White House, Ohio governor condemn neo-Nazi rally in downtown Columbus

Around a dozen masked individuals marched in downtown Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday carrying Nazi flags and hurling antisemitic and racist rhetoric, earning condemnation from a broad range of officials including the White House and the state’s Republican governor.

The display came only a week after another neo-Nazi gathering in Michigan outside a community theater production of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” 

The marches exacerbated fears among Jewish groups and others that the reelection of President Donald Trump may trigger an increase in white supremacist activity.

“I’m sorry the President-elect has emboldened these creeps,” tweeted Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin, a Democrat. “This community rejects their pathetic efforts to promote fear and hate.”

A White House spokesperson condemned the march Monday morning as a “sickening display” and said President Joe Biden “abhors the hateful poison of Nazism, antisemitism, and racism.”

“We will not tolerate hate in Ohio,” the state’s governor, Mike DeWine, said in a statement published on social media. “Neo-Nazis — their faces hidden behind red masks — roamed streets in Columbus today, carrying Nazi flags and spewing vile and racist speech against people of color and Jews.”

Referring to what he said were reports that the group was “also espousing white power sentiments,” DeWine continued, “There is no place in this State for hate, bigotry, antisemitism, or violence, and we must denounce it wherever we see it.”

Some members of the group were armed, and at least one member sprayed pepper spray at spectators, according to the Columbus Dispatch. Police detained several people on the scene in response to reports of a physical altercation but later told reporters they “determined that an assault did not take place and all of the individuals were released.” Police had separately told the Columbus Jewish News that physical altercations “broke out, stopped and then broke out again.”

National Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee condemned the march, with AJC regional director Lee Shapiro calling it “another sad example of the bigotry that we have witnessed across the country.” The Columbus Jewish federation and Jewish Community Relations Council also condemned the march, telling the Jewish News they were “disgusted by the reprehensible display of hate.”

The rally was also condemned by the city’s Democratic mayor and by its Democratic city attorney, Zach Klein.

“Columbus embraces diversity of opinions, religions, backgrounds and everything that makes us special, but we will never embrace hate. Take your flags and the masks you hide behind and  go home and never come back. Your hate isn’t welcome in our city,” Klein said in a statement. “I stand with our Jewish friends and all those who continue to be targeted by bias and hate. I’ll always have your back.”

Also over the weekend, hundreds of people in a Philadelphia suburb turned up outside a public library to protest a Nazi flag that had been flown briefly outside a private residence in Whitpain Township. Following media attention, the homeowners replaced the swastika flag with an American flag, according to CBS News. 

A similar, though much smaller, rally had taken place in the state capital of Harrisburg, in August, following a neo-Nazi demonstration there.

“The thing that scared me about this is that someone was willing, in their neighborhood, to put out a Nazi flag because that says something about them,” Lynne Krause, president of the newly formed non-denominational synagogue Darchei Noam in nearby Ambler, told CBS about the Whitpain Nazi flag. “They felt so at comfort to let people know, ‘This is what I believe.’ … White supremacy, Nazi stuff, it’s on the rise, and I think it’s unfortunate.”