Neo-Nazis in Tennessee continue to exploit their relationship with Franklin mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson, using their newfound notoriety to recruit followers and convey threats toward local journalists and progressive politicians.
A new video featuring a 20-minute conversation between neo-Nazi and Tennessee Active Club leader Sean Kauffmann and Valerie Baldes, an aide to Franklin mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson, provides a platform for Kauffmann to openly promote Nazism while spreading hate against Jews and LGBTQ people. During the interview, Kauffmann described anti-fascists as “the foot soldiers of the Judeo-capitalists” while equating LGBTQ people with pedophilia.
The video, which was produced by a consortium of white supremacist groups, was released late Wednesday, on the eve of the final day of early voting for Franklin’s mayoral and board of aldermen election. The official election day is scheduled for Oct. 24.
Hanson currently serves as an at-large alderman on the city’s governing board, and is challenging incumbent Ken Moore for mayor. Moore has served as mayor since 2011.
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The video, posted Wednesday on social media platform Telegram, is the latest in a string of incidents injecting the neo-Nazi group into the civic affairs of Franklin — a small, affluent city on the outskirts of Nashville — during the final weeks of the city’s mayoral campaign.
Earlier this month, about a dozen white supremacists showed up at a candidate forum — at Hanson’s invitation, according to one associate — at Franklin’s city hall.
Hanson then compounded the controversy surrounding her association with the neo-Nazis by issuing a press release that included large blocks of quotes from the Tennessee Active Club’s Telegram channel. Hanson has continuously refused to denounce her neo-Nazi supporters.
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Baldes opened her interview with Kauffmann by stating, “This isn’t about me condoning anything or denouncing anyone or anything. This is about information, and this is how reporting is done. You go directly to the source and you ask them what’s going on.”
Responding to Baldes’ question about why people call him and his group Nazis, Kauffmann said, “This one is tough, you know, because swastikas and stuff are pretty much the reason.”
He went on to say, “If loving my country and loving my culture and my southern heritage and my ethnic background makes me quote-unquote ‘white supremacist’ or ‘Nazi,’ then so be it.”
Baldes did not renounce Nazism during the interview.
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“And I’ve been called these things as well,” Baldes told Kauffmann. “Just because I’m helping with the political campaign — these people are just against everything. They come out and they call you names just to discredit you, and they don’t mean anything. So, if they’re going to call me names like nationalist, fascist or Nazi — and it’s because I love my country and I’m a patriot — so be it.”
The video shows Kauffmann and Baldes seated in armchairs, with a crookedly hung painting and a small table behind them. Earlier in the day, the same white supremacist Telegram channel that released the interview video also posted a photo of Kauffmann posing with Hanson, the mayoral candidate, in the same setting.
The Telegram message described the photo as a “teaser.”
On Tuesday, the Telegram channel put out a propaganda video that interspersed images of Democratic state lawmakers Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson with footage of Tennessee Active Club members training in mixed martial arts, and a burning a flag celebrating Black, brown, Asian and indigenous people of color and a collection of Black Lives Matter signs.
The steady stream of videos, online threats and taunts, distributed through multiple white supremacist Telegram channels within a span of days appears to be intended to create a sense of anxiety among voters and residents in Franklin.
In recent weeks, a white supremacist associate of the Tennessee Active Club has posted threats against journalists who produced critical coverage of Hanson’s campaign, including one warning about “the Day of the Rope” — a reference to a 1978 novel written by the late white supremacist leader William Pierce.
The associate, Brad Lewis, also issued a Telegram message purporting to show the home of a specific journalist. An anonymous user in the Tennessee Active Club’s Telegram chat wrote in response: “Who is this person? Where can I find them so I can beat the s--- out of them? So they know, I am in fact active and lurking.”
The white supremacist Telegram channel that distributed the Kauffmann interview video and Tennessee Active Club propaganda video has in the past issued a statement promising to “make it dangerous for the reporter to report freely.”
During his interview with Baldes, Kauffmann discussed a volatile confrontation in January between his group and pro-LGBTQ activists outside of a drag show in Cookeville, Tenn., a small city about 75 miles east of Nashville.
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He told Baldes that the group mistakenly brought a swastika flag — a symbol of Nazism — while intending to show up with a Confederate battle flag. Ultimately, he said, they decided to just unfurl the swastika flag because “the point of us being there was essentially to intimidate them.”
When asked whom Kauffman meant by “they,” he replied, “The homosexuals.”
As previously reported by Raw Story, the Cookeville police executed a traffic stop on Kauffmann’s vehicle as he was leaving the rally.
Robert Bray, a fellow white supremacist who was riding in the passenger seat, admitted to throwing a stink bomb at left-wing counter-protesters. One of the officers noted a pistol strapped to Bray’s hip and asked him if he had been trying to provoke a response from the counter-protesters so he could justify using his firearm.
While claiming that the firearm was only for his own protection, Bray quipped: “Those aren’t people.”
Kauffmann explained to Baldes during the recent interview: “We’re there to be direct opposition to antifa. Anywhere they go, we go. And we train just on the off chance that there potentially we would have to defend ourselves, that we were able to do so, or defend other people.”
Despite informing Kauffmann and his passengers during the traffic stop in Cookeville in January that they could be charged with aggravated assault, the lead officer let them go with a warning.
Kauffmann told Baldes that “the officer in charge” at the drag show in Cookeville asked him what they were doing with a swastika flag. (During the protest, Kauffmann also threw up a Nazi salute, and an associate called for killing Jews and Black people.)
Kauffman recounted to Baldes that he told the officer: “And my biggest point that I can make to you is, if they’re here, we’re coming, and we’ll be here. If you don’t want us to be here, they can’t be here.”
Recounting the conversation with Baldes, Kauffmann claimed that “the police were actually very supportive of what we were about and what we were doing.”
Cookeville police Chief Randy Evans could not immediately be reached for comment. Evans did not respond to previous requests for comment from Raw Story about the department’s handling of the Tennessee Active Club’s presence outside the venue where the drag show was held.
