On Thursday, Gov. Bill Lee rushed to sign both the anti-drag-show bill and the bill banning gender-affirming care for minors into law. That same day, as a show of gratitude, apparent Nazis hung a sign up on Chestnut Street near Fort Negley. The Tennessee Holler reported that the sign, which clearly featured a swastika, read (trigger warning, here comes some horrible language): “Thank you Bill Lee for tirelessly working to fight trannies and fags. We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Local anti-fascists took down the sign, which according to Reddit, was improperly secured with a bike lock.
I checked the local news, the state website and Gov. Lee’s two Twitter accounts, but I can't find one word renouncing the support and gratitude of Nazis. We know he can move swiftly, because of how swiftly he moved to sign the bills the Nazis are happy about. So, if he wanted to make clear that he is not a Nazi and will not accept the support of Nazis, he could have.
UPDATE — INBOX: NASHVILLE folks tell us they took down the NAZI SIGN hung on the Chestnut St. bridge, which thanked @GovBillLee for “tirelessly working to fight trannies and fags” adding “we must secure a future for white children”. How proud you must be, Guv. pic.twitter.com/s8tXmLuQWG
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) March 2, 2023
This leaves only two conclusions we might come to: Either Gov. Lee is too chickenshit to stand up to Nazis, or he appreciates their support. What else is there? Would he claim he didn’t know that Nazis in the city — the state capital — where he works, and has a whole team that monitors the media for mentions of him, had put up a big sign in support of him? Then he needs to fire his team, because they failed him. Or did he know, but he doesn’t see it as that big a deal? The person who tolerates Nazis — especially, especially, when he’s got local police, state police, the TBI and hell, the National Guard if he wants, at the ready to protect him — is a Nazi.
That’s just ... I mean, it’s like swimming in the deep end of a pool where a kid has just had a massive bout of diarrhea in the shallow end. You can’t say, “Oh, that happened way over there and it doesn’t have anything to do with me.” If you stay in the pool, you’re willingly swimming in it. Bill Lee is willingly swimming in Nazi shit.
All Lee’s talk of protecting children, and Nazis come straight out and make explicit what children this protects — white kids trapped in their parents’ evil beliefs.
Remember when Ben Shapiro hosted Gov. Lee so that Lee could have a safe conversation with a member of the media about how much he loves civility, even as he was ducking mainstream outlets before the election? It was just Shapiro lobbing softball questions at Lee, and Lee taking slow easy swings at them so he could have some nice soundbites. And this is how he repays Shapiro? By staying silent when Shapiro’s enemies embrace him? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not weeping for Shapiro here. The dude has earned every bit of discomfort his beliefs may bring him. But no matter how far-right he is, Nazis still hate him, and it reveals something very ugly — very hilarious, but very ugly — about Lee’s character that he doesn’t think it’s important to make clear that he sides with the dude who has shared his time and audience with Lee over Nazis.
I already understood that Lee isn’t on the side of people like me and my friends. But, good God, he’s not even on the side of people like him and his friends.
I know Lee’s grandparents and their siblings were the same ages as my grandparents and their siblings. My mom’s dad and both his brothers fought in World War II. My dad’s people were older, but his older cousins all fought. Bill Lee must have a whole generation of relatives who fought the Nazis and their allies. But then Nazis show up on his doorstep handing him accolades, and crickets from him? As a Christian, he believes he’s going to see his World War II veteran relatives again. Can you even imagine?! Facing your relatives who fought Nazis and having to tell them that you couldn’t be bothered because the Nazis liked you?
Literally the only comfort I can take in this sad state of affairs is knowing that, if a great Nazi killer who was also a threat to the rest of us were to emerge — like, say, someone constructs a Mecha Stalin and unleashes him on Nashville — the Nazis would find Lee as unwilling to do anything about the threat posed to them as he is to do anything about the threat posed by them.
There is no downside to Lee denouncing Nazis. Far-right extremists in the U.S. have not attacked or even threatened a not-so-far-but-still-pretty-damn-far-right politician in this country. He would be in no danger doing this, and it would have been meaningful to a lot of his constituents. Alas ...
On the other hand, you have the people who took the sign down. Ordinary citizens in this country have been threatened and attacked and tracked down and killed by far-right extremists. There is real, material danger for everyday people who defy Nazis. And the people who took down that sign were doing something that would piss Nazis off. They did it anyway. And then they told people what they’d done.
Everyday people — folks you’ve probably passed in the street or eaten at the same food truck as or stood near in the library and had no reason to notice — responded as soon as they saw the problem, even at their own risk. They did what the governor could not be bothered to do — make the place a tiny bit less hospitable to evil.
And this is a deep and abiding strain of Tennessean — the people willing to stand up to evil, even when evil has the government, many churches and most voters on its side. For as much as people like Bill Lee want to insist that they exemplify what Tennessee is, there have always also been Tennesseans scoffing at the notion.
I’m glad to be on the side of regular people who see evil and react immediately. I’m proud to live in a city, hell, a state, where people are openly denouncing Nazis when the governor won’t. Who ever you are, folks, I raise my glass to you.
