Marshall Rawson — who won an upset victory in Florida’s District 10 Republican primary last month — attended the infamous Charlottesville rally, considered the largest white supremacist gathering in a generation, marching with the League of the South, a racist and antisemitic neo-Confederate group that advocates for the secession of southern states from the U.S.

Video footage reviewed by TPM shows Rawson and his now-wife arriving at the rally and being greeted by name by League of the South members. A photo obtained by TPM, taken at a different point during the violent demonstration, shows Rawson standing near James Alex Fields Jr., the neo-Nazi who a short time later drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring dozens of others.

Rawson, a 34-year-old local GOP activist, handily won the Republican primary on Aug. 18. His primary victory came only eight days after the newspaper Florida Politics published an article detailing parts of his past involvement, which he has acknowledged, with the League of the South. Earlier this year a local blog called Clay News & Views listed bigoted statements Rawson made on X throughout 2023 and 2024 in which the candidate condoned slavery and called for gay people to be executed.

His attendance at Unite the Right, however, has not previously been reported in the press.

TPM’s investigation can also reveal that Rawson’s campaign got a boost from members of the very groups that marched in Charlottesville nine years ago: an analysis of his campaign donations finds that he received upwards of $15,000 from dozens of people with either established ties to white nationalist organizations or well-documented histories of extremist, racist activism.

Finally, TPM can reveal indications that Rawson from 2017 to 2020 operated a pseudonymous social media account on X that he used to advocate public lynchings.

Responding to a detailed list of questions sent by TPM for this story, Rawson emailed the following statement:

“Over the entire span of my adult life, I’ve been very active defending historical monuments from destruction or removal, and I feel that way about almost all monuments, not just those associated with southern history.

“I don’t screen my donors, and I put in tens of thousands of requests for donations by email, text, and phone.  I’ve been extremely transparent about my campaign agenda, and any donation to my campaign is presumably an endorsement of my agenda and not my campaign’s endorsement of a donor’s views or agenda.  Obviously, I’m not privy to any conversation you reportedly had with any donors and cannot speak to those conversations.”

Rawson is widely expected to win the general election this November in House District 10, which encompasses a conservative part of northcentral Florida between Jacksonville and Tallahassee, raising the prospect that an unrepentant white supremacist will attain elected office in one of the country’s most populous states with no pushback from the Republican Party.

The Florida GOP did not respond to a request for comment about Rawson’s involvement with the League of the South, his attendance at Unite the Right, his white supremacist campaign donors, or the post he appears to have made on X advocating lynchings.

The national Republican Party also did not respond to a request for comment.

At a time when the GOP veers ever rightward, Rawson’s story is a glaring example of how explicit white nationalism has established firm roots in one of America’s two major political parties.

Rawson’s involvement with the League of the South was first noted in 2014 by a prolific antifascist researcher named Laura Sullivan. Sullivan — who passed away earlier this year — published an article on her blog, Lady Liberty’s Lamp, detailing how Rawson, then a college student at Shorter University, was appearing at League of the South events while simultaneously interning for then-U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) in Washington D.C. Rawson, Sullivan documented, was spending his internship posting League of the South propaganda throughout the city, including a “SECEDE FROM OBAMALAND” sticker in the U.S. Capitol building.

Sullivan found another photo of Rawson passing out flyers for a League of the South rally. “IMMIGRATION IS BAD FOR SOUTHERN WORKERS,” the flyers said.

In May 2025, in the early days of his campaign, Rawson published a post on his campaign’s Facebook page acknowledging his involvement with the League. “Apparently, the establishment isn’t happy with the level of success we’ve had on the campaign thus far,” he wrote, predicting that “the radical downtown Gainesville crowd and the spineless establishment ‘Republicans’” would attempt to attack him by citing a “defunct Antifa blog” and “my past League of the South involvement.”

“My advocacy in the League from 2013-2016 consisted exclusively of myself and the organization demonstrating against the unfettered immigration/ ‘gang of eight’ amnesty policies that were hurting local workers, defense of marriage activism that was a response to Federal Activist Judges overthrowing state law, and then later in defense of our historic monuments that were being attacked by woke rioters and weak politicians,” he wrote.

Florida Politics’ article about Rawson last month is based in part on Sullivan’s research. Rawson did not provide a comment about his activism with the League of the South to the news outlet, but did provide one to Main Street Daily News, telling the Gainesville, Florida-based newspaper that he’d only been involved with the League of the South for a few years over a decade ago, and giving a similar description of his activities to the one in his Facebook post.

Rawson has not denounced the League of the South or apologized for his participation in its events. “I am happy to talk about my past advocacy and activism on any issue,” he wrote on Facebook in 2025. “I am also proud of the advocacy work that I have been involved with for the past 13 years.”

It’s hard to emphasize just how extreme the League of the South is.

The group was founded in 1994, two years after Rawson was born, by a group of professors obsessed with reviving the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. They sought a “national divorce” in which the South would finally secede from the rest of America. They were led by Michael Hill, then a professor of British history at Stillman College, a historically Black university in Alabama. In his decades at the helm of the organization, Hill has spoken clearly about the League of the South’s goals, denouncing the “Browning of America” and pledging to spend his life “fighting to restore the South as White Man’s Land.”

“I pledge to be a white supremacist, a racist, an anti-Semite, a homophobe, a xenophobe, an Islamophobe, and any other sort of ‘phobe that benefits my people, so help me God!” Hill wrote in a 2016 screed.

High-ranking members serving under Hill have variously praised the system of chattel slavery in the South; organized a celebration of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; and participated in brawls at racist and antisemitic demonstrations, according to an extensive history of the group maintained by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Although often eschewing explicit Third Reich imagery, the League of the South has frequently collaborated with outright neo-Nazi groups, joining with a neo-Nazi collective called the Nationalist Front throughout the first Trump administration to organize a series of rallies, often marching alongside men carrying swastika flags. In 2018, Hill shared a video online featuring himself and others burning a copy of the Talmud, the primary source of Jewish theology, while sieg-heiling. “We stand for the white race against all our enemies, particularly the Jews,” he said.

That same year, Hill celebrated the Tree of Life shooting, when a white supremacist opened fire inside a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11 Jews. Sharing a video of the massacre online, Hill wrote: “It never gets old! What a great ad for us!”

The League of the South has claimed thousands of members throughout its existence. Back in 2014, Hill was especially excited about a new generation joining the organization. “Southern Nationalism is the cutting edge and the wave of our future for Southern youth,” he wrote on Facebook, posting a photo of a young man in a League of the South polo shirt at an anti-gay marriage rally in Richmond, Virginia.

The new recruit was Marshall Rawson.

Although Rawson claimed to have ended his involvement with the group over a decade ago, Florida Politics reported that he was a featured speaker, alongside Hill, at the group’s 2021 “Florida Freedom Conference.” A dispatch from that conference, published by journalist Tracey Eaton, noted that Rawson was “not a member of the league,” even if his speech articulated talking points perfectly in line with the League of the South’s secessionism.

“Southerners are ridiculed, scorned, and defamed at every turn,” Rawson said in his speech, adding: “Yes, is it OK to be white and of Caucasian origin. Yes, Southerners are a distinct people, a nation.”

On Aug. 12, 2017, while working as a reporter at HuffPost, I watched roughly a thousand white supremacists invade Charlottesville. They were converging on the city to hold a “Unite the Right” rally. It was the coming-out party for the so-called “alt-right,” the insurgent fascist movement emboldened by the rise of Donald Trump — the moment this movement would step offline and into the real world, showing all the power it had accrued.

In the weeks and months leading up to the rally — planned ostensibly to protest the slated removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in a Charlottesville park — organizers were explicit in stating that their actual goal for the event was to take America back for the white man. “August 12, 2017 is going to be the shot heard ‘round the world,” boasted Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer. “Thanks to the magnitude of this event, I truly believe, more than I ever did before, that we will eventually win this struggle, and secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. It is our destiny. Next stop: Charlottesville, VA. Final stop: Auschwitz. See ya there, faggots.”

A video posted to YouTube by a man associated with League of the South shows white supremacists arriving at Emancipation Park for the day’s events. “Marshall’s finally here!” the man can be heard saying from behind the camera, as Rawson appears in the camera’s frame.

“Good to see y’all!” Rawson says, before hugging him.

“How ya’ doin’ Mrs. Rawson?!” the man says, leaning over to hug Rawson’s wife, Megan.

The man then filmed Rawson shaking hands with other rallygoers, including now-former League of the South member Christopher Monzon. In the background of the footage other demonstrators can be seen waving the Reichs- und Nationalflagge, commonly known as the swastika flag, of the German Nazi Party.

The man’s video was originally over eight minutes long when it was posted to YouTube in 2017. Sometime in 2022 the video was edited down to only one minute, removing the footage of Rawson and his wife. But anti-fascist researchers had preserved the original cut, which they provided to Talking Points Memo.

An archived 2022 thread posted on X — when it was still called Twitter — by an anti-fascist researcher going by the name ShermanMarching provides other evidence of Rawson’s attendance at Unite the Right.

ShermanMarching shared that thread with TPM, in which they noted Rawson’s cameo in the viral, Emmy-award winning episode of Vice News Tonight about Unite the Right that aired on HBO. Rawson can be seen in the episode’s b-roll marching at the rally. Rawson is carrying a League of the South flag.

There is also a photo of Rawson standing near a phalanx of neo-Nazis carrying shields. (The photo — taken by a local photographer — is no longer online, but was archived by anti-fascist researchers.) Among the neo-Nazis near Rawson is James Alex Fields Jr., wearing the uniform of the white supremacist group Vanguard America. Not long after the photo was taken, Fields drove his 2010 Dodge Challenger into counterprotesters, sending bodies flying into the air and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. He was later convicted for the attack and sentenced to two life sentences.

At least two people associated with the League of the South were arrested that day. Tyler Watkins Davis was arrested for joining the white supremacist mob I saw beat and severely injure DeAndre Harris, a Black counterprotester. (Davis later took an Alford plea in the case, accepting a two-year-prison sentence without admitting guilt.) And member Jim O’Brien was arrested for carrying a pistol without a permit. (O’Brien maintains that he received his citation after the rally ended and that it was unrelated.)

Eight years later, O’Brien would be among the earliest donors to Rawson’s fledgling campaign for Florida House District 10, donating $300.

If Rawson really did end his involvement with the League of the South, as he has claimed, over a decade ago, public records indicate he nevertheless enjoyed the group’s support during his run for public office.

A TPM analysis of Rawson’s campaign donors found dozens of people associated with the League of the South donating to his campaign — as well as many other donors TPM identified as having separate white nationalist or extremist ties.

The League of the South donors to Rawson’s campaign include the group’s Florida chapter leader, Michael Tubbs, a former demolitions specialist in the Army’s Green Berets who pleaded guilty to stealing munitions from a military facility. A federal indictment alleged he had plotted to attack Black and Jewish-owned businesses; he was ultimately sentenced to eight years in prison. He donated $100. Gene Andrews — a League of the South member who works as the caretaker for the childhood home of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the early leaders of the Ku Klux Klan — donated $20.

Josh Doggrell, who was fired in 2015 from his job as a police lieutenant in Anniston, Alabama over his involvement with League of the South, gave Rawson’s campaign $100. “I donated money to Rawson’s campaign because I believe he is a fine man and will do a great job as a legislator,” he told TPM in an email. Doggrell — who is now a lieutenant in the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office in Alabama — wrote to TPM from a Gmail account that used a version of the “Celtic Cross” symbol commonly used by neo-Nazis as its Google profile picture. “I use it because I am a Christian and have Anglo-Celtic heritage,” he explained in a followup email.

Non-League of the South donors include Sam Dickson, a former lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan who became a leading figure in multiple white supremacist groups, including the Council of Conservative Citizens, the National Policy Institute, and the Charles Martel Society. Dickson — who once stated that “Negroes… are hopeless” — gave $1,000 to Rawson’s campaign.

“I was asked to give a donation and I felt he was fighting the good fight and he deserves support,” Dickson told TPM, recounting how Rawson asked him personally for a donation. He’d met Rawson on “multiple occasions” over the years, he explained, including at a conference hosted by James Edwards of the Political Cesspool, a longstanding white supremacist podcast.

Dickson added that Rawson had made it “very clear” to him “that he’s taking a stand against discrimination against white people.”

“I believe that white people, white Christian Americans, European Americans … are entitled to our own nation,” Dickson told TPM, before adding: “Diversity is not a source of strength. Diversity is a source of weakness.”

Andy Strickland, a Florida-based lawyer linked to the white supremacist group Identity Evropa, donated $1,000 to Rawson’s campaign. (In 2017 I met Strickland in Williston, Florida, where he was attending a dinner with white supremacist figurehead Richard Spencer.)

And Antelope Hill, a Pennsylvania-based white nationalist publishing house that specializes in translating and reprinting books written by German Nazi Party members, donated $100.

A number of donors to Rawson’s campaign marched alongside him in Charlottesville in 2017. They include Texas-based John Verdier, who took part in the infamous torch march on the eve of the Unite The Right demonstration, when neo-Nazis brandishing tiki-torches attacked students on the University of Virginia campus and chanted “Jews will not replace us!”

Verdier, who recently confessed to organizing a party celebrating the birthday of former Ku Klux Klan leader and neo-Nazi David Duke, donated $250 to Rawson’s campaign. (Reached for comment by TPM, Verdier did not respond to a question about his donation to Rawson, texting instead: “Good luck with your anti-white article.” Speaking recently to the Texas Observer, Verdier denied being a white supremacist. “I just want freedom to live on my own,” he said. “I want to live in a neighborhood with people like me, I just want to be able to send my kids to school with other kids of European ancestry.”)

David Duke’s own daughter, Kristine Duke, appears to have donated $200 to Rawson.

TPM reached out to all of the donors mentioned by name in this section for comment.

All told, dozens of white supremacist donors identified by TPM gave more than $15,000 to Rawson’s successful primary campaign. He won his election against Chase Brannan, a right-wing, Trump-supporting politician and son of the term-limited incumbent Rep. Chuck Brannan, by just over 2,000 votes.

Rawson has repeatedly posted bigoted statements to social media.

In August of 2023, according to Clay News & Views, Rawson on X cheered news that two men in Uganda faced the death penalty for being gay, advocating that such harsh penalties for queerness be brought to America. “This is how you would run the pervs and miscreants out of Florida,” he wrote, adding: “A one-way ticket to no more sexualizing of children and the lgbtq+ agenda in Florida!”

In a series of October 2023 posts, Rawson appeared to defend slavery, writing, according to Clay News & Views, that “God did many ‘racisms’ too.” Responding to a Christian pastor on X who argued that those who condone slavery should not be allowed in church leadership positions, Rawson argued there were biblical justifications for the institution of putting people in chains. “Apparently if you actually knew your Bible (Genesis 24:35 and every other corner of the Bible) you wouldn’t let God into your church either,” he wrote. “The irony of counterfeit Christians today.” (That account of Rawson’s is now protected).

Such Christians, Rawson wrote, have a “straight ticket to Hell.”

Despite these pronouncements under his own name on X, there are indications Rawson may have still felt the need to operate a pseudonymous social media account where he could express even more extreme sentiments. There are several datapoints linking an X account that posted from 2017 to 2020 under the handle “RockOfDixie” to Rawson. Some of the posts from this account compiled by researcher ShermanMarching seem to have since been deleted, and the account’s most recent post is from 2020.

The profile photo for the “RockOfDixie” account on X features a bodybuilder flexing on stage. That exact image can be found in an online gallery of photos from the 2016 National Physique Committee’s Galaxy Championships. The bodybuilder in the image is identified as Marshall Rawson, who finished fourth out of six contestants in the competition.

“RockOfDixie” only has three followers on X, one of whom is Rawson’s wife, Megan Rawson. (Megan did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

In one post on RockOfDixie, Rawson appeared to advocate for public lynchings.

“Multiculturalism kills and public lynchings worked,” he wrote in 2018.

Rawson did not reply to questions about whether he was behind the account.

There is an argument to be made that there is little daylight between the views of white supremacists like Rawson who descended on Charlottesville in 2017 and the MAGAfied Republican Party in 2026. Rawson, after all, is not the only attendee in that day’s events who went on to win public office.

Judd Blevins, a leader in the white supremacist group Identity Evropa who attended Unite the Right, was elected to city council in Enid, Oklahoma in 2023 even after anti-fascists exposed his participation in the event. (Local progressives eventually mounted a successful recall effort.)

Nick Fuentes, who was only 18 when he went to Charlottesville, has since become one of the most famous and powerful white supremacists of his generation, leading an army of young supporters he calls “groypers.” Fuentes has sat down for dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago; has held private meetings with powerful GOP officials and donors in Texas; and has overseen a wave of groypers infiltrating low-level positions on Capitol Hill. (“We have a generation of rabid, incompetent idiots,” a senior Republican congressional staffer griped to Politico.)

Some of the same neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville would go on to be arrested for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. When Trump returned to the White House in 2025, these neo-Nazis were pardoned.

The conspiracy theories and talking points espoused by the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville are now standard GOP fare. It is common for Republicans to talk about the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, or to advocate “remigration,” a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. Stephen Miller, the powerful White House advisor whose worldview was shaped by “alt-right” propaganda, is overseeing an attempt to forcibly expel millions of immigrants from the country.

“Congratulations to Marshall Rawson, our Republican Nominee for Florida House District 10!” the Florida GOP wrote on X after Rawson’s primary win, days after Florida Politics published its article detailing parts of Rawson’s involvement in the League of the South.

“Ready to fight for North Florida and keep our state strong and free,” the Florida GOP wrote. “Looking forward to a BIG win!”