A Lee Airbnb host was banned on Sunday from the short-term rental site over her connections to a well-known neo-Nazi.
The Loon’s Nest Lodge at Silver Lake, owned by Kathie Greear, can no longer rent her rooms through Airbnb, according to Elle Wye, director of communications for the platform. A neo-Nazi group leader stayed and worked at the lodge when guests were present, in violation of Airbnb policies, she said.
“As a result, we’ve removed the associated listings from the platform in line with our policies,” Wye said.
The news comes less than three weeks after Greear wrote a letter to the editor of the Lincoln News in support of Christopher Pohlhaus and the swastika, claiming it has many meanings outside its use by Nazis. Her letter followed a Bangor Daily News story about Pohlhaus and his plans to build a white ethnostate in Maine.
On the lodge’s Facebook page, Pohlhaus is pictured pressing cider there last fall.
Fears and anger about Pohlhaus have spurred Mainers to contact legislators and organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center with tips about his activities. When Greear publicly expressed her feelings about Pohlhaus, many people on social media questioned whether she was violating Airbnb policies.
Pohlhaus displays the swastika on his body, on flags, clothing and gear as a banner of his belief in Adolf Hitler. Pohlhaus also has shared with followers repeatedly on the encrypted message board Telegram that he is training recruits in Springfield for the coming race war.
Greear declined to comment when reached by phone Sunday evening.
She expressed anger over people posting on her Facebook page that she was a Nazi sympathizer following the publication of her letter.
“I’m tired of the way the media reports things,” she said. “Other than that I have nothing else to say.”
In her letter to the editor, Greear defended Pohlhaus.
“He is a very talented, intelligent young man,” she wrote. “He is also passionate about his convictions and can be loud, intimidating, not meaning to be.”
Airbnb has standards and policies governing who can use its platform. The organization has a strict standard against people with neo-Nazi ties, Airbnb said on Sunday.
Pohlhaus was banned from Airbnb several years ago, according to administrators.
Before the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of Heather Heyer, Airbnb pulled the reservations of white supremacists who booked Airbnb stays through the neo-Nazi website the Daily Storm.
In 2019, the platform banned 60 white supremacists from using Airbnb after a data leak on another neo-Nazi platform revealed their identities.
In July, Pohlhaus was banned at the Bangor Planet Fitness because of his swastika and other Nazi symbols on his clothing.
Last week Maine Sen. Joe Baldacci, who previously called on fellow state legislators to take measures to get him out of Maine, talked about legislation ahead of next year that would outlaw Pohlhaus’s neo-Nazi paramilitary camp in Penobscot County, as well as ban full-face coverings for people openly carrying firearms.
