The brazen appearance of white supremacist groups in Nashville left the city grappling with how to confront hateful speech without violating First Amendment protections.
They first arrived at the beginning of July: dozens of masked white supremacists, shuffling out of U-Hauls, to march through Nashville carrying upside-down American flags.
A week later, members of a separate neo-Nazi group, waving giant black flags with red swastikas, paraded along the city’s famed strip of honky-tonks and celebrity-owned bars. The neo-Nazis poured into the historic Metro courthouse to disrupt a City Council meeting, harassed descendants of Holocaust survivors and yelled racist slurs at young Black children performing on a downtown street.
The appearance of white nationalists on the streets of a major American city laid bare the growing brazenness of the two groups, the Patriot Front and the Goyim Defense League. Their provocations enraged and alarmed civic leaders and residents in Nashville, causing the city to grapple with how to confront the groups without violating free speech protections.
Then it's not a question of free speech, I suppose. I'm not from the US, but I assume that demonstrations have to be registered in your country too. If this is the case, the police can easily crack down, break up these illegal gatherings, impose fines and so on. I am of course aware that there are sympathizers among the police - but they have to abide by the law if they want to keep their jobs. I don't understand why there is any need for a discussion about freedom of expression at all when these demonstrators just disrupt public order and try to intimidate people. That has nothing to do with freedom of speech - sound more like a felony to me.