Nazis marched down the sidewalks in Nashville, Tennessee, in the same state where the Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1865 by Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general. 

In the popular film, “Forrest Gump,” actor Tom Hanks played Forrest Gump, a distant relative of Nathan Bedford Forrest. His mother, played by actress Sally Field, gave him the name.

About two dozen neo-Nazis marched through downtown Nashville on Saturday in an event the group billed as a celebration of “the great white South,” according to flyers the group’s leader Christopher Alan Pohlhaus posted to the social media app Telegram, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. They shouted, “Save the white man” and “Deport every Mexican.”

Pohlhaus, a former Marine, who uses the moniker “The Hammer,” heads the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe and led the group in antisemitic and racist chants as they marched through downtown Nashville. I

Dressed in matching red shirts, black pants, and black face— coverings to conceal their identities, members of the Blood Tribe and associated neo-Nazi groups brandished black-and-white swastika flags. 

The marchers listened to Pohlhaus and another speaker talk about Tennessee historical figures and migrants, using antisemitic dog whistles outside the state Capitol, according to a video Pohlhaus posted to Telegram.

Since 2023, Pohlhaus has led the swastika-toting group in at least five other rallies: in Wadsworth, Ohio, on March 11, 2023; in Columbus, Ohio, on April 29, 2023; in Toledo, Ohio, on July 15, 2023; in Orlando, Florida, on Sept. 2, 2023; and, in Madison, Wisconsin, on Nov. 18, 2023, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

No arrests were reported, and the group left in a U-Haul box truck that ultimately exited greater Nashville, police said.

Blood Tribe also focuses on “hypermasculinity,” according to the Anti-Defamation League, and has targeted LGBTQ groups in previous public demonstrations, referring to LGBTQ groups as “pedophiles.”