, after striking a service worker with a flagpole. (Photo: John Partipilo)

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