WARNING: This story contains distressing content.

Hamilton’s mayor and anti-racism advocates are among those condemning a white supremacist group’s demonstration on the weekend outside city hall.

In Nationalist-13’s latest demonstration in the city, men dressed in black and wearing masks held a banner bearing the group’s name and performed a Nazi salute, according to pictures viewed by CBC Hamilton.

Hamilton-based Nationalist-13, also known as NS13, is a group known as a fight club, also called an active club within white nationalist circles.

According to a months-long CBC visual investigation in collaboration with The Fifth Estate, active clubs are part of a decentralized white supremacist and neo-Nazi network that has grown globally in recent years, increasingly moving from online forums to real-world training groups and anti-immigration protests.

The CBC investigation found these groups are getting together to train in local spaces such as gyms and parks in Hamilton and Niagara.

Hamilton police said they were made aware of NS13’s gathering on Sunday afternoon, but the group members had already dispersed by the time officers got to city hall.

“There were no reports of criminal activity related to this incident,” said a police news release.

Elected leaders urged to ‘pay close attention’

In a statement, however, Mayor Andrea Horwath called the gathering a “blatant act of hate,” “deeply offensive” and “unacceptable.”

“I am deeply disturbed to learn that a white supremacist organization descended upon Hamilton city hall for a gathering glorifying hate,” she said.

Horwath declined CBC’s request for an interview.

Lyndon George, executive director of the Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre, said in a statement that elected leaders need to “pay close attention” to public and organized gatherings like the one held on Sunday, as well as the messaging these groups are trying to portray.

Group becoming more public than ever

In late November, members of the same group gathered on Main Street East and John Street South on a Saturday, holding a banner with their logo and another with a hateful message.

At the time, Insp. Carolyne Rashford said Hamilton police were notified about a group of about 10 to 15 “masked individuals,” but by the time officers arrived, the group members had left the area.

Police said then there was also no “evidence of criminality” at that time. Rashford said Hamilton police were working with provincial and federal partners to monitor extremist groups and “actively monitoring to see what we learn and we share that information with our policing partners.”

In the last year or so, NS13 has moved to become more public than ever before. They have joined members of other active clubs in recent anti-immigration protests in Toronto, London and Hamilton, holding banners calling for “mass deportations.”

Following the masked demonstration on Nov. 29, downtown councillor Cameron Kroetsch said he wanted to see city leaders do “something more demonstrable” to combat hate.

“I understand that cities can’t just sort of direct that the police force go out and do these kinds of things or direct certain activities to happen in certain resolutions to occur, I get that. It’s a challenge facing many cities,” he said.

“But we can demonstrate that we care, demonstrate that we’re listening and send a strong message, and that’s something we’re not really doing right now collectively as a group.”

‘These things don’t appear out of nowhere’

Caitlin Craven, executive director of the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, told CBC in December there is a feeling of “utter exhaustion” at having to see and then say “the same things over and over,” after such demonstrations.

“Every single time that happens, it has a large ripple effect,” she said, calling for policies and systems that better support people who experience racism and hate so they feel safe in their own communities, including economically.

“We’re so focused on the response to a specific incident when what we’re really talking about here is a rise in organized violence — organized, systemic violence that targets communities… These things don’t appear out of nowhere,” she said.