A neo-Nazi turf war may have just flared in Columbus, Ohio. Jewish, Black and elected leaders won’t stand for it

(CNN) — Elected officials, Jewish advocacy groups and civil rights leaders are vowing to “push back” against the message of a White nationalist group that staged a march last week near downtown Columbus, Ohio, calling the demonstration an act of hate unwelcome in their community – and across the United States.

Hate Club, a newly formed White supremacist organization tracked by the Anti-Defamation League, may have been engaging in a turf war when about a dozen members paraded Saturday through the Short North neighborhood wearing all black with red face masks, an executive of the anti-hate group told CNN.

Some marchers carried black flags emblazoned with red swastikas, a notorious symbol of hate, antisemitism and White supremacy tracing to the murderous legacy of Germany’s Nazi Party and the Holocaust.

At least one marcher yelled, “n***er,” again and again, according to a video of the march given to CNN affiliate WBNS that’s garnered online attention far beyond Ohio’s capital. The neo-Nazis deployed pepper spray, Columbus police said, citing video evidence and adding, “To date, probable cause has not been established to make any arrests.”

Several concerned residents called police to report the demonstration, and anyone is invited to share videos or photos of it with investigators, police said.

The daytime march – past a clothing boutique, a salon and a cookie bakery – erupted as events organized or attended by White supremacists in the United States hit a new high in 2023, the Anti-Defamation League reported. Public gatherings of White nationalists or people with Nazi flags have unfolded in recent years in Nashville, New Hampshire, Boston, Virginia, Michigan and Washington, DC.

Hate Club was created just last month, the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism’s vice president, Oren Segal, told CNN.

The Columbus march was Hate Club’s first official event and appears to have been part of a turf war with the White nationalist supremacist Blood Tribe, Segal said.

“Typically, the ultimate goal of groups like ‘Hate Club’ is to turn America into a white ethnostate where white men are in power,” Segal told CNN via email “They consider themselves as both the last remaining bulwark against enemies of the white race and the only path to a white ethnostate.”

“Blood Tribe views itself as the main white supremacist group in Ohio, so … (the) ‘Hate Club’ march appears to have been an intentional effort to antagonize them,” he said. “When white supremacists start competing for turf or visibility, the losers are the communities that are impacted.”

And while the US Constitution “protects First Amendment activity, no matter how hateful,” Columbus Police Chief Elaine R. Bryant acknowledged Monday in a statement, “no one in our community should experience intimidation or harassment. We will continue to strive to make Columbus a city where all residents feel welcome and safe.”

‘Hate doesn’t get to have the last word’

Some Columbus community leaders marched Sunday in unity against the prior day’s neo-Nazi demonstration.

“I was outraged, and I felt disrespected,” the Rev. Derrick Holmes, senior pastor at Union Grove Baptist Church, told CNN affiliate WSYX of the White nationalist event. “I really want a counterweight to what happened yesterday and really of just the mind that hate doesn’t get to have the last word, that injustice doesn’t get the last word, that bigotry doesn’t get to have the last word.”

Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin laid blame for the White nationalist activity, at least in part, on President-elect Donald Trump, who has been reluctant to condemn White supremacists in the past and notably said “both sides” were to blame for racial violence in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump was re-elected the week before the Ohio march.

“I’m sorry the President-elect has emboldened these creeps,” Hardin said on X. “This community rejects their pathetic efforts to promote fear and hate. Columbus will always stand with those they seek to intimidate.”

The presence of White supremacist groups in Ohio is not new. In the early 20th century, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the University of Dayton, held rallies in the state and assembled in towns such as Westerville, where the group established a stronghold.

The Trump-Vance transition team did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment about Hardin’s remarks.

The outgoing administration said of Saturday’s march in Columbus: “President (Joe) Biden abhors the hateful poison of Nazism, Antisemitism, and racism – which are hostile to everything the United States stands for, including protecting the dignity of all our citizens and the freedom to worship,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Hate directed against any of us is a threat to every single one of us.”

‘They’re not welcome here’

Events like Saturday’s march in Ohio “are designed to create fear and anxiety in communities,” Segal told CNN’s Jim Acosta this week, “but also to act as almost like a photo opportunity … to signal back to their online community to try to get people to embrace their hatred and potentially to act on it.”

Segal expects White nationalist groups will continue to surface, he said, adding elected officials should immediately reject their actions.

“This White supremacist activity never went away,” he said. “The reality is the book on White supremacy, antisemitism and hatred is not closed. In fact, there are more chapters being written every single day.”

Indeed, amid the year’s “incredible surge of antisemitism, we cannot allow ourselves nor society to normalize these behaviors,” said Justin Kirschner, Cincinnati regional director for the American Jewish Committee.

Overall threats to Jews in the United States tripled in the year after the deadly October 7 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas, preliminary data from the Anti-Defamation League shows, while the Council on American-Islamic Relations got 8,061 reports of anti-Muslim bias incidents in 2023, the highest number in the 28 years the group has tracked hate, it said in April.

Following the neo-Nazi march in Columbus, Kirschner said, political leaders must continue condemning the acts of White nationalist groups that are “not in line with the values of our communities.”

“We, as a society, must push back against this,” he said.

“Our response to their hate and the rise of antisemitism is to strengthen our resolve, deepen our community bonds, and continue our education and advocacy work,” said the advocacy and charity group JewishColumbus, calling the marchers “cowards … scared to show their faces” and their demonstration “an assault on the values that define our diverse and inclusive community.”

And the NAACP Columbus called Saturday’s neo-Nazi march “a stark reminder that White supremacy remains a serious threat in our society.”

“This hatred is not just an attack on Black people – it is an assault on the very principles of democracy and equality,” NAACP Columbus Branch President Nana Watson said in a statement. “We cannot allow these forces of division and bigotry to gain ground. It is our duty to confront this hatred head-on, to organize, to legislate, and to educate until such ideologies are left powerless and irrelevant in our society.”

Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein was “disgusted” and “angry” when he heard about the march, he told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Monday, noting Columbus is a community that celebrates culture and diversity.

“When you have these outside groups come in masked and parade up and down one of our most celebrated touristy areas of town carrying Nazi flags, it’s disgusting,” Klein said. “It’s vile and they need to go back to where they came from and not come back to the city of Columbus because they’re not welcome here.”

CNN’s Hanna Park contributed to this report.

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