Tommy Washbush / Freepik
A group of silhouetted demonstrators in front of a red background.
When a group of about 20 neo-Nazis rallied in Madison last month, news of their presence in the city spread on social media, leaving more questions than answers for individuals caught off guard and shocked at the display of swastika flags and Hitler salutes. The march also surprised the Madison police.
Officers weren’t alerted to the Nazi group until “after they started marching on State Street,” Stephanie Fryer, public information officer for the Madison Police Department, tells Isthmus. “This group prefers to show up unannounced, giving communities no time to prepare.” Extra officers were also already working downtown because of the Wisconsin Badgers football game, and an assistant chief came in to help monitor the group. The group left Madison after about two hours.
Police still know little about the Nazi group, which calls itself the Blood Tribe. Fryer says Madison police did not directly communicate with anyone from the group and the department does not know where group members came from or why they chose Madison.
“Based on their actions in Orlando, Watertown, and most recently in Madison, this group does not actively start or initiate physical confrontations. While their rhetoric is alarming and hateful, members are mainly looking for a reaction from others.”
While “the Madison Police Department does not support hateful rhetoric,” she adds, “the department has an obligation to protect First Amendment rights to all.” She recommends that onlookers not engage with the group.
Madison journalists were torn about how to share information about the march: Some shared photos and videos on social media, while the Wisconsin State Journal declined to cover the march to avoid giving attention to the Nazi group.
“The newsroom didn’t see the value of giving this group what it wanted by reporting on their activities or running a photo of the march in the newspaper,” wrote Kelly Lecker, executive editor of the State Journal, noting the paper was working on more in-depth coverage of the topic. “Because of social media,” though, “photos and information were out there anyway, without the much-needed context the media can provide.”
With most group members wearing masks, only the group’s leader, Christopher Pohlhaus, has been identified as a participant in the march. Pohlhaus is reportedly recruiting for future rallies in the upper Midwest.
Members of the Blood Tribe showed up at Pride events in Watertown in July and Hudson in June, according to the Anti-Defamation League. News reports from the Watertown event said some members were armed. The group has also appeared in Ohio and Florida.
Pohlhaus had been trying to build a training compound for Blood Tribe members on land he owned in Maine, but after public pressure sold the land in October. Vice reports that Pohlhaus is an accelerationist, a white supremacist who believes in the use of violence and terror to speed the collapse of society and governments.
Top U.S. law enforcement officials have warned that white supremacists are the nation’s top domestic terror threat. In 2012, a white supremacist gunman killed six at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek.
Earlier this year, an Oshkosh man pled guilty in a plot to attack U.S. power grids in an attempt to further white supremacist ideology. There has also been an uptick in attacks on U.S. electrical infrastructure, including by neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Madison’s city council unanimously passed a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on Dec. 5, partially in response to the November march, encouraging “all Madisonians to recognize the diversity of religions and cultures in our community as a source of richness and strength.”
