Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

White Supremacist Infighting Erupts After ‘White Lives Matter’ Rally

White nationalist groups have been fracturing in the days after last weekend’s “White Lives Matter” rally in Tennessee — disagreeing over preferred tactics and image.

According to a new post by Marilyn Mayo of the the Anti-Defamation League, white nationalists are divided into two camps when it comes to this particular dispute: those who promote a more subtle “racist ideology that appeals to conservatives” and the more outspoken white nationalists who “prefer to highlight their racist and anti-Semitic ideology” through dress, language and clear Nazi imagry.

This difference came to a head in the wake of last weekend’s White Lives Matter rally in Tennessee, which drew around 200 people. One of the main organizers was Matthew Heimbach, who falls into the more blatantly white supremacist camp. According to the ADL, a number of the attendees in Tennessee “openly displayed neo-Nazi symbols such as SS bolts and Klan patches” and gave Nazi salutes.

The rally failed to attract either the numbers or media attention of this summer’s Unite the Right gathering and was criticized by other white nationalists for both the lackluster showing as well as Nazi messaging.

Contemporary white supremacists on the “alt-right,” including former Identity Evropa head Nathan Damigo write disparagingly of the gathering online. Damigo, whose style and ideology is influenced by “alt-right” figurehead Richard Spencer, sought to cast the rally as fringe “self-indulgent extremists.”

“Not my scene,” Spencer wrote simply. “Also, No Lives Matter!”

Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.