The father of a man identified as a participant in a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, publicly denounced his son’s “vile, hateful, and racist rhetoric and actions” on Monday.“My name is Pearce Tefft, and I am writing to all, with regards to my youngest son, Peter Tefft, an avowed white nationalist who has been featured in a number of local new stories over the last several months,” he wrote in a letter to North Dakota-Minnesota news site Inforum.Tefft’s father said his son “did not learn” white nationalist rhetoric “at home” but attended the rally Saturday in Charlottesville, where he “was interviewed by a national news outlet while marching with reported white nationalists.”
“We have been silent up until now, but now we see that this was a mistake. It was the silence of good people that allowed the Nazis to flourish the first time around, and it is the silence of good people that is allowing them to flourish now,” he wrote. “Peter Tefft, my son, is not welcome at our family gatherings any longer.”He said Tefft’s “hateful opinions are bringing hateful rhetoric to his siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews as well as his parents.”“He once joked, ‘The thing about us fascists is, it’s not that we don’t believe in freedom of speech. You can say whatever you want. We’ll just throw you in an oven,'” Pearce Tefft said. “Peter, you will have to shovel our bodies into the oven, too.”Peter Tefft on Friday posted a photograph of himself and the Confederate monument in Charlottesville that sparked the rally on a Twitter account where he also described himself as a “pro-white activist” and claimed, “Nazi is a racial slur against whites.”