Neo-Nazis Burned a Swastika After Their Rally in Georgia

Neo-Nazis held a swastika burning following a white supremacist rally in the city of Newnan, Georgia, on Saturday.

Photographer Spencer Platt captured the scene for Getty Images. His pictures show a massing burning swastika and an othala rune – a pagan symbol that was used by some elements of the Third Reich.

One image shows dozens of people giving Nazi salutes in front of a burning swastika that appears to be 12 to 18 feet tall.

According to Platt and local news reports, the white supremacist group gathered in Draketown, Georgia, about 50 miles from Newnan after the protest.

The rally at Greenville Street Park in Newnan was organized by the white supremacist National Socialist Movement. The New York Times reported that it was made up of roughly two-dozen people, making it much smaller than the deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia last August. One woman died after a car ran through a crowd of counter-protesters at that rally.

The neo-Nazi rally on Saturday was met with about 100 counter-protesters, according to the Times, including members from antifa anti-fascist groups, and a large police presence of roughly 700 law enforcement officers. About 10 counter-protestors were arrested, according to reports. Local authorities said some were charged for refusing to removed their masks – in violation of a 1950 state law initially aimed at stopping the Ku Klux Klan.

Every state legislator as well as numerous county and city officials in Coweta County condemned the rally before it took place.