Neo-Nazis wave flags in downtown Portsmouth
PORTSMOUTH — A newly active neo-Nazi group held a demonstration last weekend in downtown Portsmouth. The hate group’s presence rattled community members and raised questions.
Members of the People’s Initiative of New England appeared wearing masks in front of the North Church on Saturday, March 9. The group known as PINE is an offshoot of the Nationalist Social Club, or NSC-131, and is considered to be a neo-Nazi group itself, according to representatives from the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Experts say the hate group’s message to secede from New England is rooted in white supremacy.
On its Telegram channel, PINE claimed responsibility for the demonstration and posted photos from its “flag waving” in Portsmouth. The Nationalist Social Club announced the formation of PINE last spring.
“PINE advocates for its five-point plan for New England, a more sanitized version of NSC-131’s agenda that includes seceding from the U.S. to create a ‘white homeland’ and ending all non-white immigration,” the ADL says of the group.
The demonstrators were holding red flags with a green pine tree on the top corner, its so-called “Flag of New England.”
‘Tense and frightening’
Downtown Portsmouth retail store manager Jacquelyn Drury witnessed the group firsthand while working last weekend.
“Their presence was definitely threatening,” she said. “For a Saturday morning downtown, the sidewalks were silent. People were afraid of them. We had customers asking us what was going on, who these people were, and what they wanted. The way they were dressed in cargo pants, sunglasses and masks, the uniformity with which they were gathered, made us feel like it was some sort of militia group. We looked up the flag and found that it was flown for ‘military and security purposes,’ and its design has ‘puritan religious influences,’ which made us think it was NSC-131.”
Drury discussed safety measures with her coworker in the event of any potential danger in Market Square.
“It was a tense and frightening situation. If I hadn’t been on the clock at the time, I would have gone out and held a counterprotest,” she added. “I don’t want Portsmouth to be seen as a safe place for white nationalists. First it was the NSC-131 highway banner, then the Nazi graffiti that hit half of downtown, and now this? It’s unacceptable. We can’t let them intimidate us with their hateful rhetoric.”
Introducing itself last July, PINE published an article on its Substack page, calling itself a “grassroots political effort founded to advocate for and advance the interests of New Englanders.” But its main stated objective is a “peaceful separation from the United States of America,” which the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center say is to create a separate white ethnostate and exclude marginalized groups.
Police in Portsmouth did not interact with the group last weekend, according to city police department Chief Mark Newport.
“We have peaceful protests in the square all the time, so unless we get called or unless there’s an issue, we’re not going to engage with them unless there’s a reason to,” he said. “There was no reason to interact with that group.”
Group trying to ‘normalize’ hateful white supremacy, experts say
Experts with the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center shared that PINE appears to represent the same ideals as NSC-131.
A difference between the two factions so far is the language they use, according to Hannah Gais, senior research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Review of the two groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center has found that PINE attempts to normalize their motives by scrubbing up the language they present.
Gais said the Southern Poverty Law Center considers PINE to be a neo-Nazi organization like its founders in NSC-131.
“They’re trying to basically separate themselves from these charges of being an identity group trying to create a white homeland in New England. But the only way to do that is through ethnic cleansing,” she said of PINE. “It’s called ‘mainstreaming,’ putting a nice gloss on what is essentially an ideology grounded in hate.”
New group is ‘political arm’ of neo-Nazis in region
The Nationalist Social Club has been active in the Seacoast and southern Maine in recent years, protesting a children’s story hour at the Seacoast Repertory Theatre with a derogatory message about drag queens, leading the community to respond with a message of love, leaving recruitment materials on residential properties, and hanging a racist message from a Route 1 overpass in Portsmouth.
The Nationalist Social Club was formed in eastern Massachusetts in December 2019, the Anti-Defamation League reports. The neo-Nazi group views itself as “soldiers fighting a war against a hostile, Jewishcontrolled system that is deliberately plotting the extinction of the white race,” the Anti-Defamation League states.
The Nationalist Social Club announced the formation of PINE last April 20, the birth date of Adolf Hitler, according to Gais.
While the Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked PINE’s activity in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, the Nationalist Social Club has been found to be operating throughout New England.
“What it’s kind of looking like for me is that PINE is now becoming a more independent presence on its own, but as far as membership though, it’s hard to know about the overlap between the two groups,” Gais said. “When you see a lot of these (groups that are) possibly commingled but are trying to present themselves as separate groups, that’s a tactic particularly used by neo-Nazis and white nationalists… to make themselves look bigger and much more threatening. It basically paints their movement as being a broader and more diverse swath of people than may necessarily be reflected.”
Emily Kaufman, associate director of investigative Research for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said PINE formed last spring as more of the “political arm” of NSC-131.
“What they’re trying to do is normalize their white supremacist ideology,” Kaufman said. “They’re trying to give a sense that there’s a wider acceptance of white supremacy and antisemitism. By showing up, even if it’s 10 individuals on a street corner, what they do with that is document that very carefully and turn that into digital propaganda for themselves.”
New England is not represented with an official flag, though Kaufman said PINE utilizes the red flag with a small pine tree on it. The same imagery is shown in a photo within PINE’s Substack article, where a member is seen handing an informational card about the group to a Donald Trump voter in Manchester, New Hampshire, which has the flag printed on it.
“What PINE is doing is trying to appropriate that to coincide with their ultimate goal of creating a white homeland or white ethnostate,” Kaufman said of using the flag.
Seacoast communities have hit back against hate whenever the neo-Nazis have disrupted local affairs, holding counter-protests and rallies and denouncing the perpetrators in municipal meetings.
In a similar fashion, elected officials, business leaders and residents of Portsmouth sharply rebuked an antisemitic, racist graffiti spree last winter on downtown area businesses, Temple Israel, and other buildings. In response, Assistant Mayor Joanna Kelley, whose Market Street business Cup of Joe Café & Bar was hit in the barrage, and community leaders held a “Love Blooms Here” event in February 2023, giving flowers to affected business owners and religious leaders.
“(The) ADL applauds local leaders who have denounced antisemitism following these disruptions, and community members who support these leaders,” Kaufman said.
The Anti-Defamation League published a report in March 2023 showing that in 2022, white supremacist propaganda activity hit all-time high nationally and across New England, with New Hampshire seeing a 383% year-over-year increase.