Last week, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell sued the Nationalist Social Club, the local neo-Nazi group also known as NSC-131 or NSC, and Christopher Hood and Liam McNeil, two of the group’s leaders, for “violent, threatening, intimidating, and coercive conduct that has interfered with the exercise of rights secured by state and federal law,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is unique in that it clearly points to specific actions allegedly conducted by the neo-Nazi group that go beyond free speech protected by the First Amendment. It also underscores that citizens don’t have to sit on the sidelines and idly witness in shock what NSC-131 has been accused of doing in 2022 and 2023 to promote its white supremacist ideology.
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One activist who has not been sitting idly in the sidelines vis-a-vis local neo-Nazis is Kristofer Goldsmith, a US Army veteran. He is the founder of Task Force Butler, an anti-fascist nonprofit that has been monitoring extremist groups and pushing government agencies, institutions, and companies to hold NSC-131 accountable. To do that, “we need to look for the legal vulnerabilities wherever they are,” Goldsmith, a self-described Nazi hunter, said in an interview. “Though NSC-131 frequently engages in harassment campaigns and destruction of property … those are things that we have found that law enforcement are just not as aggressive about prosecuting so we focused on the violence. That’s where it looks like [the Massachusetts] lawsuit really focused on.”
Through his organization, Goldsmith has also been sounding the alarm about the close link that exists between these hate groups and American military service, a concerning development that my Globe colleague Hanna Krueger has reported on based on her own analysis and Goldsmith’s research.
Earlier this year, Goldsmith unveiled Project Husky, a 309-page document laying out a legal blueprint to hold NSC-131 accountable using civil and criminal actions. The document has been shared with journalists and state and local law enforcement authorities, including Campbell’s office, he told me.