Republican-dominated committee in Tennessee fails to pass bill against neo-Nazis
Proposal pushed by sole Democratic member called on police, courts to treat white nationalists like terrorists
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
A Republican-dominated committee of the House of Representatives in the southern US state of Tennessee has declined to pass a bill denouncing white nationalism and neo-Nazism.
The bill, submitted by Nashville Democrat John Ray Clemmons, called on law-enforcement agencies to regard and pursue white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups as they do terrorist organizations. The proposal was “met with silence” by the four Republican committee members, after its sole Democratic member, Darren Jernigan, presented it, the Tennessean reported Wednesday.
The resolution was filed in the Tennessee General Assembly in the wake of the August “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which one person was killed and at least 26 were injured when a car plowed into counterprotesters.
It stated that white nationalist and neo-Nazi ideology “remain very real threats to social and racial progress.”
"I'm in utter disbelief at what just happened," said the resolution's sponsor, Rep. John Ray Clemmons. "I didn't think there was anything controversial about this resolution." https://t.co/PDZE1LkSfx
— Tennessean (@Tennessean) March 14, 2018
The bill came up on the Tennessee House subcommittee’s schedule just days after a white nationalist group, whose members took part in the Charlottesville rally, held a flash mob protest in Nashville where they held up a large banner asserting their “European roots.”
In October, in the biggest gathering of white supremacists since Charlottesville, some 100 white supremacists and neo-Nazis gathered in Tennessee’s Shelbyville for a “White Lives Matter” rally. Hundreds of counterprotesters also turned out.
Clemmons said after the committee meeting that he was “in utter disbelief at what just happened.”
He added, “I didn’t think there was anything controversial about this resolution.”
On the possibility of trying a second time to have his resolution passed, he said, “…if I can’t even get a second in a subcommittee, it evidences this Republican supermajority’s refusal to denounce these hate organizations, for what reason I cannot begin to imagine.”
A supermajority is more than a simple majority of half.
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