At first, nothing seemed out of place to Andrew Voorhees.
He arrived in downtown Concord around 1 p.m. Aug. 2 to begin preparing for the scheduled NH 50501 anti-Trump rally. He heard a loud megaphone, but it wasn’t until he parked and stepped onto the State House lawn that he realized his own group wasn’t responsible for the commotion ahead.
Instead, the agitators were about 20 members of the neo-Nazi group “Blood Tribe.”
“The first thing that I saw was the swastika flag, and I genuinely couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first,” Voorhees said. He noticed the group’s ski masks and matching red and black garb. “To see that in front of our Capitol building in the place where I was born and raised was a surreal moment.”
Other witnesses felt similarly. Like Vorhees, Meagan Murphy was unloading her car when she spotted the group.
“Their energy presented something evil,” she recalled.
Murphy and Vorhees never expected to see a neo-Nazi demonstration in the heart of Concord, but experts say political extremism is on the rise in New Hampshire, like it is in much of the United States.
The Southern Poverty Law Center tracked 15 hate and antigovernment groups in New Hampshire last year. Until 2022, that number had largely stayed in the single digits.
New Hampshire tied with Massachusetts for the most active extremist groups in New England, though Jeff Tischauser, a researcher with the watchdog group, said the region as a whole holds “a very special place” for extremism.
“Many of these white power activists perceive themselves to be revolutionaries in their own way, and they want to harken back to the ‘good old days’ of 1770s,” Tischauser said.
The uptick in hate and antigovernment group activity could represent a new normal, though.
Why Concord?
Christopher Pohlhaus, the tattoo artist and ex-Marine who founded Blood Tribe several years ago, first appeared on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s radar during the fall of 2021.
The following year, Pohlhaus worked to build a Blood Tribe basecamp near the rural town of Springfield, Maine. He has since sold the land and moved away.
Tischauser couldn’t say for certain why Blood Tribe targeted Concord — he hasn’t tracked them in New Hampshire previously — but he said they could have chosen the capital city because of its sheer proximity to the neo-Nazi group’s roots in Maine.
The area’s demographics could have been another contributing factor.
In a video posted online days after the demonstration, Pohlhaus said the rally in Concord was a “great one.” He said Blood Tribe intended to target somewhere its members hadn’t visited yet, with a small, predominantly white population. He said they figured the people would be less aggressive toward them, but that’s not what they found.
“I’m certain that was the most visceral emotional reaction we’ve ever had,” Pohlhaus said. “We were assaulted more than ever.”
Concord police are investigating an altercation between a man and members of the Blood Tribe.
Tischauser said groups like the Blood Tribe look at race as an indicator of political opinion and target places they think they can sway as a recruitment tactic. New Hampshire’s population is about 90% white.
“It’s an attempt by them to look at the racial characteristics of your state and of your city and then wrongly thinking that, ‘Oh, it’s a majority white place. These white people are going to agree with us. They just don’t know it yet,'” Tischauser said.
The demonstration in Concord was the group’s largest in almost a year. They’ve also rallied elsewhere, in places like Florida and Ohio.
Nationally, the Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked the increasing number of hate groups to an all-time high of 1,430 in 2024. It documented a rise in white nationalism during Donald Trump’s first presidency, saying in a report that his campaign and policy proposals “energized” those groups.
In New Hampshire, Sean Locke, who heads up the Civil Rights Unit in the state attorney general’s office, said his team has not only noticed increased reports alleging hate-motivated crimes and civil rights violations but a swell in organized action.
“We’re seeing more planned bias-motivated behavior, hate-motivated behavior, and especially more with an ideological focus,” Locke said.
Piecing together the march through Concord
Vorhees watched as Blood Tribe members saluted and made speeches in front of the State House, where they advocated for deportations and revoking citizenship from immigrants and children of immigrants.
Then, Voorhees said, they performed two military-style drills and marched forward.
Videos show the protesters — all of them masked except Pohlhaus — continuing down South Main Street. Several bystanders yelled at them and followed them through downtown.
Near the Hills Avenue intersection, a scuffle broke out between one man and the Blood Tribe members. The Concord Police Department is investigating the altercation, and the state Civil Rights Unit is keeping tabs on the case.
In addition to black-and-white flags emblazoned with swastikas, the group held a banner that read “Trump loves Epstein,” which confused many bystanders. The sign appears to refer to President Donald Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in prison.
Tischauser said the white power movement has given up on Trump as a “savior of the white race,” reasoning that he is too close to Jewish influence. Many neo-Nazi groups maintain strong stances against pedophilia as well, he said.
“This whole ‘Trump loves Epstein’ thing, it’s a response to tie down that really important talking point that they have that motivates them,” Tischauser said. “The message that you saw in Concord is very much part of that.”
Once they reached the Thorndike Street intersection, the masked protesters boarded a 26-foot U-Haul “supermover” truck in the parking lot of Christ the King Parish. Video taken by Ed Ramshaw, who followed the group for several minutes, shows its members chanting white nationalist slogans and performing the Nazi salute as Ramshaw and others continued to heckle them.
Officers with the Concord Police Department and New Hampshire State Police stood by, and some bystanders questioned troopers on the legality of transporting people in the back of a commercial truck.
In New Hampshire, carrying passengers in a truck “not so designed” constitutes a motor vehicle violation.
After the members of the Blood Tribe boarded the U-Haul, a man wearing a face mask but dressed in street clothes latched the sliding door behind them.
One heckler from the crowd approached the truck in an apparent attempt to reopen it but was stopped by police officers.
Then, the truck drove away.
Does it count as free speech?
Daniel Pi, an assistant professor at the UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law in Concord, said that although the demonstration was “abhorrent,” it likely still counts as protected speech under the First Amendment.
Unless someone incites imminent violence or speaks “fighting words” — two doctrines that have narrow legal definitions — their speech is still protected by the U.S. Constitution.
“Uniformly, the courts have said that these racist rallies and stuff, they don’t constitute fighting words,” Pi said. “Just saying that in the abstract a certain race is superior or inferior, or exhorting people to be hateful is not an incitement to violence and it’s not fighting words.”
New Hampshire’s Civil Rights Unit, founded in 2017, has seen a roughly 37% increase in public complaints and law enforcement referrals over the past five years. The unit received 214 last year.
Not all referrals are hate-related; some report acts of discrimination or other civil rights infringments. Of the 124 complaints and referrals Locke has received so far this year, he said approximately 26 of them call out potential hate crimes or civil rights violations.
The Civil Rights Unit often responds to these reports by assisting local police departments in their investigations.
For various reasons, like if the action didn’t rise to a civil rights or hate-related crime or if the crime isn’t provable, not all cases are prosecuted. Some are simply difficult to take to court.
Locke declined to comment on Concord Police’s active investigation into the rally but said the First Amendment provides robust protections for freedom of speech.
“That is often kind of the biggest challenge with events like marches and demonstrations,” Locke said. “Has anything crossed that line into something that is not protected by the freedom of speech?”
Pi said the point of free speech to protect the content that people don’t like, despite the emotions that hate speech, like the messages broadcast at the demonstration, might elicit.
“We wouldn’t need a First Amendment if it was speech that everybody liked anyway, if it was all just speech about puppy dogs and rainbows,” Pi said. “Hate speech is protected, just like any other speech.”
Abby DiSalvo contributed reporting for this story.