One father of a marcher in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend
is denouncing his own son after the young man was seen on national news
spouting hate.
In a letter to Fargo, North Dakota’s Inforum, father Pearce Tefft wrote that his family wasn’t sure where his son Peter picked up his racist beliefs.
“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,” Tefft wrote, clarifying that he certainly didn’t learn such
values at home.
“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,” he continued. However, he acknowledged, that Peter chose another
path.
The family has remained largely silent, but Tefft said these recent
events pushed them over the edge. Remaining silent, he believed, would
be 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.
He went on to say that his son is no longer welcome in their home or
at family gatherings until he renounces the hate. The beliefs of the
younger Tefft has also brought hate targeted at his relatives, who are
being considered guilty by association.
His father recalled a time when his son joked, “The thing about us
fascists is, it’s not that we don’t believe in freedom of speech. You
can say whatever you want. We’ll just throw you in an oven,” Tefft
recalled.
“Peter, you will have to shovel our bodies into the oven, too. Please
son, renounce the hate, accept and love all,” the father closed.
“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,” his nephew Jacob Scott said. “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.”
