One of the white-supremacist groups behind the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia has been banned from hosting armed protests in the city.
The League of the South, a Confederacy-worshipping hate group, is not welcome back in Charlottesville, after they agreed to a deal with the city on Monday, the Southern Poverty Law Center first reported. Charlottesville's Cavalier Daily reported Wednesday that the agreement would ban any combination of two or more League members who attended a Charlottesville protest with weapons.
The deal stems from a lawsuit by Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection accusing the League and other Unite the Right participants of engaging in violent protests that escalated until a man connected with white-supremacist groups rammed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a 32-year-old woman.
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Now the League is barred from demonstrating in the city again, if armed with any weapons including the shields or makeshift spears they carry. And the ongoing lawsuit means more white-supremacist groups might sign similar deals.
The League of the South is a pro-Confederate group with a paramilitary wing and leaders with far-reaching extremist ties. Michael Tubbs, chairman of the group’s Florida chapter, pleaded guilty in 1991 to armed robbery of machine guns from a U.S. Army base while he was a soldier in the 1980s. Victims told investigators that Tubbs and his co-conspirators planned to give the weapons to the Ku Klux Klan, and that stealing weapons “was the only way that the organization could survive.”
A raid on Tubbs’ home prior to his 1991 arrest revealed explosives, guns, VHS tapes of Hitler, racist literature, and his handwritten notes detailing what appeared to be planned attacks on Jewish- and African-American-owned businesses and news outlets.
Tubbs and Spencer Borum, the League’s Kentucky chairman, are named extensively in the Georgetown lawsuit, which details how white-supremacist groups allegedly coordinated attacks on counter-protesters.
“Later-arriving groups simply bulldozed anyone who slowed down their entry,” the suit describes.
“Defendant League of the South epitomized this technique by plowing through a line of counter-protestors. Defendant Spencer Borum, Chairman of the League’s Kentucky chapter, triggered a violent melee by charging at counter-protestors with his flagpole. Nearly a dozen League members rushed in from behind, ramming into the crowd with their matching shields held in formation.”
The neo-Nazi group the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP) followed the League into the crowd, according to the lawsuit, which includes quotes from the party’s then-spokesman Matthew Parrott praising the League attack.
“With a full-throated rebel yell, the League broke through the wall of degenerates,” Parrott told the Los Angeles Times after the Unite the Right rally. The quotes are included in the lawsuit. “Michael Tubbs, an especially imposing League organizer[,] towered over and pushed through the antifa like a Tyrannosaurus.”
(Parrott is no longer with the TWP. Earlier this month, he told The Daily Beast the TWP was “no more” and that he had quit after his wife had an affair with the TWP’s leader, who is also married to Parrott’s stepdaughter.)
The lawsuit describes the TWP allegedly working with the League to push down counter-protesters with with shields.
“Moments later, League members shoved a counter-protestor to the pavement, screamed ‘Leave!’ and ‘Get the fuck out of here!,’ spat in her face, and pepper-sprayed her atpoint-blank range,” the suit alleges.
At another point, Tubbs instructed his followers to use flagpoles like javelins against counter-protesters, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit also seeks to bar other Unite the Right participants including the TWP, Vanguard America, and the National Socialist Movement from hosting future demonstrations in Charlottesville. Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler and anti-fascist group Redneck Revolt are also named in the suit, although only the League has signed an agreement to steer clear of the city.
