Deranged anti-LGBTQ+ GOP candidate taps white supremacist group for security

Gabrielle Hanson, an alderman-at-large running for mayor in Franklin, Tennessee, recruited members of the white supremacist group Tennessee Active Club to provide security for her at a candidate forum, according to News Channel 5 in Nashville.

Like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups, Active Clubs promote violent white supremacist ideology. They also provide training in combat sports to members in chapters across the country.

Related:

Bonkers GOP aide bawls as she claims LGBTQ+ people are “training” children on buttplugs

She claimed that a community “fell apart” because of a $630K grant for buttplug training.

“They’re who the Proud Boys wanted to be,” Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Rolling Stone.

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A leader of the Tennessee chapter, Brad Lewis, says he’s a friend of Hanson and that Active Club members were on hand because Hanson had received credible threats.

Earlier this year, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that the Tennessee Active Club has been training above the Lewis’s Country Store in Nashville.

In a Telegram post earlier this year responding to the report, Lewis proudly claimed, “I’m not a cuckservative, I’m an actual literal Nazi.”

Photos by Channel 5 reporter Phil Williams reveal a group of young white men, one wearing a balaclava over his face, loitering outside the venue.

At a candidate forum in Franklin, Tennessee, where members of the white supremacist group Tennessee Active Club are here, saying they are providing security for Gabrielle @HansonforMayor. 1/ pic.twitter.com/Yi6x7dDsey

— Phil Williams (@NC5PhilWilliams) October 2, 2023

Hanson was voted onto the Franklin City Council two years ago with the backing of the Williamson Country chapter of Moms for Liberty.

Since then, she’s led a charge backed by Moms for Liberty, harassing the local LGBTQ+ community in often bizarre rants while battling multiple charges of moral hypocrisy.

In April, Hanson tried to shut down the Franklin Pride celebration by sharing photos of a Nashville drag queen, who once performed at the event, biting into “a live bleeding heart,” part of a Halloween-styled act not performed at Pride (nor was the heart “live” or “bleeding”).

“This is something that could have happened in our park!” Hanson declared.

At another meeting dedicated to revoking Franklin Pride’s permit, the Moms for Liberty chapter president denounced “a social change agenda” that is not “pro-religion, pro-community, pro-Christianity, pro-family, or pro-America. Rather, it seeks the destruction of all of those elements.” 

One Hanson ally at the same meeting sobbed from the podium, “You are letting Satan in. He will not take an inch. I promise you. He will take everything, and it will not stop.”

Early last month, a Hanson campaign aide went on a tear-filled tirade at a council meeting claiming LGBTQ+ people are giving children buttplugs in her hometown and training them on how they’re used.

“It started out as Pride coming in, and I thought everything would be OK,” she said as she cried. “And it ended with a Rainbow Room where eight- to 12-year-old kids were given butt plugs and dildos and trained.”

None of that was true.

Funniest video I've seen this year!
MAGA vs. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 "butt plugs???"🤣🤣🤣pic.twitter.com/lBPWMhx5Go

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) September 12, 2023

Last week, Hanson was confronted with evidence her husband, a one-time Congressional candidate in Chicago, campaigned in an American flag Speedo at Chicago Pride in 2008, with her encouragement, giving the lie to her claims of “protecting children” from “sexualizing” behavior in Franklin or anywhere else.

In September, it was also revealed that Hanson had pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution while she was a college student in Dallas and that she had used photos of strangers culled from social media falsely portraying them as members of an “executive committee” in support of her candidacy.

In April, Hanson claimed to have “full knowledge” from an inside source that the mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school in March involved a scandalous “love triangle.” The unsubstantiated claim led to an investigation by the Franklin Ethics Commission which concluded her comments were protected by the First Amendment.