This story was updated Sunday, August 3 with additional information about the hate group behind the march and local officials' reaction.
A white supremacist hate group marched across the State House lawn carrying swastika flags and fought with passersby in Concord Saturday, according to several eyewitnesses.
Lieutenant Mark Schneible said Concord police are investigating possible criminal activity related to the group, but provided no other detail. A spokesperson for the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office said Sunday that it was "actively monitoring" the police investigation.
A white supremacist group called Blood Tribe was claiming through social media posts to be behind Saturday's events. Organizations that study extremism, including the Program on Extremism at George Washington University and the Anti-Defamation League, describe Blood Tribe as a neo-Nazi group with several dozen members and thousands of online followers.
"[Blood Tribe's] stated goal is to turn the United States into an all-white ethnostate through the violent removal of all Jews and non-white minorities they see as enemies of the white race," according to George Washington University's Program on Extremism.
According to experts on extremism, the group's founder, a former Marine named Christopher Pohlhaus, moved to Maine in 2022 and has staged marches and other events around the country in an effort to recruit members and gain media attention. The Concord Monitor reported Sunday that Pohlhaus was with the group at the State House.
One eyewitness to Blood Tribe's presence in Concord, Karen Mayo, said she was downtown midday when she saw about 20 people wearing black pants and red shirts, with their faces and hands covered, marching side by side in pairs onto the State House plaza. Mayo said one person had a camera and appeared to be filming the group, and another was speaking through a megaphone.
Mayo said they appeared to be chanting: “America, the land of the free.” Other witnesses said the group was also chanting anti-immigrant and racist slogans like "minorities should disappear."
The group carried several flags bearing swastikas and a sign that read “Trump loves Epstein."
At one point, Mayo said she saw a man who appeared to be with his family who went to talk to the group, which began a confrontation. Mayo said a child with the family was visibly upset.
“The mom and the grandma were sort of talking to him about it, and he was saying ‘You have to be brave, you have to be brave,’ and I was comforting the kids saying, ‘You know, your dad is safe, it's good to be safe,’ “ Mayo said.
Video online Saturday shows a physical confrontation between the group and several passersby on South Main Street, near the Bank of New Hampshire Stage several blocks from the State House. According to the Concord Monitor, onlookers also saw the marchers punch and spray a man with mace further up Main Street.
One eyewitness said members of the group took off from the area in a U-Haul truck.
Mayo said that she was ready to confront the group when she saw them at the State House, though she thought about being safe for her son and husband who wouldn’t want her to get hurt.
“I'm not a peacekeeper,” Mayo said. “I knew that I would be confrontational and that wouldn't be good for anybody. So when they decided to leave the State House, they got in their marching orders, I was standing in the middle of the pathway in front of the arch and I made them go around me. And I called every single one of them a coward. And then I decided that I wasn't behaving myself, so I needed to leave the area.”
While she said the marchers made her nervous, she would still keep going to protests.
“It makes me so mad that they feel like they can be here and have those beliefs and yet feel like they're, they're safe because they're all covered and no one knows who they are,” Mayo said.
Blood Tribe's actions downtown took place shortly before a planned State House rally by 50501, a group that has staged several protests against the Trump administration in recent months.
City and state elected officials and several local organizations condemned the hate group's presence in Concord.
"There is no place for hate groups or their repugnant and disgusting ideology in New Hampshire," Gov. Kelly Ayotte said in a statement on X. She noted that the state Department of Justice's Civil Rights Unit was monitoring the local police investigation.
"Concord does not welcome hate," said Concord Mayor Byron Champlin on Facebook. "I am disgusted by Neo-Nazis marching through our streets. I commend the Concord Police Department for responding quickly and to our citizens who have bravely spoken out against this group.
Hate groups have staged a handful of activities in Concord and elsewhere in New Hampshire in recent years. In 2023, the neo-Nazi group NSC-131 gathered outside a downtown cafe that was hosting a drag event, chanting and doing Nazi-style salutes.
