A Maine neo-Nazi is pulling up stakes on his planned white supremacist compound, after pressure from locals resulted in his ban from a local gym, and his friend’s ban from AirBnB.
Christopher Pohlhaus is the founder of the fascist group “Blood Tribe,” which has held small hate rallies harassing minority groups across the country. Alongside those attention-seeking rallies, Pohlhaus has also advertised a property in rural Maine as a future headquarters for his Nazis. But Mainers were none too thrilled about their new neighbors, The Daily Beast reported this year. Now, after local opposition, Pohlhaus has sold the property, the Bangor Daily News first reported on Tuesday.
Pohlhaus did not return a request for comment. But on Telegram on Tuesday night, he blamed the political left for spoiling his plans.
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“We made the decision to sell the 10 acres that was in my name up here,” he wrote. “With the militant leftist doxing the location, it was basically too dangerous to fulfill its purpose to be a safe space for families to make the transition up here. People were coming up there all the time, snooping and getting very brazen, even driving down into the clearing.”
But Maine lawmakers had previously warned that the compound’s residents posed a potential risk to locals. “We have a problem with Nazis coming to set up a military-style camp,” Maine State Sen. Joe Baldacci told The Daily Beast in August, noting that he was proposing a law like one on the books in Vermont, where paramilitary-style training facilities are banned.
And it wasn’t just “militant leftists” who declared Pohlhaus’s crowd persona non grata in Maine. Local businesses also gave him the boot.
A Planet Fitness gym banned Pohlhaus from its facilities this summer, citing “multiple member complaints about the t-shirt you have been wearing and some of your visible tattoos.” Among those tattoos was a large swastika.
One of Pohlhaus’ associates was also banned from listing her property on Airbnb this fall after the company learned that Pohlhaus had stayed and worked at the property while customers were also staying there. The bed-and-breakfast owner came to locals’ attention after she wrote an op-ed in a newspaper defending Pohlhaus’ swastika tattoo and condemning his Planet Fitness ban. “First of all I am not a Nazi sympathizer or supporter but I still thought this country allowed people to have different opinions without being accused or cancelled,” she wrote.
On Telegram, Pohlhaus claimed he had other, larger properties in Maine, and that if he attempted the project again, he would not buy land under his own name. (His purchase of the property under his legal name tipped off the Southern Poverty Law Center to the encampment this summer.)
“You could call it a leftist W [win] I guess, but really, it’s not slowing us down at all in the slightest,” he claimed.
