A father has publicly disavowed his son for participating in Saturday’s violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Pearce Tefft of Fargo, North Dakota, shared a letter Monday morning renouncing his son's white supremacist ideas. Pearce said he and his family are completely against his son’s beliefs and insists racism and hate were not a part of his upbringing.
“I, along with all of his siblings and his entire family, wish to loudly repudiate my son’s vile, hateful and racist rhetoric and actions. We do not know specifically where he learned these beliefs. He did not learn them at home,” Pearce wrote in a letter published on InForum. “I have shared my home and hearth with friends and acquaintances of every race, gender and creed. I have taught all of my children that all men and women are created equal. That we must love each other all the same.”
Pearce went on to say he and his family had been silent about Peter’s extremism, but after Saturday’s deadly demonstration, he realized silence was a mistake.
“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 wrote. “Peter Tefft, my son, is not welcome at our family gatherings any longer. I pray my prodigal son will renounce his hateful beliefs and return home. Then and only then will I lay out the feast.”
Peter was identified publicly after his brief interview during the rally went viral.
When asked about his father’s letter, Peter told InForum he had no ill feelings toward his family. He did, however, say he was angry about the threats his family has received since he was identified.
Peter’s nephew, Jacob Scott, also released a statement this week, condemning his uncle’s actions.
In brief, we reject him wholly – both him personally as a vile person who has HIMSELF made violent threats against our family, and also his hideous ideology, which we abhor. We are all bleeding-heart liberals who believe in the fundamental equality of all human beings. Peter 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. He scares us all, we don't feel safe around him, and we don't know how he came to be this way. My grandfather feels especially grieved, as though he has failed as a father.
