Bay Area girds for protests to come
White nationalists said to plan rallies in wake of violence
The violence and death sparked by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend was, to most people, a frightening look into a fringe hate-group philosophy that experts say is resurgent across the country.
But the images of Ku Klux Klansmen marching and a reported Nazi sympathizer allegedly driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters — killing a woman and injuring at least 19 — suggest a cultural rift is stretching from the old plantation homes in the south, across the Great Plains all the way into the liberal enclaves in the Bay Area.
With the mayhem in Virginia still fresh, white nationalists are reportedly planning rallies in San Francisco and Berkeley later this month, raising questions about how the events should be handled or confronted.
“What’s happening now is that since the change of the administration in Washington, these folks think they have a right to come out and assert themselves,” said George Holland, an Oakland lawyer
“This is about confrontation. This is about people coming to commit violence.” Jesse Arreguin, mayor of Berkeley, on white nationalist protesters planning rallies in his city
and president of the local branch of the NAACP. “They are trying to bait people into physical violence. They come armed and prepared to fight.”
President Trump denounced the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis on Monday after being widely criticized for an earlier denunciation of violence “on many sides.” He said the Justice Department had launched a civil rights investigation into the killing of a counterprotester at the rally.
The Virginia mayhem echoed a demonstration in Berkeley on April 15 that was led by Nathan Damigo, who was also one of the Virginia organizers. The 31-year-old white supremacist who grew up in Silicon Valley was caught on video punching a dreadlocked woman in the face during the Berkeley clash.
Damigo claimed he punched the 19-year-old woman because she was a threat, and he has not been charged. On Monday, he told The Chronicle that police were to blame for the violence during the Charlottesville protest, which started as a demonstration against the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
He said police ignored a permit and kicked his group out of the park, running them through a gantlet of counterprotesters wielding bats and sticks. He did not take any responsibility for the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was run over by a car that was driven through a crowd. James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Maumee, Ohio, was arrested on second-degree murder and other charges.
Damigo said Fields may have been caught in the middle of a violent crowd, panicked and lost control of the vehicle.
“We simply don’t know what the intent was,” said Damigo. “I do feel that the blood rests in the hands of local law enforcement as well as the city officials in Charlottesville, because (they) created a scenario that created chaos and violence.”
Damigo argues that an antiwhite culture has developed in the United States that is destructive and harmful to society.
“Diversity is divisive,” he said. “The idea that we are going to unite around some abstract principle — democracy, freedom or love — that simply is not going to work.”
His view appears to be spreading.
“There are tens of thousands of neo-Nazis and white supremacy groups in the U.S., and they seem to have formed alliances with other fringe groups like militias who are sympathetic,” said Jack Glaser, a social psychologist and professor at UC Berkeley who studies prejudice and discrimination.
A permit has been issued for a Patriot Prayer group to gather Aug. 26 at Crissy Field in San Francisco, according to Sonja Hanson, a spokeswoman for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The group is ostensibly religious, but its purpose is really “an attempt to provoke black-clad ideologues on the left into acts of violence,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.
“The park will review and assess safety,” Hanson said. “We’re planning accordingly.”
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said he does not condone hate speech, bigotry or violence, but noted that the gathering will be on federal land and that the U.S. Constitution protects the group’s right to express an opinion, limiting his ability to respond.
“I ask that when they chant of hate, San Francisco chants of love,” Lee said.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said another group, No Marxism in America, is planning an event on Aug. 27 at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley, the site of earlier clashes between far-right groups and blackclad counter-protesters. The group has not yet applied for a permit, but police are making plans to respond should the gathering turn violent, he said.
“We will be prepared to keep our community safe and prevent any destruction of property,” Arreguin said. In light of what happened in Charlottesville over the weekend, he said, “I’m deeply concerned.
“If this was really about freedom of speech — the city of Berkeley welcomes freedom of speech,” he said. “This isn’t about that. This is about confrontation. This is about people coming to commit violence and spout hate speech and promote bigotry and promote white supremacy.”
Such groups are strategically targeting Berkeley, San Francisco and the college town of Charlottesville because people there are liberal and likely to rise up in response. It’s an old neo-Nazi tactic that goes back to an attempt in 1977 by the National Socialist Party of America to march on Skokie, Ill., where many Holocaust survivors lived.
“They’re trying to agitate a lot of people into reacting to them,” said Lecia Brooks, an Oakland native who has studied the white supremacist and alt-right movements for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “And they know that there is a lot of (anti-fascist groups) in these places, too, who will try to confront them.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center counts 79 hate groups in California out of 917 it is tracking nationwide.
“They’re strong (in California). I’d say they’re very strong,” Brooks said, noting that Damigo’s white supremacist group Identity Evropa is one of those on the rise. “They’re determined to make a name for themselves.”
Last week, Brooks co-authored a Southern Poverty Law Center guide on what to do when such groups come to a campus or city.
“Alt-right personalities know their cause is helped by news footage of large jeering crowds, heated confrontations and outright violence at their events. It allows them to play the victim and gives them a larger platform for their racist message,” according to the guide. “Denying an alt-right speaker of such a spectacle is the worst insult they can endure.”
Nonviolent opponents of hate groups should discourage anti-fascist groups from attending these events, Brooks said. The self-described altright thrives on physical confrontations “and they get disappointed if the antifa doesn’t show up,” Brooks said.
When anti-fascist groups show up and start mixing it up with the hate groups, she said, media accounts often describe “a clash” instead of focusing on the hate groups. The hate groups chalk that up as a “win” because they have created chaos.
Arreguin said city and law enforcement officials have tried to ask anti-fascist groups not to attend alt-right events, but they showed up anyway.
“The antifas feel that they have to come and have to confront them,” Arreguin said. “So you have two sides who are so passionate and ideological about what they believe in that it’s hard to talk some sense into them.”
Glaser said having a black president for eight years angered many racists, and Trump emboldened them with his anti-immigration campaign speeches and, most recently, his delay in condemning white supremacist violence.
But Glaser characterized the latest uprisings as more the last gasp of a once mighty minority than the resurgence of white supremacy in America.
“There are always going to be extremists like this, but I don't think there is a mass movement toward white supremacy,” Glaser said. “If anything, there has been an awakening, a greater recognition of the problems racial minorities face, and this is, in part, a backlash to the awakening. You can see it in their rallies where they chant, ‘You will not replace us.’ They are feeling threatened.”
Chronicle staff writer Kurtis Alexander contributed to this report.
Peter Fimrite and Joe Garofoli are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: pfimrite@ sfchronicle.com, jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com