The White House on Monday condemned a march of neo-Nazis in Columbus, Ohio, over the weekend, saying it was “hostile to everything the United States stands for”.
Joe Biden “abhors the hateful poison of Nazism, antisemitism, and racism – which are hostile to everything the United States stands for, including protecting the dignity of all our citizens and the freedom to worship”, Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for the president, said in a statement sent to several news outlets on Monday. “Hate directed against any of us is a threat to every single one of us.”
Biden’s comments came after a small group of masked people dressed in all black marched through Columbus’s Short North neighborhood. Video aired by the local CBS affiliate WBNS showed about 10 people parading through the streets, some of whom were carrying flags with swastikas on them. The group was reportedly yelling racial slurs at people on the street and shouting about Jewish people and white power, the Columbus Dispatch reported, citing police dispatchers.
Local leaders and Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Republican governor, condemned the march. “We will not tolerate hate in Ohio,” he said in a statement. “There is no place in this state for hate bigotry, antisemitism, or violence, and we must denounce it wherever we see it.
Oren Segal, vice-president of the Anti-Defamation League’s center on extremism, told the New York Times that a St Louis-based group called Hate Club had claimed responsibility for the event.
The episode in Columbus comes about a week after demonstrators gathered outside a community theater production of The Diary of Anne Frank in Howell, Michigan, holding flags with Nazi and white supremacist symbols.
Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime systematically murdered 6 million Jewish people amid the second world war during the Holocaust. Other groups targeted by Hitler before his defeat and suicide included people who were homosexual and living with disabilities.
