Alt-right, white nationalists are fighting among themselves after White Lives Matter rally

Ku Klux Klan members lined the sidewalk in Shelbyville next to men extending their arms in Nazi salutes.

Some bore swastika tattoos and others wore "SS" bolt patches, perhaps unsurprising for a rally involving members of the National Socialist Movement, an organization considered by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center to be the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States.

But the symbols weren't entirely what the event's organizers intended to portray for Saturday's White Lives Matter rally — and have ultimately contributed to division and bickering within the white nationalist community in the Tennessee event's aftermath.

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"I didn't want to start a scene with the KKK in Shelbyville," said Brad Griffin, a League of the South member who helped organize Saturday's rally, which was held as a collaborative event among members of Nationalist Front. "The whole point of this was to do something peaceful."

Griffin and others in Nationalist Front — which includes League of the South, Traditionalist Worker Party, Vanguard America and the National Socialist Movement, all deemed hate groups by SPLC — have been the subject of ridicule by members of the so-called "alt-right," a term used to describe those who subscribe to a white nationalist, often anti-Semitic ideology promoted largely through social websites. They believe some of the white nationalists' symbols and tactics that offend the general public are hurting the overall cause.

"Today’s #WhiteLivesMatter protest was cringe," tweeted Nathan Damigo, founder of alt-right white nationalist group Identity Evropa. "Self indulgent extremism is pure anti-propaganda. It’s unmarketable and a serious dead end."

"This is what the infighting is about," said Marilyn Mayo, senior research fellow at ADL's Center on Extremism. "It's about the people on one side who embrace National Socialism, who embrace the Klan, who embrace symbols of extremism, and those on the other side who really want to show a sort of suit-and-tie or khaki-and-polo-shirt version of the extremist movement."

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Damigo's sentiments were echoed by other leaders in the white nationalist alt-right movement seeking to appeal more to the masses — people who would be turned off by the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi imagery — and trying to target a more sophisticated demographic.

The Traditionalist Worker Party fired back on Twitter, referring to Damigo as "an insecure, preening, back-stabbing weasel" who is overly concerned with his group's haircuts. Damigo's Twitter display name is "Fashy Haircut," a reference to the the side-fade male hairstyle associated with Nazi Germany and now popular among members of the alt-right.

Both Damigo and Nicholas Fuentes, another prominent alt-right figure, equated white nationalists covering their faces with helmets and masks and carrying shields to rallies with "LARPers," an online acronym for live-action, role-playing now commonly being used as an insult within white nationalism.

"If you can't see why the optics of today's TN rally are problematic for our goals, you are not prepared to be a part of a serious movement," Fuentes tweeted Saturday.

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Griffin indicated that some degree of jealousy of Nationalist Front's event — the largest white nationalist gathering since Unite the Right in Charlottesville, according to ADL — may be why members of the alt-right, who were invited to participate but declined, were critical.

"I think a lot of them were just mad we had a big demonstration and they weren’t a part of it," he said.

Others outside the movement have criticized participants in the White Lives matter rally for not following through with plans they announced to hold a second event that afternoon in Murfreesboro, where an estimated 800 to 1,000 counterprotesters were awaiting their arrival, along with hundreds of law enforcement officers.

Griffin has said Shelbyville — and the planned rally in Murfreesboro — were partially being held to prove white nationalists weren't the ones who instigated violence against counterprotesters in Charlottesville.

Opposing sides were kept separate and no violence erupted during the rally on Saturday, so Mayo said in some ways Griffin and Nationalist Front accomplished their goal. But the event revealed other fissures.

"As you can see in the aftermath, for the movement itself it created more infighting," Mayo said of the rally. "I don’t think it’s a win or a loss (for them), really. It's just a sign of the fact that there's a lot of infighting and tension within the movement from different strands." 

As for whether Griffin was himself concerned by the KKK and Nazi insignia at the rally — "not something (he) planned on" — he said he would likely have taken action if the Klan members were wearing robes or if someone was carrying a swastika flag, which would have looked worse for the group.

But the groups themselves — KKK members and avowed Nazis — are still needed supporters of the white nationalist cause, he indicated.

"I'm not really thrilled about their way of doing things," Griffin said. "At the same time, we're all white nationalists and we're all pro-white, and we can all agree what happened in Antioch was a terrible thing."

Griffin was referring to a fatal shooting at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ last month, the suspect of which is a 25-year-old Sudanese immigrant who came to the United States in 1996.

Griffin isn't deterred by how he may be perceived by the general public or others in white nationalism.

"I expect to get called a racist or a Nazi anyway, so I don’t really give a damn," Griffin said.

Reach Natalie Allison at nallison@tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter at @natalie_allison.