Nicole Young

USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee

Neighbors in a Robertson County community are upset about a Nazi flag being flown above a property along Highway 76 near Springfield.

The property’s resident, Dale Spurgeon, 63, of Springfield, said he's a member of the National Socialist Movement (NSM) and has been displaying the flag for about the past month. No one has said anything to him about it, he said.

“It’s my choice to fly the flag on my property,” he said. “I don’t bother anyone, and I feel like it’s my right as an American to display what I want to display.”

Air Force veteran Laurie Elliott, owner of The Studio Hair, Nails and Tanning Salon, was shocked to learn the flag was being flown just down the street from her home and business.

She said she couldn't believe it when a client first mentioned the flag a couple of weeks ago. She and her husband have lived in their home on Highway 76 for 17 years. Her husband has served almost 20 years in the armed forces, first as a Marine and now as an Air National Guardsman, she said.

He has been deployed several times, most notably to Iraq following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Elliott said.

“That was hard, but he was off fighting for the freedoms that we all enjoy,” she said. “I can’t imagine someone having freedoms, enjoying those freedoms and wanting to just give all that up and over to a socialist agenda.

“It angers me and it breaks my heart all at the time. That’s terrible.”

Fear and anger among neighbors

Other neighbors had similar reactions.

One woman was so angry about the flag that she refused to speak about it and threatened to call police. Another said she was scared and feared retaliation.

For the Anti-Defamation League’s Southeast Regional Director Mark Moskowitz, the community’s reactions weren’t surprising.

“This is really about the community,” he said. “The swastika is a hate symbol, just as we consider the Confederate flag to be a hate symbol. We have all heard the arguments that they’re part of our heritage, but the proper place for them to be displayed is in the historical context, like in a museum.”

While Spurgeon’s decision to display the flag on his property is “disappointing,” Moskowitz said there’s nothing to stop him from flying it, legally.

“He is protected by the First Amendment,” he said. “In America, there is nothing to say you can’t hate. Sometimes people just want attention, and that’s one way to get it.”

Southern Poverty Law Center Senior Fellow Mark Potok agreed.

“A person who flies the Nazi flag in front of his house is clearly trying to be provocative,” he said. “Certainly, neighbors looking at that flag who are anything but purely white are going to be intimidated. That flag stands for the mass murder of millions of Jews and others worldwide.”

Movement has roots in Nazi Party

A Robertson County native, Spurgeon is a retired painter and factory worker and served in the Army in 1972-73, he said, adding that he “just missed Vietnam by a hair.”

During the past few years, he’s read a lot about the NSM and has come to agree with the structure of national socialism, he said. He also believes national socialism saved Germany.

“I in no way condone the extermination of a race. I would never be a part of something like that,” Spurgeon said. “But there are some ways in which socialism would be good for America, like it was for Germany. No more rampant crime would be one of those ways.”

Founded in 1994 and based in Detroit, NSM is the largest and most prominent neo-Nazi group in the United States with 46 chapters, according to Potok.

The group is best known for its violent anti-Jewish rhetoric, racist views and a policy allowing members of other racist groups to join while retaining membership in other groups, according to an extremist group database maintained by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

“Members of this group are unapologetically Nazi and refer to Adolf Hitler as their holy leader,” Potok said. “They are known for their outrageous and crude provocations, the best example of which occurred in 2005 in Toledo, Ohio, when they managed to provoke a kind of riot after holding a rally in a black, inner-city community.”

The Toledo riots cost the city more than $336,000, the SPLC database notes. No NSM members were injured during the incident and they were not held liable for any of the destruction, it said.