A man who marched in the white supremacy rally in Charlottesville has been disowned by his family.
A man who marched in the white supremacy rally in Charlottesville has been disowned by his family.
Peter Tefft of Fargo, North Dakota, “is a maniac, who has turned away from all of us and gone down some insane internet rabbit-hole, and turned into a crazy nazi, ” said his nephew, Jacob Scott, in a statement to a local television station.
On Saturday, Charlottesville became embroiled in violence when white nationals, who were protesting against the removal of a Confederate statue, clashed with counter-demonstrators.
“ [Peter] scares us all, we don’ t feel safe around him, and we don’ t know how he came to be this way, ” Mr Scott continued. “My grandfather feels especially grieved, as though he has failed as a father.”
In February, Mr Tefft told a reporter in Fargo he was “100 per cent pro-white.”
Mr Tefft’s father said he and the rest of the family are entirely against his son’s racist beliefs.
In a letter published on Monday in The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, Pearce Tefft wrote that he and other family members “wish to loudly repudiate” his son’s “vile, hateful and racist rhetoric and actions.”
“We do not know specifically where he learned these beliefs, ” Mr Pearce Tefft wrote. “He did not learn them at home.”
In the letter, the father said he has taught his children that “all men and women are created equal” and that “we must love each other all the same.”
“Evidently Peter has chosen to unlearn these lessons, much to my and his family’s heartbreak and distress, ” he wrote.
“We have been silent up until now, but now we see that this was a mistake, ” the elder Tefft continued. “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 said Peter is no longer welcome at family gatherings.
“I pray my prodigal son will renounce his hateful beliefs and return home. Then and only then will I lay out the feast, ” he said.
