THE RIGHT WING
The Largest Fascist Rally in Recent Memory Is Expected This Week
The August 12 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, looks like it will be the largest organized racist demonstration in recent memory.
This week's "Unite the Right" event will be different. While attempting to pull from the same broad pool of Trumpists, this time the rally will be led by a star-studded cast of fascist and other white nationalist leaders and groups. Those supporting it claim over a thousand people will come.
Richard Spencer will headline the event; he attended college in Charlottesville and given the repeated rallies, it looks like he hopes to turn the town into an organizing base. Another famous alt-right figure, Mike Enoch of The Right Stuff, will also speak.
The organizer of "Unite the Right," Jason Kessler, is a white nationalist who wrote for the Daily Caller. Embracing the racist creed that white people are an oppressed group, he's said that "the number one thing" he wants from the rally is "to destigmatize Pro-White advocacy."
Kessler originally sought the attendance of a wider swath of Trumpist activists, going so far as to denounce the earlier KKK rally. But as the event approaches, it has become more clearly an open white nationalist -- and even neo-Nazi -- event. Four groups in the Nationalist Front, a national umbrella organization of racist groups, are attending. Matthew Heimbach of the fascist Traditionalist Worker Party and Michael Hill of the neo-Confederate League of the South will both speak. The National Socialist Movement, the largest US neo-Nazi party, recently announced it will attend. (Their presence is the welcome sign for hardened, open neo-Nazis -- who've generally shied away from being visible at past alt-right events -- to come in force.) And last, the fascist alt-right group Vanguard America, which recently joined the Nationalist Front, will be there.
They will be joined by alt-right figures who stop just short of claiming the mantle of racial purity for themselves, but will happily collaborate with those who do. These include Augustus Invictus, a Florida lawyer who has defended the neo-Nazi skinhead gang American Front and ran as a Libertarian Party candidate for Senate, and Baked Alaska, a former Buzzfeed editor who now promotes white nationalism. Members of the alt-right fight gang the Proud Boys are also expected.
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/largest-fascist-rally-charlottesville
The Largest Fascist Rally in Recent Memory Is Expected This Week
The August 12 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, looks like it will be the largest organized racist demonstration in recent memory.
This week's "Unite the Right" event will be different. While attempting to pull from the same broad pool of Trumpists, this time the rally will be led by a star-studded cast of fascist and other white nationalist leaders and groups. Those supporting it claim over a thousand people will come.
Richard Spencer will headline the event; he attended college in Charlottesville and given the repeated rallies, it looks like he hopes to turn the town into an organizing base. Another famous alt-right figure, Mike Enoch of The Right Stuff, will also speak.
The organizer of "Unite the Right," Jason Kessler, is a white nationalist who wrote for the Daily Caller. Embracing the racist creed that white people are an oppressed group, he's said that "the number one thing" he wants from the rally is "to destigmatize Pro-White advocacy."
Kessler originally sought the attendance of a wider swath of Trumpist activists, going so far as to denounce the earlier KKK rally. But as the event approaches, it has become more clearly an open white nationalist -- and even neo-Nazi -- event. Four groups in the Nationalist Front, a national umbrella organization of racist groups, are attending. Matthew Heimbach of the fascist Traditionalist Worker Party and Michael Hill of the neo-Confederate League of the South will both speak. The National Socialist Movement, the largest US neo-Nazi party, recently announced it will attend. (Their presence is the welcome sign for hardened, open neo-Nazis -- who've generally shied away from being visible at past alt-right events -- to come in force.) And last, the fascist alt-right group Vanguard America, which recently joined the Nationalist Front, will be there.
They will be joined by alt-right figures who stop just short of claiming the mantle of racial purity for themselves, but will happily collaborate with those who do. These include Augustus Invictus, a Florida lawyer who has defended the neo-Nazi skinhead gang American Front and ran as a Libertarian Party candidate for Senate, and Baked Alaska, a former Buzzfeed editor who now promotes white nationalism. Members of the alt-right fight gang the Proud Boys are also expected.
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/largest-fascist-rally-charlottesville
