IF THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOU'RE HEARING ABOUT THE TENNESSEE NAZI FIGHT CLUB, ASK YOURSELF WHY

Did you know about this gas station in Tennessee that hosted a Nazi fight club? Until now, I didn't.

The Nashville gas station whose "actual literal Nazi" owner hosted a far-right hand-to-hand combat facility upstairs will now join a local chain of convenience marts, The Tennessean reported.

The Lewis Country Store, the restaurant and fill-'er-up where the Southern Poverty Law Center discovered a white supremacist fighting gym in June, will become part of Tennessee's Tri Star Energy's holdings. Tri Star told the local paper that the sale will likely go through the day after New Year's, and the facility will be "company-owned and -operated" going forward.

“Anytime we acquire a store, we fold them into our culture and run them as our stores,” an executive told The Tennessean.

That likely means the end not just of the white supremacist mixed martial arts ring, but also its notorious LED exhortations to motorists that they "Never Forget Benghazi," "#Trump That Bitch," and bring comedienne Kathy Griffin's head in exchange for a $50,000 reward.

... The store continued to provoke with its defiance of local COVID-19 regulations in 2020, and its owner's proud declaration that he is an "actual literal Nazi" after the SPLC report came out this year.

I can see why the 2016 news stories about the Lewis Country Store didn't go national -- they were published shortly before Election Day 2016, and the owner seemed like just a normal Trump voter, not a Nazi.

Two weeks ago, the [Nashville] Scene reported on a scrolling digital sign at a gas station, Lewis Country Store. The sign had apparently been scrolling pro-Trump and anti-Clinton messages for months, but its latest iteration had been brought to our attention by someone concerned about children seeing the language used: "Trump Just Said It. Bill Clinton Did It! The Only P*$$y Trump Ever Grabbed Was Paul Ryan! #TrumpThatB*tch."

Lewis Country Store is a Shell gas station, and we asked the oil company what they thought about their brand being associated a particularly nasty piece of political rhetoric.

... Shell's investigation has apparently led the company to decide being associated with Lewis Country Store is not a good look.

Shell withdrew its branding from the Lewis Country Store, but business went on as usual otherwise. Then in early June of this year, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported on the Nazi fight club that was using a gym above the Lewis Country Store:

White nationalist groups are using a private gym above a store in Nashville, Tennessee, to network and train for hand-to-hand combat....

Sean Kauffmann is the leader of the Tennessee Active Club, which is part of a national network of white power hate groups....

On May 21, an administrator of the group’s Telegram channel forwarded a message from Lewis Country Store that mocked the reactions of community members to the store’s bigoted signage. About an hour later, a message on the channel asserted that the group has a working relationship with the store’s owner.

“This dudes cool as fuck,” [sic] the message states, “he lets us train at his private gym upstairs! Fuck this commie government!”

... According to video and photographs the Tennessee Active Club posted online, the gym above Lewis Country Store was used at least three times in 2023.

After the SPLC report was published, a local NPR station reported that

the owner of the store, Brad Lewis, went on a white supremacist podcast, where the host asked him about the report published by “the commie scumbags from the SPLC.” Lewis responded by confirming that he allows people to train in the space above his store.

“I’ve got some guys that are ex-MMA pros that have been training with me for, gosh, 15 years now. We’re getting some younger, younger white men in there,” he said.

... The day after the report was published, Lewis posted on Telegram: “I’m not a cuckservative, I’m an actual literal Nazi.”

Also:

... the Lewis Country Store posted a photograph of the [Tennessee Active Club] giving the Hitler salute outside Lewis Country Store with “Fuck the SPLC!!!” as the caption.

That was in June. Did you know about it?

I didn't. But imagine if the situation were reversed. Imagine if a popular store that posted anti-Trump messages were found to be associated with a hate group that embraces a murderous racist ideology. It would be all over Fox News for weeks. There'd be dozens of stories. The owner would be famous.

But there's no media outlet that will really pound a story like this the way Fox does. No media outlet trusted by liberals makes a habit of highlighting right-wing evildoers, unless those evildoers are part of the political, business, or media elite and the stories can be used to make high-minded points about governance, democracy, foreign policy, or high-level corruption.

This matters because identifying an endless series of low-level enemies is one of the key ways the right-wing media keeps viewers angry at liberals and Democrats, and thus loyal to the Republican Party. Our side's preferred media sources are much too high-minded to do this. And so even when a proudly public Trump supporter identifies himself as a Nazi, it won't become big news, even for a moment. I'm all for serious journalism, but this outrage gap is helping the GOP.