A confrontation was captured on cellphone video in Lincoln Park, as angry residents chased a group of men putting up stickers for the white supremacist group "Patriot Front."
That same extremist group has been causing trouble recently in other cities as well.
Andy Krupp and his wife were enjoying a stroll through Lincoln Park Saturday afternoon when they noticed a group of three young white men slapping stickers on signs and light poles. "I walked towards the stickers and saw that they were part of a well-known racist group," Krupp said. "My reaction is, I was outraged."
So angry in fact that Krupp pulled out his cellphone and began to follow the men while giving them some advice. "Get out of here you Nazis," Krupp is heard yelling at the men in the video. "Get out of here. Get the (bleep) out of Chicago, Nazis! Patriot Front is not welcome!"
Patriot Front is a white supremacist group founded in 2018 that recently made headlines when 31 members were arrested in Idaho and charged with planning to violently disrupt a gay Pride celebration.
Krupp was not intimidated; he followed the group of men and started filming. "I was about as angry as a human being could be. How could I as a Jew living in Chicago turn a blind eye to this kind of hatred? I think everybody needs to stand up to hatred when they see it," he said.
Krupp followed the men for several minutes as they zig-zagged down residential blocks. The chase ended when another man jumped out of his car and joined in.
"I followed them for a number of blocks, yelling at them, ‘Get out of our neighborhood, no Nazis are welcome in our neighborhood. This is Lincoln Park, we have no tolerance for hate or Nazis. Chicago has no tolerance for hate or Nazis.’ And they ran away, we ran them out," Krupp said.
Within minutes, word of the Patriot Front sighting had spread on social media, and Lincoln Park residents organized to remove all the stickers.
There are also reports on social media of Patriot Front propaganda popping up in other Chicago neighborhoods over the weekend, including Logan Square and on Michigan Avenue near Lake Street.