A neo-Nazi group has gone on an interstate recruiting tour, targeting LBTQ-friendly events in Ohio, and is threatening to hold a rally in Florida this month. But it’s in Maine, where the group’s leader is trying to build a headquarters, that the organization is causing the most trouble.
The neo-Nazi group “Blood Tribe” has spent 2023 seeking attention from other members of the white supremacist movement. Wearing bright red shirts and black ski masks, the group has agitated at anti-LGBT rallies, and encouraged other far-right groups to more fully embrace Nazi symbols and militant tactics. The group’s next anticipated stunt is a swastika flag march at an unannounced location and date in Florida this month, alongside another white supremacist group that previously harassed residents of Jacksonville, a city still reeling from a different white supremacist’s mass shooting at a Dollar General in August.
Despite their far-flung recruiting efforts, it’s in Maine that Blood Tribe and its leader Christopher Pohlhaus are trying to establish themselves. In the sparsely populated town of Springfield, Blood Tribe is buying up land, trying to establish a white supremacist hub—and getting its supporters banned from Airbnb in the process.
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“We have a problem with Nazis coming to set up a military-style camp,” Maine State Sen. Joe Baldacci told The Daily Beast of Mainers’ attitude toward the neo-Nazi encampment.
Baldacci is proposing legislation that would prohibit groups from setting up paramilitary training facilities in Maine. Already, 25 states have similar laws on the books, Baldacci said, pointing to a statute in Vermont that might prevent a group like Blood Tribe from setting up shop.
Reached by phone, Pohlhaus declined to comment immediately. He recently told Maine’s WVII that the proposed legislation is “nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with me and nothing to do with what I'm doing. And it’s not going to stop me at all."
Pohlhaus’s project in Maine is a 120-acre site where he plans to construct a white supremacist camp site, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported in July. In social media statements, Pohlhaus has suggested that locals accept his presence there, and that “Maine’s a white state.”
On the contrary, residents have taken issue with Pohlhaus’ activities in their rural area north of Bangor. Complaints from members of a local gym led to the SPLC identifying Blood Tribe’s camp site. Pohlhaus was banned from the Planet Fitness in July over “multiple member complaints” about his racist T-shirts and swastika tattoos, journalist Crash Berry first reported.
Baldacci said he’s also received complaints from residents, including an email from a Springfield-area official stating that “we need help.”
A local woman who attempted to rehabilitate Pohlhaus’ image was also kicked off Airbnb this week, with users on the r/Maine subreddit filing complaints about her bed and breakfast. Kathie Greear, who did not return requests for comment, has hosted Pohlhaus in the past. Last October, Greear used her B&B’s Facebook page to share a picture of Pohlhaus pressing apple cider. The Airbnb ban came after it was revealed that Pohlhaus had stayed and worked at Greear’s Loon’s Nest Lodge while guests were present, in violation of Airbnb policies, the Bangor Daily News reported.
Greear also came to Pohlhaus’s aid in a letter to the editor of the Lincoln News last month.
“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,” Greear wrote. “Let me share a couple of facts. Chris was thrown out of Planet Fitness because his tattoo of a swastika on his chest was showing through his white tee shirt while working out. In my world I would have spoken with Chris and asked him to either change his shirt or leave and when he returned we should not be able to see that symbol that causes such upset to other patrons.
“Did you know that the swastika was actually used way before Hitler used it? Currently all over the world with what I would expect a different meaning than what we associate it with. Here in this country it was first used by the Native Americans.”
Pohlhaus is a neo-Nazi and most people associate the swastika with Nazis.
Blood Tribe is currently advertising what it claims will be the biggest swastika march since the Third Reich, sometime in Florida this month. Although the group has not announced the date, Pohlhaus indicated to The Daily Beast that he would be traveling for the event on Sept. 6.
The event is advertised as a collaboration with a different white supremacist group with a reputation for harassing Jewish people in Florida.
Provocative group rallies are part of an effort to consolidate a white supremacist movement that has been largely decentralized since the disastrous “Unite The Right” rally in 2017, said Hannah Gais, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“The movement hasn’t really recovered from that,” Gais told The Daily Beast. She noted that many current groups rely on tactics like vandalism, flier distribution, and small (but extensively photographed) rallies to give off the impression of a thriving movement.
“It’s really about churning out material, getting attention, getting people to think they’re more active and bigger than they are,” she said.
Blood Tribe has used recent high-profile hate rallies to recruit prospective neo-Nazis across the country. In March, the group joined with other far-right organizations to hold an anti-drag rally in Wadsworth, Ohio, where Blood Tribe members shouted “Sieg Heil!” and threw Nazi salutes at people entering the all-ages drag event.
Though the anti-LGBT crowd included less-explicitly neo-Nazi groups like the Proud Boys, Blood Tribe has pushed fellow travelers to adopt a “more radical nationalism,” occasionally feuding with chapters of the Proud Boys over outward adoption of Nazi symbols.
Soon after collaborating with Blood Tribe in Wadsworth, some members of another white supremacist group did adopt newly militant tactics. In a podcast episode after the event, Pohlhaus boasted of convincing members of the group “White Lives Matter Ohio” (WLM Ohio) to throw Nazi salutes at the event. Shortly after that, WLM Ohio’s Telegram (which rarely mentioned neo-Nazi ideology by name, and even the previous year called neo-Nazis “LARPers who stand at the gateway of nationalism like bridge trolls to keep sane men from crossing over,”) began posting more openly in support of the fascist ideology.
Two weeks after the Wadsworth rally, a member of WLM Ohio, who’d been pictured standing alongside Blood Tribe members, was arrested for throwing a homemade explosive at an LGBT-friendly church that was planning to host a drag event. The man, 20-year-old Aimenn Penny, admitted to investigators that he’d attempted to burn down the church to “protect children and stop the drag show event,” according to an FBI affidavit, which also noted that he expressed enthusiasm for a civil war between races in the U.S.
Pohlhaus has described the event as evidence that his group can expect little pushback from police, reasoning that police will keep counter-protesters away.
“The cops being there definitely gives you the leeway to be as insufferable and obnoxious as possible. I can say whatever to encourage the most emotional response,” Pohlhaus said. “There was an ambulance that had to show up twice” because a woman on the opposing side of the demonstration had an anxiety attack.
In Maine, however, Pohlhaus’s group is the unwelcome party, with locals brainstorming ways to prevent more Nazis from showing up in the woods. Some previously noted that Blood Tribe does not yet have the required permits for building cabins and burning brush on the Springfield property.
Baldacci, the state senator promoting an anti-paramilitary law, noted that the building code issue is unlikely to pose much of a barrier to the encampment. “If he qualified for a building permit like everyone else,” he said, “they [the town] couldn’t deny it just because he’s a Nazi.”
But Maine has dealt with white supremacists in the past.
“Maine had a long history with the KKK,” said Baldacci, a Catholic whose family remembers the group’s intimidation tactics. “My father remembered the KKK burning crosses near the Catholic church. Unfortunately this cycle of hate has existed before.”
