Neo-Nazi fight clubs dupe Tri-Cities event center into hosting ‘Martyrs Day Rumble’

Published January 11, 2023 By admin with Comments 1

It started with some distasteful song lyrics from the band.

Then, some kids with shaved heads walked in.

It wasn’t immediately obvious at first glance that Jeff Carvo had been lied to.

But the more the night drew on at the HAPO Center in Pasco, the more unsettling the details and iconography became.

Then, someone put up a banner that read, “No guilt.” He told the group to take it down and that they needed to wrap up the event.

“The more and more uncomfortable we got, we just thought we had to shut this down and call it a day,” he told the Tri-City Herald.

The group wasn’t completely who they said they were. He didn’t have the full story.

That’s how a group of three dozen white supremacists fooled HAPO Center event managers into hosting a fight night Dec. 3 in commemoration of a notable Pacific Northwest white nationalist.

The event at the center — owned jointly by Franklin County and the city of Pasco — detailed first by online news blog The Daily Kos, underscores the vulnerable position gyms and local governments can find themselves in when groups deceive them.

Content retrieved from: https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/article270956382.html.