The neo-Nazi who helped try to take over a North Dakota town was arrested at a Tennessee Pride event

A neo-Nazi who was arrested years ago for parading with a rifle through the streets of a tiny North Dakota town, threatening residents alongside white supremacist Craig Cobb, was arrested over the weekend at a Pride event in Tennessee and charged with assault.  

Kynan Dutton was part of an odd mix of extremists protesting Pridefest in Knoxville, Tennessee, that included members of the neo-Confederate League of the South, a smattering of other white nationalists, as well as handful of Black Hebrew Israelites. Many wore camouflage clothing and bandannas to hide their faces, but their affiliations were nevertheless on public display. 

While such a varied assortment of white and black nationalists was certainly happenstance –– especially considering their opposition on the grounds of racial identity –– they united under a shared condemnation of homosexuality as a “lifestyle” antithetical to traditional values. 

“[The] reason we’re here is to support the traditional family that is one man, one woman and children,” Dutton told the University of Tennessee Beacon before earlier in the day. “None of these other permutations, some of this other corruption or evil that is being permutated by this parade –– it should not, and hopefully in the future will not, be allowed by these cities.”

Dutton, the self-identified head of the National Socialist Movement in Tennessee, also told reporters for the Knoxville News Sentinel that Pridefest should not be allowed in Knoxville because it is a historically “pro-white, pro-traditional family” town. He was arrested after witnesses reported seeing him push another man to the ground shortly after 1 p.m. on Saturday, the paper reported. 

While hardly a player of consequence on the radical right, Dutton is notable for his brief brush with fame in 2013 when he and his wife, their children in tow, answered Cobb’s call to move to Leith, North Dakota, and help build an all-white racist enclave. 

There, the Duttons lived with Cobb in a ramshackle white house without running water or working toilets. Their efforts, in fact, seemed damned from the start when Cobb and Dutton, a former soldier, were arrested and charged with multiple counts after they took rifles to the streets and shouted threats because Cobb believed his home had been vandalized. 

Last weekend’s rally was the first most had heard of Dutton since his arrest.

In fact, Dutton’s involvement might have been overlooked if not for Billy Roper, a long-time white nationalist who has sought to grow his infamy as racist ideologies push for mainstream prominence in the era of Trump. 

In reaction to Dutton’s arrest, Roper claimed on his blog that Dutton was a “lone Christian protester who was assisted by pro-Whites who came to his aid, ending the assault and resulting in one arrest on the Christian side.”