The group left in a U-Haul box truck that was driven out of the county, police said, indicating the demonstrators were outsiders.
A small group of neo-Nazis marched in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday, drawing a few vocal opponents and ultimately leaving following a “challenge,” police said.
The demonstrators, all men, wore red, long-sleeve T-shirts and black pants, and some carried black Nazi flags, according to verified social media video from the scene.
“Neo-Nazi demonstrators … carried flags with swastikas, walked around the Capitol and parts of downtown Saturday afternoon,” Nashville police said in a statement.
No arrests were reported, and the group left in a U-Haul box truck that ultimately exited greater Nashville, police said, indicating the demonstrators may have been from out of town.
“Some persons on Broadway challenged the group, most of whom wore face coverings,” the department said. “The group headed to a U-Haul box truck, got in, and departed Davidson County.”
I used to be a very strong proponent of freedom of speech, but after seeing what that has been used for and the damage it has done I fully agree that limits are necessary.
That said I’m approaching the problem from a different angle. I think you absolutely have a right to say whatever you want, but there’s an equivalent right that other people don’t have to be subjected to what you have to say. To further expand on that idea people must be informed about the content of what you’re saying. You’re perfectly within your right for instance to insist that the world is flat, but before talking about that in public people need to be informed that you’re about to go off on a fringe theory that has literal centuries of evidence that runs counter to it and that if they don’t want to hear it they need to leave now.
In online spaces this problem becomes easier to handle, just apply content warnings, something like community notes, and hide the content by default until people opt into viewing it.
Edit: also we need to reevaluate this whole “corporations are people and have the exact same rights to freedom of speech” thing. I think we should generally be very accepting of a person’s speech, but much more strict about a companies speech, especially commercial speech.