Mike DeWine Posts Holocaust Ceremony, Silent on Nazi Protest of Drag Brunch

Social media users assailed Ohio Governor Mike DeWine after he tweeted on Monday about an annual Holocaust commemoration while remaining silent on the Nazi extremist group that protested a drag charity brunch in Columbus on Saturday.

The annual Drag Brunch, sponsored by Land-Grant Brewing Company, was raising money for Kaleidoscope Youth Center (KYC), an organization that supports LGBTQ+ youth in Ohio. About halfway through the event, a group of masked protesters clad in black and red disrupted the brunch as they waved a flag bearing a swastika and chanted racial epithets, homophobic and transphobic slurs.

Videos of the protest went viral on social media, raking in thousands of likes, comments and shares. The clips show a dozen or so protesters, apparently called Blood Tribe, exhibiting Nazi symbols and gestures. The group left without incident after roughly 30 minutes, according to social media posts.

About 500 people pre-registered to attend the charity brunch, which raised $5,000 for KYC plus an additional outpouring of support since videos of the protest went viral over the past several days, Jennifer Kuhn, KYC director of community partnerships and external relations, told Newsweek in an email.

The drag brunch protest in Columbus is an example of the hate the LGBTQ+ community faces and continues to overcome, Kuhn said.

"There were maybe 20 or so Nazis that showed up, yet hundreds attended the fundraiser," Kuhn added to Newsweek. "Our love and support together is greater than their hate."

KYC slammed DeWine and the Ohio legislature in a statement, while also spotlighting the "hatred, bigotry faced by LGBTQ+ young people every day."

KYC says state lawmakers are circulating "harmful and blatantly discriminatory legislation," which, the youth advocacy group says, "has the intent to ultimately eradicate our community, with a particularly cruel fixation on transgender and non-binary identities."

Ohio is one of nearly two dozen GOP-led states pushing legislation targeting gender-affirming care and other rights of the transgender community. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), at least 469 bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights have been introduced in current legislative sessions.

Newsweek has reached out via email to representatives for DeWine for comment.

DeWine was slammed on Twitter Monday for not condemning the masked Nazi group after he tweeted about the annual Ohio Governor's Holocaust Commemoration.

"Last week, we held the 43rd-annual Ohio Governor's Holocaust Commemoration," DeWine said in the tweet, which also contained a video clip from the event. "Each year, we gather to reflect on history and remember the victims and survivors of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime in the years leading up to, and during, World War II."

Many Twitter users who replied to DeWine's tweet questioned why the governor has yet to comment on the Nazi protest.

"While this annual commemoration is important, equally if not more important is the demonstration of hate this past weekend at the same capitol [sic] site," one Twitter user said in response to DeWine's tweet. "Why are you not denouncing the masked hate group? People believe others' actions far more than their words."

Despite his silence on Saturday's protest, DeWine has assailed antisemitism that was displayed at his rallies in Ohio.

"I think everyone has an obligation to denounce it," he said during a press conference in 2020, according to local media outlet WKYC. "If they're carrying anti-Mike DeWine signs, they've got a right to do that. But antisemitic signs? That's just wrong."

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther responded to the incident on Twitter in several posts Sunday afternoon, in which he thanked Columbus police for keeping the peace as well as the performers "for their courage and commitment to love and acceptance over divisiveness and hate."

"The vile and offensive out-of-state hate group who protested at a drag performance yesterday does not represent our community," Ginther said in another Sunday tweet. "While their 'speech' is protected by the Constitution, they do not have the right to threaten, intimidate or harm others."

Dozens of social media users railed against conservative lawmakers over the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ bills popping up in red states.

"Yesterday, a group of Nazis stood outside a drag event in Columbus, Ohio in their new-age Klanwear (black ski masks, red shirts/sunglasses) chanting 'There will be BLOOD!' THIS is what the GOP deliberately emboldens when they attack trans youth, drag shows & the LGBT community," @AmoneyResists tweeted.

Saturday isn't the first time an extremist group has protested an LGBTQ+ event in Ohio this year. In March, neo-Nazis waved swastika flags while chanting "there will be blood" during a protest against a drag queen story hour held in Wadsworth, just west of Akron. A number of groups turned up to protest the all-ages event billed as "Rock-n-Roll Humanist Drag Queen Story Hour," including a group of neo-Nazis and members of the far-right Proud Boys organization. Police arrested two men on disorderly conduct charges amid altercations between protesters and supporters of the event.

An Ohio man, who is a member of White Lives Matter Ohio, was charged last month with a federal hate crime, accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a church that was scheduled to host a drag brunch, according to cleveland.com. The firebombing of the church underscores the rise in white supremacist activity in Ohio, according to the local news outlet.

Update 05/02/23, 4:45 p.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from Jennifer Kuhn.