After an antisemitic group brought a hate campaign to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2024, and targeted people believed to be Jewish or people of color, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a young, biracial man assaulted during the event.
The lawsuit names the Goyim Defense League (GDL), its leadership and GDL members as defendants in the civil case. Claims include violation of the federal Ku Klux Klan Act, assault, battery and malicious harassment.
During the GDL’s Nashville tour, which began in mid-July 2024, members marauded through town, waving swastika flags, screaming obscenities and insults in people’s faces and otherwise harassing, abusing and intimidating people they perceived to be of color or Jewish, including a group of Black children, according to the lawsuit. They also littered lawns with antisemitic propaganda, disrupted a public city council meeting and assaulted two young men based on their race and Jewish ancestry.
The GDL is a group of antisemitic white supremacists whose mission, according to statements by its founder, includes “expelling” all Jewish and Black people from the United States. The group’s ideologies overlap significantly with those of other racist, antisemitic groups and neo-Nazi provocateurs who peddle similar “great replacement theory” rhetoric. This racist conspiracy theory falsely asserts there is an active and covert effort to replace white populations in white-majority countries.
GDL members have organized nationwide tours that are roadshows of racist and antisemitic acts of confrontation, provocation, harassment, intimidation and violence; used to ramp up recruitment; make money; and further their mission to drive Jewish people and people of color out of the United States. Dozens of neo-Nazis have attended each of these hate tours.
The tours also aim to spread propaganda, using video of the harassment, intimidation and assaults to further harm their victims through livestreams on the GDL’s online platform and other platforms that cater to extremists.
