The sight of Nazis marching through the Short North neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday, waving Nazi flags and chanting racist slogans, may have been shocking to some people outside Ohio’s capital, but the spectacle shouldn’t have surprised anyone who lives here. Although an expert who monitors white supremacist activity told The New York Times that a St. Louis-area group called the Hate Club had claimed responsibility for the march in Columbus, the idea that Nazis don’t live in Columbus — that they are exclusively bad actors U-Hauling into town on a day trip — is ridiculous.
White supremacy doesn’t just live here. It thrives here.
After all, that expert on white supremacist activity told the Times that the Hate Club may have marched Saturday as part of a rivalry with a similar group right here in Ohio. Could that club’s rival have been the group that in May 2023 crashed a drag brunch fundraiser for a youth center in Columbus’ Franklinton neighborhood?
Andrew Anglin, who founded the Daily Stormer, one of the most-visited white supremacist websites in the world, grew up in a Columbus suburb. He attended Columbus State Community College and Ohio State University. White supremacy doesn’t just live here. It thrives here. I understand why city officials, including the mayor, have to pretend otherwise — it’s hard to entice people and businesses to move to your city if you seem too used to having Nazis in your backyard. But in the words of the great philosopher Marlo Stanfield, “You want it to be one way, but it’s the other way.”
Nazis know where to go in Columbus. They go where they won’t be confronted, or at least where they’re not in any actual danger of physical harm. And while violence is a tenet of Nazism, the strain that occasionally pimples up here in Columbus picks its targets wisely, meaning where they are least likely to FAFO. This is why you saw plenty of video of their self-guided gallery hop through the Short North, but no confrontation. Theirs was a message and display for other white people. And like any other potential solution to racism, the work lies mainly at the feet of other white people. They were barely confronted here because as long you don’t stand in front of the television while the Buckeyes game is on, even terrorists marching can get a pass on the most popular street in town.
To be clear: It’s not that Nazis stand on every corner of my city. Columbus is in Franklin County, one of only a handful of blue islands in an otherwise red state. The issue is that, despite that, white supremacy is still comfortable here. Come see our nationally recognized science center, our burgeoning arts districts, and our seasonal collection of white supremacists.
I’m mindful of the fact that, while Columbus police were called to curtail the Nazis, they didn’t make any arrests and no use of force was applied, unlike in 2020 when Black Lives Matters protesters in the Short North were tear-gassed and beaten. How do police here explain such hypocrisy?
Jason Meade, who was a Franklin County Sheriff’s Department deputy in December 2020, shot and killed Casey Goodson Jr. as he carried his dinner. (A mistrial was declared in February when a jury couldn’t agree if Meade had committed murder.) In August 2022, Officer Ricky Anderson of the Columbus Police Department killed Donovan Lewis, who was reportedly in his bed, unarmed. Anderson, who Columbus officials say “retired in bad standing due to the ongoing criminal and administrative investigations into the death of Donovan Lewis,” stands indicted on charges of murder and reckless homicide.
Come see our nationally recognized science center, our burgeoning arts districts, and our seasonal collection of white supremacists.
When Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said Saturday that city leaders would “monitor the situation in partnership with the Columbus Division of Police to ensure the safety and security of our city,” he must have meant that they will make more public statements but stop short of doing anything to deactivate their terrorism.
Almost everybody condemns Nazis. Even the White House chimed in on the Columbus march to check off the “racism bad” box on their thoughts-and-prayers bingo card. “President Biden abhors the hateful poison of Nazism, anti-semitism, and racism — which are hostile to everything the United States stands for, including protecting the dignity of all our citizens and the freedom to worship,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement Monday morning.
The problem is that condemnation is not concrete action. It is politics. It is what you do when you want to look like you’re doing something. Condemning Nazis is easy and costs nothing. Critiquing our real-time response to tyranny is hard, and changing the culture of a city to make it genuinely feel unwelcome to such ideologies is even harder.
Adam Coy, who was a Columbus police officer in December 2020, murdered Andre Hill, a Black man who was neither armed nor a threat. Coy, who is scheduled to be sentenced next week, murdered Hill as Hill walked out of his garage. But as police and deputies around here kill innocent Black men, Nazis only get monitored.
It’s time for city officials and officials across to country to take a different approach to the prevalence of white supremacists and to stop pretending that they’re all from someplace else. It’s also time for them to stop preaching about what they won’t accept, while watching Nazis parade down the street undeterred.
