Johnson City, TN: Reportback from Mobilization Against League of the South, Round 1

Report from Appalachian antifascists about their recent mobilization against League of the South in Johnson City, Tennessee.

On September 15^th antifascists from Appalachia mobilized in Johnson City, TN to counter the League of the South who had announced plans to harass the first ever TriPride festival. League of the South we will remind you, is a white supremacist group based in Alabama that played a major role in the violence in Charlottesville and has organized several other hate rallies since then.

It turns out they don’t have much of a base of support in East Tennessee as they were only able to mobilize an underwhelming six people, all of whom drove in from the Knoxville area. Upon finding the six sad nazis stuck in a protest pen along the parade route, about 40 antifascists lined up between them and the parade with several large banners in order to create a visual barrier so that Pride attendees didn’t have to deal with them, leaving the nazis to yell at our backs aimlessly for a couple hours. It seems that the Knoxville nazis’ new winning strategy is to mimic annoying street preachers and yell endlessly about the bible, morality, and men wearing skirts. Keep it up guys!

While holding banners we enjoyed the parade and handed out hundreds of flyers publicizing the counter-protest against the LoS’s next hate rally in nearby Elizabethton, TN on September 29^th. Meanwhile Pride attendees ruthlessly trolled and heckled the nazis while the nazis completely lost their shit multiple times from being in the presence of so much gay. Talk about snowflakes.

“It turns out they don’t have much of a base of support in East Tennessee as they were only able to mobilize an underwhelming six people.”

After the parade ended, the nazis left their protest pen and went to a nearby street corner where they proceeded to harass people coming and going from the festival. We again mobilized to isolate them with our banners but police intervened so we were only able block off one side of them. After a standoff of several minutes, Tom Pierce, who seems to have been calling the shots that day, told his nazi flock it was time to head home at which point we escorted them back to their minivan (driven by Craig Spaulding) with about 30 cops in tow.

Overall it was a good day. We kept the nazis isolated, got the word out about the Sept 29^th counter-protests in Elizabethton, and were well received by other pride attendees. While we have our critiques of the very corporate and cop friendly Pride leadership, we know this event was still important to the thousands of people who came out from surrounding small towns and rural areas where there is little to no queer community to speak of. We were happy to do our part in neutralizing the threats from violent white supremacists.

These white supremacist groups are fixated on Appalachia because they believe these mountains are fertile ground for their genocidal ideology. Time and again we have proven them wrong. From Pikeville, to Knoxville, Johnson City we have out-organized them and outnumbered them every time, while their numbers continue to dwindle as they fail to gain new recruits.

But we aren’t quite through with them yet. Join us on September 29^th at Sycamore Shoals State Park, in Elizabethton, TN. The League of the South says they will be there at 9am. Lets be there to greet them! For more info, flyers, and background, go here.

For updates follow on Twitter:

Knoxville Radical Alliance @knoxradical

and the Holler Network @hollernetwork