Elle Reeve, a journalist for Vice News who filmed a viral documentary on the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer, says neo-Nazis continue to recognize her in public and make themselves known.
Reeve has been covering white nationalism in the US for several years. By the time she arrived in Charlottesville last year, many of the neo-Nazis who were present already knew who she was, as well as intimate details about her life.
"Everywhere I went, they knew who I was,". "There was no slipping into the crowd as anonymous reporter. And they knew who I’ve dated; they knew my boyfriend’s Jewish, so they would yell things about that to me."
Since Charlottesville and her widely viewed documentary on what occurred there, Reeve says she has been approached by neo-Nazis in unexpected places – including airport security.
Reeve said she was going through security last Christmas and a male TSA officer recognized her.
She thanked the officer, went through the security process, and as she was putting on her shoes Reeve said he came over and "tells me this little joke that lets me know that he’s a Nazi."
"It was just really creepy," Reeve added. "It was just like this sense of, 'Oh, they’re everywhere.'"
Reeve said it was reminiscent of scenes in Charlottesville last summer — because, she said, neo-Nazis in attendance "did not look like the people upper-middle-class white people in the East Coast think of when they think of racists or white supremacists."
"I think that’s a really hard reality for people to accept that a lot of these white nationalists are from New Jersey, they went to prep school, they live in nice neighborhoods, they look like people you know," Reeve added. "So, I think it’s really important to show that."
