Last Updated on January 19, 2026 by Serena Zehlius, Editor
For the second time in as many weeks, members of a neo-Nazi hate group massed in downtown Nashville, accosting passerby in Nashville’s tourist-heavy Lower Broadway entertainment district.
Members of the Goyim Defense League, some wearing masks and shirts that said “Pro-White,” carried flags emblazoned with swastikas and shouted anti-semitic epithets while attempting to hand out flyers. Nashville police arrested one member following a fight outside the Johnny Cash Museum on 3rd Ave., S.
On Monday, group members were spotted on a Nashville interstate overpass, gesturing at motorists after dropping a banner over the side.
Photograph by John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout ©2024
Photograph by John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout ©2024
This follows a July 7 march through the same part of Nashville by Patriot Front, a white nationalist hate group that shares a theory of “white replacement” — that immigrants and people of color will outnumber white Americans — with the Goyim Defense League. It marked the second time in 2024 Patriot Front staged a Nashville event, the first in February.
Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell addressed Sunday’s march in a post on X: “Right now, though, as we see people putting effort into demonstrating hateful ideology publicly—including in Nashville—we should all work both to recognize the incredible power of the First Amendment while rejecting the most hateful and painful of its possibilities.”
A June report 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.
