'Unite the Right' Rally: Low Attendance and an Early Exit by White Nationalists in D.C.
‘Unite the Right’ Rally: Low Attendance and an Early Exit by White Nationalists in D.C.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/12/us/politics/charlottesville-va-protest-unite-the-right.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
By Noah Weiland and Andy Parsons
Aug. 12, 2018
WASHINGTON — A year after the race-fueled violence in Charlottesville, Va., a small group of white nationalists marched through downtown Washington on Sunday on their way to a rally in front of the White House.
It was over almost as soon as it began.
The white supremacists were met along their march route and at the rally site by thousands of counterdemonstrators denouncing racism and white supremacy. The white nationalists, who numbered about two dozen, stayed in Lafayette Square, a park just north of the White House, for a short time and left before 6 p.m.
They had been scheduled to hold a two-hour rally in the square beginning at 5:30. A spokesman for the National Park Service confirmed that the white nationalists had ended their event by that time.
Counterprotesters who had been shouting “Go home, Nazis, go home!” suddenly started booing when the white nationalists did just that.
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A new song then broke out, “Na na na na, na na na na! Hey, hey, goodbye!”
With the white nationalists gone, the mood among the counterprotestors grew mildly celebratory, although rain led many to leave. Waves of counterprotesters walked east down H Street, with one chanting, “I believe that we just won.”
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After marching from a neighborhood just west of the White House, the handful of supremacists settled in a pocket of Lafayette Square, tucked underneath trees. Many of them carried American flags, and several wore President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign hats.
The group’s organizer, Jason Kessler, stood on a platform with a microphone, addressing attendees who arrived before the event was scheduled to begin. He blamed a harsh law enforcement response after last year’s Charlottesville rally for his group’s meager showing.
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Counterprotesters in Lafayette Square stood against fencing, shouting and booing in the direction of the white supremacists.
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“Riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division,” he wrote on Twitter on Saturday morning. “We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!”
Mr. Trump’s words were reminiscent of his reluctance a year ago after the deadly Charlottesville rally to single out white nationalists, instead blaming “both sides” for the violence, and appearing to draw a moral equivalence between hate groups and counterprotests.
The rally in Washington on Sunday, called Unite the Right II, was scheduled to take over Lafayette Square for two hours in the evening. The Unite the Right group planned to have up to 400 people at the rally, according to the permit it received from the National Park Service, though the group was considerably smaller.
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Protesters near Lafayette Square on Saturday, a day before the Unite the Right rally.CreditHilary Swift for The New York Times
The Park Service, which permits around 750 First Amendment demonstrations annually in the national capital region, granted one last week to Mr. Kessler. “In anyone’s recollection, there has never been a First Amendment permit that’s been denied,” said Mike Litterst, a Park Service spokesman. “There wasn’t much discussion or question of whether or not it would be issued.”
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James Murray, an assistant director in the Secret Service’s Office of Protective Operations, had warned in a letter on Monday to the Park Service that it was possible that tension between groups could lead to the same kind of violence that occurred in Portland, Ore., last weekend, where a right-wing rally turned violent after, the police said, a group began throwing rocks and bottles at officers.
Mr. Murray wrote that some of the same counterprotesters who seized downtown streets at the presidential inauguration in January 2017 were also interested in Sunday’s demonstrations, and were “known to have engaged in violent and destructive activity.” Members of the sometimes violent movement known as antifa were expected to be among the counterprotesters on Sunday.
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“Very few of our visitors share the views that will be expressed in Lafayette Square this weekend,” she said.
Reporting was contributed by Hawes Spencer and Michael Wines from Charlottesville, Va., and Catie Edmondson and Gardiner Harris from Washington.
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