Leaders wrestle with solving Nashville's neo-Nazi problem while protecting free speech

A proposal to prohibit Metro Nashville Police officers from associating with hate groups was introduced to the Metro Council in July, following a recent rash of neo-Nazi gatherings in downtown Nashville and triggering a debate over free speech rights in the face of racist and antisemitic rhetoric.  

The bill, which would disallow MNPD officers from any kind of association with hate groups and paramilitary gangs, including prohibiting display of any tattoos or "posts, 'likes,' jokes, memes, retweets, and other statements that advocate racism, violence, misogyny, homophobia, or other kinds of hate or discrimination," was filed by District 25 Council Member Jeff Preptit.

At the meeting when it was introduced, Preptit said that many hate groups intentionally recruit from law enforcement, though there is no evidence the recent neo-Nazi activity is related to law enforcement. The bill was deferred for weeks after multiple council members brought up concerns regarding First Amendment infringement.

Efforts such as Preptit’s to address the recent neo-Nazi demonstrations in Nashville have spurred mixed responses and discussions from city and state lawmakers over how to uphold First Amendment rights while also buffering residents from hate speech and activity.

City, state response mixed on how to approach free speech

A fence surrounding a late July peace rally at Bicentennial Park provided a perfect view of the literal and metaphorical divide between the two extremes that have walked city streets over the past month.

On one side of the fence, community members gathered on amphitheater steps with music, dance and a plethora of signs declaring love for Nashville and those in it. Community leaders ranging from Mayor Freddie O’Connell to Jewish Federation President Leslie Kirby and local advocacy leaders for myriad issues mingled under the goal of reinforcing peace and community in a city that has worked so hard to cultivate it.

Mere feet over the fence, however, arguments broke out between attendees and a small group of neo-Nazis. With sweat dripping, masks slipping — and in the case of one man, a mohawk drooping in the heat — the neo-Nazis held aloft tiny pamphlets scrawled with antisemitic messages and wielded livestreaming iPhones.

The event marked the most notable public acknowledgement by the city of the sudden uptick in neo-Nazi activity.

“Those who abuse the powers of the First Amendment for the powers of hatred and fear are not entitled to tolerance and acceptance,” O’Connell said at the event. “We will continue our efforts to ensure they confront ongoing difficulty when they try.”

Just days prior, the Metro Council strongly rebuked another crowd of neo-Nazis who had signed up to speak at their meeting.

Wearing shirts emblazoned with swastikas and the words “whites against replacement,” the demonstrators lined the back of a decidedly diverse council room that was none too friendly to their presence.

“I want to say to all these visitors from out of town: You’re not welcome here,” At-Large Council Member Zulfat Suara said, kicking off the announcements phase of the meeting. “You have the right to march, but there is no room for hate here."

As Suara spoke, the Nazi group jeered and heckled from the back of the room, yelling racist expletives, pornographic allegations and mocking comments.

At another gathering just days after that, a member of one of the neo-Nazi groups said they visited Nashville because "it's the only place that respects freedom of speech," when confronted by a NewsChannel5 reporter.

Despite the relatively uniform response from city leaders both condemning hatred and upholding the First Amendment, messaging from state lawmakers and officials regarding the free speech rights of neo-Nazis has been mixed.

Shortly after the peace rally, the same group of neo-Nazis went on to harass children busking in downtown Nashville, prompting further outrage from Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville.

At a news conference regarding the harassment, Jones said the incident was “not about freedom of expression” when asked how he intended to address the rise in hate groups while also upholding First Amendment rights in cases that are not blatant harassment.

“Hate speech is not free speech,” he said.

Hate speech is indeed protected under the First Amendment, while clear cases of harassment and threats of violence are not.

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, through his communications director, declined to comment for this story.

Over in a Davidson County General Sessions courtroom a week prior, Assistant District Attorney General Joey Clifton argued on behalf of the city against Ryan McCann, a 29-year-old Canadian member of the Goyim Defense League, one of the neo-Nazi groups involved in the recent demonstrations.

McCann was accused of using a flagpole to beat a downtown bartender who had just been involved in a physical altercation with members of the neo-Nazi group on July 14. He faces a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct.

Clifton argued McCann’s words did not count as protected speech because the very words inflicted harm.

“As your honor knows, you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater, and your honor also can't say words in somebody's face that the very utterance inflicts injury or tends to incite immediate breach of the peace,” he said.

McCann sat in the courtroom beside his attorney, quiet without his jeering compatriots. His case was bound over to a grand jury, which is expected to be scheduled in the coming months. The bartender involved in the altercation, Deago Buck, was initially charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The charges were dropped on Aug. 6.

Hate speech must be fought with free speech, says First Amendment advocate

The confusion and hesitation exhibited by leaders regarding First Amendment boundaries is not surprising because the topic is rarely a clear-cut issue, said Nadine Strossen, a professor of law emerita at New York Law School with a specialty in First Amendment issues and a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Strossen said the issue lawmakers face when confronted with situations like the one in Nashville is the frequent misunderstanding of what hate speech is actually protected.

“Hate speech is sometimes protected and sometimes unprotected,” she said. “It is very fact specific and very contextual, taking into account not only the message of the speech, but also all the facts and circumstances in which it is uttered.”

Strossen said that the line between legal and illegal hate speech usually rests on two core principles: viewpoint neutrality principle and the emergency principle.

“Government may never suppress speech solely because of disapproval of that viewpoint,” she said. “That is for us as individuals, and acting through our democratic sovereignty, to decide what we want to listen to, what we don't want to listen to, what we want to refute, what we want to ignore, and so forth.”

Some hate speech, however, enters the realm of the second principle: the emergency principle.

“This is speech that imminently threatens or directly causes specific serious harm,” she said. “This speech can and should be restricted, and the Supreme Court has recognized several categories of speech that satisfy this context-based concept of an emergency.”

Examples of this include the concept of a “true threat,” when a speaker specifically threatens an individual that “either intentionally or recklessly instills a reasonable fear on the part of the audience members that they are going to be subject to a violent attack,” according to Strossen.

“The law does not require that the speaker intend to actually carry out the violence because the harm is already done,” she said. “If you have a reasonable fear that you're going to be attacked, that already hampers your own freedom of speech, not to mention your freedom of movement and your privacy.”

Based on these principles, Strossen said, the majority of the recent neo-Nazi demonstrations — clearly barring the harassment of the five children and the physical altercation with the downtown bartender — fall under protected hate speech.

“If they're expressing an idea, even a loathsome idea, rather than targeting a particular individual passerby, that is likely to be protected speech,” she said.

Strossen recommends local leaders respond through enforcement of already-established rules, rather than new measures that could infringe on free speech. Rules dictating required permits for large gatherings, for example, in addition to noise ordinances, rules on sound amplification and more go “a long distance” in dampening the impact of ill-meaning demonstrators, Strossen said.

Most importantly, she said, cities need to educate law enforcement on the boundaries of free speech.

“Make absolutely sure that law enforcement is prepared to intervene, to prevent and if necessary, to punish somebody whose conduct does go beyond protected free speech to either become a form of punishable speech, or worse yet, some kind of assault or other law infraction,” Strossen said.

Lastly, Strossen said lawmakers need to resist the urge to censor offensive speech.

“We should resist hate speech with free speech, not censorship,” she said. “At best, it's ineffective, and at worst, it's counterproductive. … Punishing expression is not an effective way to change people's minds. It will harden people in their attitudes. It will turn them into free speech martyrs. It will gain them attention and sympathy that they otherwise never would have received.

“If your goal is to deny them the oxygen and attention that they're seeking, then you absolutely have to oppose any kind of censorship, because that's exactly what they are hoping you will do — censor them.”

Tennessee offers a unique environment for extremism, expert says

The discussion of hate speech as a part of free speech is nothing new, especially as the number of hate groups rises across the United States.

But Tennessee, it seems, has a particularly strong relationship with the issue.

When asked whether neo-Nazi demonstrations are happening more in other places as compared to Nashville, Jeff Tischauser, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center who focuses on hate groups, said that the “quick answer is no,” but that circumstances in Nashville make it a particularly fertile place for that type of demonstration.  

He said three of the main Nazi groups the center monitors — Patriot Front, the Blood Tribe and Goyim Defense League  — have all targeted other cities, “but what's odd is all three of them have targeted Nashville.” All three groups have demonstrated publicly in Nashville this year.

“There's clearly something going on in the movement that sees Nashville as a place to get media attention and to try to circulate a message,” he said.

Tischauser said he can see a few reasons for this, which all focus on a specific theme: Nashville being a Democratic stronghold in a majority Republican state.

“These groups perceive that even though Nashville is a blue place, they know it's a tourist attraction and they know that people from across political ideologies go there,” Tischauser said. “And these groups think that they could try to reach members of the conservative movement, or who they think are part of the conservative movement.”

According to Tischauser, many of these groups take credit for legislation recently passed by the Republican supermajority at the state level, especially regarding anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

“They see the bills being passed by the state GOP in Tennessee … and these groups will argue to themselves on these forums that they're the ones pushing the GOP, that they're the ones on the street, showing people what these ‘degenerate groups’ are doing,” Tischauser said. “And then they give themselves a round of applause.”

While Tischauser acknowledges these groups have First Amendment rights, he recommends that city and law enforcement officials become more knowledgeable on where the line should be drawn.

“I would encourage policymakers to think about that line between what's protected and what's unprotected speech,” he said. “And if there are law enforcement officers following these groups around, which they should be, then they need to be really trained on when that line is crossed, so that they could stop … these racist maniacs from escalating a situation.”

Statehouse reporter Vivian Jones contributed to this report.

The USA TODAY Network - Tennessee's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.

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