PULASKI — A white supremacist group is planning to hold a rally this weekend on the town square in Pulaski.
The Pulaski Board of Mayor and Aldermen approved a parade permit for an organization called the Aryan Nations for 12:30-4 p.m. Sunday, City Administrator Terry Harrison said.
Harrison said federal law bars the city from denying a parade permit based on a group’s political viewpoints.
“There are some groups we would rather have in here more than others, but we have to do what the state of Tennessee and the Constitution of the United States says we have to do,” he said.
Harrison said the city will be prepared for the march, but he declined to discuss specific security plans.
Paul Mullet, national director of the Aryan Nations, said the group is gathering to celebrate White Unity Day. He described the rally as espousing “anti-immigration, anti-gay and pro-white” viewpoints.
“Injustice to the white community is what we are rallying against,” he said.
Pulaski was chosen as the site of the rally, Mullet said, because it was the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan.
Mullet would not disclose how many members of the neo-Nazi group are planning to attend, but he said they would be traveling to Tennessee from all over the United States.
During a rally in June, a dozen Aryan Nations members gathered at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, along with 70 counter demonstrators, according to a report in The York Daily Record. The newspaper reported demonstrators shouted threats at one another, but there were no acts of violence. Members of the Aryan Nations did not carry any visible weapons.
Harrison said he is not aware of any counter demonstrations planned for this weekend in Pulaski.
During congressional testimony in 2001, former FBI Director Louis J. Feech called the Aryan Nations a “continuing terrorist threat.”
At that time, the white supremacist group was under the leadership of Richard Butler. Since Butler’s death in 2004, various factions have tried to revive the Aryan Nations, including the group led by Mullet based in Chillicothe, Ohio, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Mullet said he does not view the Aryan Nations as being a militant group, but he is calling for a revolution.
Asked whether he plans to accomplish this objective through political means or through armed force, Mullet said, “I am calling for revolution however we get the job done.”
