A Nashville store known for displaying hateful anti-LGBTQ signage has gone a step further by hosting white nationalist fight clubs in a private gym above the store, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported Thursday.
Lewis Country Store has provided the gym at least three times in the past month for white nationalist groups “to network and train for hand-to-hand combat,” according to an investigation by Hatewatch, SPLC’s monitoring arm. The fight clubs were discovered through right-wing social media.
“A message posted May 21 on a Telegram channel run by Tennessee Active Club, a white nationalist hate group, led Hatewatch to photographs of the property on a real estate listing website,” the SPLC stated. “Those images were matched to a propaganda video and photographs the group posted online.”
That evidence showed that the gym above Lewis Country Store was used at least three times in 2023, all on Sundays: on April 2, May 7 and May 21, Hatewatch found. The Lewis Country Store is closed on Sunday.
Hatewatch was not well-received when it reached out to store owner Brad Lewis,
“’You and the SPLC can go f--k yourselves,’ Lewis said, Hatewatch reported. ‘What I do with my life and my business is none of your f--king meddling business.’
Later the Lewis Country Store posted a photograph of the group giving the Hitler salute outside Lewis Country Store with ‘F--k the SPLC!!!’ as the caption.”
The Lewis Store is “known locally for displaying hateful anti-LBGTQ+ and misogynistic signage,” SPLC reported. And “it now appears to be an important hub in the local white nationalist movement.”
SPLC reports that the Tennessee Active Club “is part of a national network of white power hate groups whose clubs train in mixed martial arts to fight against what they perceive as an anti-white system. The group celebrates violence and hypermasculinity, arguing that physical strength will position them to stand up to the forces they believe weaken America and European nations, including Islam, Judaism and racial diversity.”
The leader of the Tennessee Active Club is Sean Kauffman, who has used its brand “to mobilize protests against LGBTQ+-inclusive events." At a drag show in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in November 2022, Kauffmann and members of his group screamed slurs and acted aggressively toward participants before appearing on video joining a prayer circle.
Kauffmann reportedly has been around the white nationalist movement for years and started a neo-Nazi group called Panzer Strike Force in Tucson, Arizona.
“After Lewis responded to Hatewatch’s request for comment, the Lewis Country Store posted an undated photograph of Kauffman, Robert Bray, two unidentified individuals and six others whose faces are obscured giving a Hitler salute outside the store," SPLC reported.
Bray is linked to the Philadelphia Proud Boys, as reported by Raw Story.
