As white nationalists gather again near Nashville, they say racial justice efforts are helping, not hurting their cause

At the annual American Renaissance conference, attendees and speakers don’t show up in white sheets, with Nazi regalia or an AR-15 strapped to their back.

Instead, the meeting inside Montgomery Bell State Park’s conference center could easily be confused with a corporate retreat — lots of white guys in suits, trying to sell the idea of white separatism.

“In some ways, it’s far more insidious,” says Vanderbilt’s Sophie Bjork-James, “because it allows them to have a bigger reach.”

Bjork-James studies white nationalism and says this group and its online magazine try to appear less radical by avoiding language like racial slurs.

“It’s been an incredibly successful strategy,” she says.

And it’s part of the reason the group has so much staying power when compared to other white nationalist groups. American Renaissance has been around since the 1990s.

But underneath that facade, its ideas are still racist. American Renaissance wants complete segregation and believes an entire race’s value can be measured by statistics like crime rates and births out of wedlock.

“We simply want to be left alone as whites to have the opportunity to hold our own destiny in our own hands,” says Jared Taylor, the editor and founder of American Renaissance.

Taylor speaks like he’s giving a lecture at a university. When he set up his interview with WPLN News, Taylor even used his Yale email address, though he hasn’t been associated with the university since he was a student there in the 1970s.

He argues his movement has been helped  — not hurt — by ongoing national dialogue about systemic racism.

“It drives people into our arms,” he says.

Montgomery Bell State Park has been Taylor’s chosen venue for about 10 years now. The park, incidentally, was named after a slaveowner. Taylor says it’s the most agreeable place they’ve been able to find.

“We used to meet in hotels convenient to airports,” Taylor says. “But now we must meet at a publicly owned facility because unlike a hotel, which can be bullied and intimidated by people who don’t want people like us to be able to speak our minds freely, the state of Tennessee refuses to be bullied.”

That reputation — that Tennessee protects free speech — has drawn far-right pundits to the state in recent years and was even cited as one reason the social media site Parler decided to relocate here.

But law professor Gautam Hans argues that Tennessee’s legislature has signaled that the state will protect some types of free speech over others.

“Some people want to use legislation in ways to promote the ideas they like and suppress the ideas they don’t,” Hans says. “And that’s not consistent with what the first amendment is supposed to stand for.”

For example, after the Black Lives Matter movement, lawmakers introduced legislation that would make it harder and less safe to protest. They also wanted to limit how race and gender could be talked about in schools.

Those examples of speech are subject to debate, but another seems more settled: is a group like American Renaissance entitled to meet at a Tennessee state park?

The parks department says yes. They don’t endorse hateful ideology, the department said in an emailed statement. But they can’t reject a group because of their viewpoints.

And Hans says if the state tried to fight it, there would probably be an expensive lawsuit.

“It’s on us as individuals to do what we can,” Hans says. “Because even if [the state] wanted to do something about this — which I’m not sure if they do, or they don’t — they really can’t.”

In the past, protests or bureaucratic obstacles have made it more difficult for some extremist groups to gather in Tennessee.

But for now, the American Renaissance conference says the state suits its needs.