HOW A WHITES-ONLY GROUP PLANS TO TURN RURAL TENNESSEE INTO ITS HOMELAND [View all]

Members of a whites-only group with extensive ties to the white power movement have purchased a nearly 70-acre property in central Tennessee that they intend to use as a self-described “headquarters,” a Hatewatch investigation found.

Kira Barber, 39, acting as an apparent representative for the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA), purchased the tract of land, located in a rural area of Jackson County, Tennessee, in December 2022 for $250,000, according to public records. Group leaders have described the property, located roughly 80 miles outside of Nashville, as the AFA “capital” and the group’s “corporate and ecclesiastical headquarters.” In newsletters and fundraising materials intended to raise money for improving the plot of land on the group’s website, the AFA has stated it intends to construct a hof (temple) and school for young people.

Members of the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) practice an exclusively white form of pre-Christian Norse and Germanic religions that the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to as neo-Völkisch, with 31 chapters in the U.S. as of 2022. Founded by Stephen McNallen in Northern California in the late 1960s, the group has described its core demographic as “Ethnic European Folk,” which it has defined as “white people.” Group representatives have stated that AFA would deny admission to Black people “because they’re not of northern European descent,” as well as LGBTQ+ people.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2023/06/15/how-whites-only-group-plans-turn-rural-tennessee-its-homeland