July 24 (UPI) -- The founder of a Neo-Nazi group and two other men were arrested in Boston during a protest against a drag queen story hour for children.
"On Saturday, July 23rd, the Loring Greenough House hosted the Drag Queen Story Time. Parents and children were entertained with singing and book reading. All enjoyed the event," the Loring Greenough House, a historic home and event venue in Boston, said in a statement.
"Unfortunately, a group of masked neo-Nazis gathered just outside our fence to chant malicious and homophobic rhetoric. The protest of a drag queen event was a tool to gain attention. Any concern for the well-being of children was absent."
Masked members of the Nationalist Social Club wearing hats bearing their "131" symbol could be seen in WCVB-TV footage from the protest carrying a banner that reads "Pedo Scum Off Our Streets."
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Christopher Hood, the 23-year-old founder of the group, was arrested when police broke up a fight between him and a counter-protester, WBZ-TV reported. The counter-protester, 27-year-old Seth Rosenau, was also arrested and both men were charged with affray and disturbing the peace.
Tobias Walker, 21, was also arrested after hitting a car with a metal object and fleeing on a bike, police told WBZ-TV. He has been charged with disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace and attempting to commit a crime.
The Nationalist Social Club has been called a Neo-Nazi group by the Anti-Defamation League, which has said the group "espouses racism, antisemitism and intolerance via the Internet, propaganda distributions and the use of graffiti." The group is active in six New England states.
"NSC members consider themselves soldiers fighting a war against a hostile, Jewish-controlled system that is deliberately plotting the extinction of the white race," the hate group watchdog has said.
"Their goal is to form an underground network of white men who are willing to fight against their perceived enemies through localized direct actions."
Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden condemned the protest in a statement, calling Boston a "way point in the crusade of hate launched five years ago in Charlottesville."
"The presence of white supremacists at a Jamaica Plain book reading today, like their downtown Boston march earlier this month, is at once a disgrace and a warning," Hayden said in the statement. "Society everywhere is targeted by these groups, and society everywhere must reject them."
The incident Saturday came after more than 100 members of the white supremacist hate group known as Patriot Front marched in downtown Boston over the Fourth of July weekend and allegedly attacked a Black man.
Members of the hate group could be seen carrying Patriot Front's banners as well as shields with the group's sticker affixed. Many of the flags bore the symbol of the political party of Benito Mussolini, the former Italian dictator who created fascism.
Patriot Front, founded in the aftermath of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, has been called a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
