Republicans Kill Tennessee Resolution Condemning Neo-Nazis

NASHVILLE, TN -- A resolution denouncing neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups died a quick and quiet death in a Tennessee House subcommittee Wednesday as Republicans refused to give a hearing to the condemnation.

Rep. John Ray Clemmons, a Nashville Democrat, stood before the House State Government Subcommittee preparing to present House Joint Resolution 583 Wednesday afternoon and fellow Nashville Democrat Rep. Darren Jernigan made a motion to hear the proposal, but no second from any of the committee's four Republican members was forthcoming, as the GOP majority sat in silence. Eventually, subcommittee chairman Rep. Bill Sanderson directed Clemmons to present another, unrelated bill to the panel, essentially killing the condemnation resolution.

In part, the resolution declares "we strongly denounce and oppose the totalitarian impulses, violent terrorism, xenophobic biases, and bigoted ideologies that are promoted by white nationalists and neo-Nazis" and it urges - but does not require - law enforcement "to recognize these white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups as terrorist organizations and to pursue the criminal elements of these domestic terrorist organizations in the same manner and with the same fervor used to protect the United States from other manifestations of terrorism."

Clemmons filed the resolution in the days after the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. during which a counter-protester was killed.

In an interview with The Tennessean after his abortive appearance before the subcommittee, Clemmons was flabbergasted, saying he was "in utter disbelief."

"I would love to try to pass a resolution denouncing white nationalists and neo-Nazis, but 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," he told the paper.

Last year, the Tennessee House "accidentally" honored slave trader, early Ku Klax Klan leader and Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest after a Republican representative put language honoring him in an ostensibly non-controversial resolution about Tennessee history. The sponsor of that resolution was castigated on the House floor for trickery by members of the House Black Caucus, with top Republicans joining in the condemnation.

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