The brazen appearance of white supremacist groups in Nashville left the city grappling with how to confront hateful speech without violating First Amendment protections.
They first arrived at the beginning of July: dozens of masked white supremacists, shuffling out of U-Hauls, to march through Nashville carrying upside-down American flags.
A week later, members of a separate neo-Nazi group, waving giant black flags with red swastikas, paraded along the city’s famed strip of honky-tonks and celebrity-owned bars. The neo-Nazis poured into the historic Metro courthouse to disrupt a City Council meeting, harassed descendants of Holocaust survivors and yelled racist slurs at young Black children performing on a downtown street.
The appearance of white nationalists on the streets of a major American city laid bare the growing brazenness of the two groups, the Patriot Front and the Goyim Defense League. Their provocations enraged and alarmed civic leaders and residents in Nashville, causing the city to grapple with how to confront the groups without violating free speech protections.
My ex worked at a local screen printing shop, and I hung out there a lot and made some cash during big orders. I went to the owner with a simple “punch more nazis” design I made stoned, half jokingly asked him to burn the design so my ex could print it for me.
It was the business version of that genie “thats dope you still have 3 wishes” meme - “yea I’ll burn it in the morning you know where the extras (leftover unused shirts) are 🤷♂️”
We never got along super well but we knew where we agreed lmao