White supremacist group Patriot Front held a march in downtown Nashville, Tennessee over the weekend, wearing the group’s signature masks and waving Confederate flags.
Members of the group arrived in Nashville via a U-Haul truck, a tactic that previously led to dozens of the group’s members being charged for attempting to cause a riot in Idaho.
Patriot Front was founded in 2017 after the “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The group believes that the U.S. belongs to “the founding stock,” or white people part of “the European diaspora.”
However, Patriot Front’s public marches, where members don’t show their faces, have led to numerous accusations the organization is nothing more than an entrapment effort by the government.
On Saturday, Patriot Front members marched to the Tennessee State Capitol and vandalized one of the city’s bridges with their logo. Group members held Confederate, American, and upside-down American flags and signs that said “Reclaim America.”
According to a video posted on TikTok, Patriot Front arrived in Nashville via a U-Haul. In it, group members are seen holding megaphones and descending from the moving truck. All the members are wearing masks, khaki pants, and navy shirts—outfits Patriot Front members have worn during other group demonstrations.
As shown in the video, Patriot Front also gave out flyers to those nearby that said the organization “believes in the ethnic interest of Americans as those descendant from the original European settlers of this land.”
@d33ray60 Once again in Nashville. Why hide your face? Be a man about it. Not my video. #nashville #downtownnashville #trending ♬ original sound – D33Ray
The video was posted by TikTok user @d33ray60, who said the video was not his own.
Arriving via U-Haul seems to be a Patriot Front tactic: In 2022, more than 30 Patriot Front members were arrested after they were found in a U-Haul on their way to protest an Idaho Pride parade.
A tipster told police that he’d seen a “little army” descending out of the back of a van.
According to U-Haul’s policies, those who have reserved U-Hauls may not “congregate with others” inside the cargo compartment of the vehicle and the company strongly advises against allowing passengers to ride within the cargo compartment because doing so is “very dangerous.”
In response to Patriot Front using U-Hauls—again—for transport, some online called out the brand.
“Hi @uhaul. The Patriot Front are violating your well-known rule that people cannot be transported in your moving vans,” former Department of Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem tweeted. “Also, they are Nazis.”
While some members were convicted on charges in Idaho, its leader, Thomas Rousseau, had the charges dismissed. No arrests have been reported since the Nashville march.
In a statement to the Daily Dot, a U-Haul spokesperson told the Daily Dot that the Patriot Front violated their U-Haul rental agreement by allowing passengers to ride in the cargo compartment of their rental.
They also said U-Haul rents to all individuals, regardless of their political affiliations or personal views.
“We rent moving equipment to individuals – not groups, organizations, etc.,” the spokesperson said. “We do not ask customers about their personal views, political affiliations, religious beliefs, voting history, income level, educational background, race, gender, or any other private information that is none of our business.”
This post has been updated with comment from U-Haul.
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