Rally in D.C. ends without violence
Small group is vastly outnumbered by counterprotesters
A small group of white supremacists made an early exit Sunday from a planned rally after counterprotesters outnumbered them.
WASHINGTON — After weeks of hype, white supremacists managed to muster just a couple of dozen supporters Sunday in the nation’s capital for the anniversary of their deadly rally in Charlottesville, Va., finding themselves greatly outnumbered by counterprotesters, police officers and representatives of the news media.
But even with the low turnout, almost no one walked away with the sense that the nation’s divisions were any closer to mending.
Indeed, the streets of downtown Washington were charged Sunday with tension, emotion and noise, particularly in the afternoon, as right-wing agitator Jason Kessler and perhaps 20 fellow members of the far right — some wearing bright red “Make America Great Again” hats — marched under heavy police escort from the Metro station in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood to their barricaded and heavily protected rally area near the White House.
They were surrounded by a vast, rolling plume of counterprotesters, who hurled insults and chanted “Shame!”
“You killed a girl in Charlottesville!” one voice in the crowd yelled, referring to Heather Heyer, a woman who was fatally injured when a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters a year ago.
‘Much healing to do’
A similar dynamic to the one in Washington played out in Charlottesville on Sunday, where few if any far-right demonstrators could be found, and where the most palpable tensions developed between leftwing protesters and police, whose presence in the city was heavy and, some argued, heavyhanded. Heyer's mother, Susan Bro, visited the site of her daughter’s attack on Sunday afternoon. She laid flowers at a makeshift memorial and addressed a crowd. “There's so much healing to do,” Bro said. “We have a huge racial problem in our city and in our country. We have got to fix this or we'll be right back here in no time.”
Only a handful of arrests were reported in Charlottesville on Sunday, including a man and a woman who got into a fistfight after the man saluted the town’s statue of Robert E. Lee. By early evening, the security cordon around the downtown area had been lifted, hours ahead of schedule.
Hate crime rising
In Washington, the mere threat of another large turnout from the far right, coupled with a large turnout from the far left — among them, hundreds of black-clad, masked and helmeted anti-fascist protesters known as antifa — seemed to indicate that the United States was not over its turn toward Europeanstyle politics by street protest.
It was also a return to the way extreme-right demonstrations in America tended to play out before Charlottesville.
The template starts when a group like the Ku Klux Klan announces a rally. Next comes news coverage, fevered and intense.
That prompts a huge number of activists, police officers and everyday people to turn out, dwarfing what is often a pathetically small band of extremists in hoods or armbands.
That does not mean that hate is on the wane. According to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, there were a total of 1,038 hate crimes recorded in the 10 largest U.S. cities last year, an increase of 12 percent from 2016 and the highest figure in more than a decade.
Stormy weather
In Washington on Sunday, the far-right rally felt as if it was over before it had really begun. It was officially scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m., but the small band of extremists arrived early, finished their demonstration and left before that time.
Their effort may have been diminished by the numerous news reports published about the right-wing protesters who were in Charlottesville last year, identifying them and sometimes leading to them losing their jobs.
Another factor was a thunderstorm that rolled over Washington around 5 p.m., dampening enthusiasm and thinning out the crowds. As the rain began falling in earnest, the white supremacists began leaving Lafayette Park in front of the White House.
Counterprotesters in the park booed them, chanting “na-nana-na, hey hey, goodbye,” and their mood soon grew celebratory.