Officials in Columbus, Ohio, and across the state condemned a small group of people who marched through part of the city on Saturday carrying Nazi flags and shouting racial slurs and expressions of white power.

The marchers appeared to number only about a dozen people, but the invectives they shouted through a bullhorn at anyone they passed and the large swastika symbols they bore seemed to achieve their goal of rattling not just Columbus but a wider audience online.

Videos of the neo-Nazi marchers in the Short North neighbourhood, a part of the city containing many restaurants and newly built apartments, quickly spread on social media, prompting swift denouncements by state and city officials.

“Neo-Nazis — their faces hidden behind red masks — roamed streets in Columbus today, carrying Nazi flags and spewing vile and racist speech against people of colour and Jews,” governor Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, said in a statement on X.

“There is no place in this state for hate, bigotry, antisemitism or violence, and we must denounce it wherever we see it.”

The Anti-Defamation League said that the Columbus event fit a recent pattern of white supremacist incidents, hundreds of which have taken place across the country over the past 18 months.

The marches tend to be small, unannounced to avoid counter-protesters and tailor-made for social media, said Oren Segal, vice president for the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.

New York Times News Service