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The organizers of an alt-right rally in Boston this weekend have vowed to move ahead with the event in the wake of violence at a similar event in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday.

The demonstration is just one of several so-called free speech rallies planned across the United States this week, with right-wing events planned later in the summer.

The rally on Saturday IS NOT CANCELED. Not sure where this rumor came from, the Boston Free Speech rallys organizers wrote on Facebook late Monday.

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Members of white nationalist protesters hold shields as they clash against a group of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12. Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Information about the potential shutdown was posted Monday on 4Chan, an anonymous internet forum that has become a home for hard-right ideologues. The same day Bostons mayor Martin Walsh said, I dont want them here. We dont need them here.

The group wrote online that the Boston Police Department and the city are ignoring their calls but that their permit for the rally remains.

Walsh said Monday that he is exploring ways to shut down the rally over fears of similar bloodshed to that in Charlottesville, where one counterprotester died and dozens were seriously injured after a car that police believewas driven by an alt-right member plowed into a group of pedestrians.

We are not in any way associated with the organizers of the Charlottesville rally, the Boston events organizers wrote on Facebook. But the event shares speakers in common with the violent Virginia rally.

Speakers at the event include alt-right figures such as Tim Baked Alaska Gionet, who was a speaker in Charlottesville. Kyle Based Stick Man Chapman and Joe Biggs, a former contributor to the conspiracy theory website InfoWars, will also be there.

Related: Trump retweets alt-right leader who has praised white supremacist Richard Spencer

The so-called alt-right movement is a loose-knit group of racist white nationalists, nationalists, conspiracy theoristsand misogynists.

Some of the speakers began to pull out of the Boston event Monday, including alt-right figure Gavin McInnes, who has written for racist websites, including Vdare, and is a contributor at The Rebel, an alt-right online media outlet.

In addition to Boston, rallies are also being planned for Saturday, August 19, in Mountain View, California; Los Angeles; New York City;Washington, D.C.;Austin, Texas; Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Seattle. These events are being organized by alt-right figure Jack Posobiec in opposition to Google and in solidarity with former Google engineer James Damore. Posobiec has said specifically said that the event is not an alt-right event but is open to anyone who values free speech.

Damore was fired as an engineer with the internet search giant last week after he wrote a memo criticizing the companys diversity policies. Damore said Tuesday that he does not want the alt-rights support. I do not support the alt-right, he told CNN Tech. Just because someone supports me doesnt mean I support them.

The neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, which has been promoting these events as part of what it branded the Summer of Hate, was shut down Monday following the Charlottesville rally after it mocked counterprotester Heather Heyer, who was killed when a car plowed into the crowd. We are going to start doing this nonstop. Across the country, the site said after the Charlottesville rally.

These rallies arent about popularizing white nationalism, readan anonymous post on 4Chan on Sunday, but about normalizing white nationalism.

We need more of these in the future, it said, hopefully with an even larger turnout.

Another rally is being planned for September 16 in Richmond, Virginia, around a monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee to protest the removal of similar statues from public spaces in Civil Warera Southern states. White supremacist Richard Spencer is also seeking permission to speak next month at the University of Florida.

Counterprotests are being planned in response to the rally in Boston as well, with the Black Lives Matter civil rights group saying they will march against the alt-right.

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Where Are the Next Alt-Right, White Nationalist Rallies Planned? - Newsweek

The battle to curb America's deep-rooted and systemic issues with racism, hatred and oppression grew violent Saturday, after a white supremacy rally dubbed "Unite the Right"clashed with counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A car plowed through swaths of demonstrators rejecting a group of racists, neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right,killing one person and injuring 19 others. Organizers of the right-wing demonstration provided shields for those in attendance, encouraging them to respond to the counterprotesters with physical aggression.

Related: Fox News Blames The Media, Not Nazis, For Charlottesville And White Supremacy

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Across the country, Americans are seekingways to add their voices to the fight against white supremacy, terror and violence. But the nonprofit advocacy organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) tells Newsweek there are better ways to defeat hate groups besides showing up to their ralliesand that clashing with counterprotesters is exactly what the alt-right wants.

"Charlottesville is not the end of this;this is going to continue,"Lecia Brooks, the centers director of outreach, tells Newsweek. This was just the most coordinated event to date."

The alt-right has a number of upcoming major demonstrations across the nations college campuses, including one at University of California, Berkeley, and another at Texas A&M University, where the group has heavily recruited young white males since its inception. While theyre on college campuses, alt-right leaders such asRichard Spencer and Milo Yiannopolous expect to be met with countless demonstrations from activists and the left. "They feed on attention,"Brooks says.

But reclaiming the national conversation on intolerance will require activists to drown it out from afar, according to the SPLCs community guidelines on fighting hate.

"Take part in hosting alternate events far away from [the alt-rights] scheduled demonstrations, and draw all the attention away from them,"Brooks said. "If it's an upcoming event and you cant make it to the area, standing in solidarity where you may happen to be is just as effective. We have to take back the narrative and take over the story. That would be a beautiful thing."

Protesters bearing slogans against white nationalism in New York City's Times Square on August 13. Reuters

The Indivisible movement, created in the aftermath of Trump's shocking electoral victory, announced on Sunday plans for at least 682 "events in solidarity"with the counterprotesters of Charlottesville, writing in a statement to Newsweek that thegroup will combine with other organizations such asDemocracy for America, Women's March and Peoples Action "in solidarity with our brave friends in Charlottesville who put themselves at risk to fight against white supremacy."

The SPLC and other advocacy organizations also recommend donating to groups on the ground, organizing against the alt-right and responding to such rallies in real time. Interfaith organizations like Congregate Cville, a Charlottesville coalition that came together ahead of "Unite the Right"and called on nearly 1,000 religious leaders to travel to the city for the rallies and reject the groups message, are often some of the most vocal opponents to major alt-right demonstrations, notes the SPLC.

To be sure, drowning out the alt-right with demonstrations across the country and away from their controversial rallies wont put a definitive end to the movements intolerance. That will require a swift rejection of the groups hateful ideologies and practices from the most powerful people in the worldone that did not occur when the president initially spoke about the demonstrations over the weekend.

After initially describing the rally as an "egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides,"Trump said Monday groups like the KKK and neo-Nazis are "repugnant"and represent the opposite of American values.

But "this is by no means over,"Brooks says, "and it won't be over just because we finally said the right words."

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How To Stop The 'Alt-Right's' Hate And Intolerance After Charlottesville Riots - Newsweek

Members of the alt-right like to depict their movement as an irreverent response to political correctness.

On Saturday, in Charlottesville, Virginia, James Alex Fields Jr. drove a car through that faade, in a terrorist attack that killed Heather Heyer and injured 19 others who had gathered in opposition to the white-nationalist movement.

It was a defining moment, but not a moment for a pause. More alt-right rallies are scheduled for the coming Saturday, in at least nine cities. These events will provide an important barometer for the future of this movement, depending on how many people turn out, who those people are, and how they conduct themselves. For the alt-right, the coming weekend represents a critical testwhich may reveal it gathering force, dissipating, or changing in significant ways. By Saturday night, it may be clear where its headed.

Take the Statues Down

The alt-right has become an umbrella community for the American far-right, a loosely defined movement with a strong center of gravity online and which encompasses a large number of subnetworks.

Some of these subgroups identify primarily as the alt-right, but many are affiliated with more specific strains of white-nationalist ideologyincluding the Ku Klux Klan, Odinists, Neo-Nazis, and more, many in full regalia lest anyone miss the point.

The prevalence of white nationalism within the alt-right has led to a deep internal split between its overtly racist wing and its less overtly racist wing. Members of the latter faction might be charitably described as less racist or as non-racist, but most are pretty open about the fact that their primary concern is the specter of bad publicity. The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville graphically illustrated a couple of important points regarding this internal division.

First, the overtly racist wing of the alt-right is clearly ascendant. White supremacist protests in early 2016 were embarrassingly small. An estimated 500 white nationalists turned out for the rally Saturday. While this is still a small number in the absolute sense, the trend is disturbing.

Second, Charlottesville put to rest the idea that the alt-right can be primarily defined as fun-loving transgressive hipsters or an elaborate practical joke (if anyone still really believed that). Even before the culminating act of terrorism, the rally in Charlottesville illustrated that the umbrella of the alt-right is an effective means to mobilize a highly visible mix of old-school white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Offline, at least, this isnt the new white nationalism; its the old white nationalism as the primary beneficiary of the activity generated by a looser collection of people online.

Third, the composition of the crowd in Charlottesville shows that there are more potential fracture lines in the alt-right than the optics of white supremacy. Since the 1970s, white nationalism in the United States has been a sectarian affair. White nationalists all generally agree white people should be in charge, but they have many different competing beliefs about why that is the case, and how white rule should be implemented. These differences are not trivial, and for decades they have prevented a broadly concerted campaign of action by white nationalists in America. Charlottesville was an example of how the alt-right umbrella community can muster numbers that Odinists or the KKK alone cannot.

The events scheduled for this coming Saturdaya free speech rally in Boston and marches scheduled in nine cities to protest Googles firing of an employee who wrote a screed against diversitywill help clarify where all the chaotic elements that comprise the alt-right are headed in the near-term future. (The anti-Google protests are slated for Atlanta, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Seattle, New York, Washington, Austin, Boston, and Mountain View, California. On Sunday, organizers released a statement condemning violence and insisting that they are in no way associated with any group who organized in Charlottesville.)

Prior to Fieldss attack, Charlottesville was on track to be a clear victory for the alt-right. While attendance of 500 people is a pittance compared to most mainstream political events, it represents a marked upswing from 2016. Simply turning out that many people in one place was an unqualified win.

The fact that few participants sought to conceal their identities was a bold statement about the mainstreaming of white nationalism, which did not go unnoticed during an ominous torch-wielding event the night before the formal rally. Even after the Unite the Right rally itself was shut down by authorities as an unlawful assembly in the face of escalating violence, the event was seen as a show of strength.

But the terrorist attack by Fields, who attended the rally alongside a neo-Nazi group known as Vanguard America, was a game-changer. Videos posted online depicted his car accelerating down a street to target a group of pedestrians with devastating effect. The horrifying attack, recorded in graphic detail, sparked a massive national outpouring of outrage and condemnation. When Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler attempted to hold a press conference on Sunday in Charlottesville, he was chased away by a crowd of people shouting murderer and shame.

The question now is how the alt-right will process the backlash, and an early indicator will be seen in Saturdays marches and rallies.

Terrorism is a double-edged sword. While it can help mobilize the most radical segments of an extremist movement, it simultaneously alienates the least radical, including people who are loosely supportive of an extremist movement, or tolerant or dismissive of its rhetorical excesses.

The risk that terrorism entails for extremists was clear after the Oklahoma City bombing, when the anti-government Patriot movement rapidly went from boom to bust, as adherents melted awaysome due to fear of a government crackdown, others in genuine moral dismay over the attack, which killed 19 children and injured many more. The Patriot movement has since recovered from these setbacks, but the process took years, and McVeigh is still a controversial figure for many adherents.

The attack in Charlottesville, while horrific, was not on the scale of Oklahoma City, and it is unclear how those within the alt-right will process its meaning. In the first 24 hours, online adherents responded predictably, with a mix of denialism, whataboutism, victim-blaming, disavowals of Fields, and the advancement of conspiracy theories to explain the problem away. Some glorified the rally while pointedly ignoring the car attack. Others dismissed it as a road-rage incident unrelated to ideology. And somerelatively fewcriticized the attack for portraying white nationalism in a negative light.

Thats the context for Saturdays scheduled events, whose organizers have denied any connection to the Unite the Right organizers, although at least one personality from Charlottesville (Tim Gionet, aka Baked Alaska) is scheduled to appear at the Boston event. Turnout for these events will help illustrate exactly what kind of moment this nation has come to. Heres what to look for:

How each of these questions plays out will reveal something about the future of the alt-right. If attendance is very low, for instance, it may signal that Charlottesville was a sobering moment for the movement, perhaps with some adherents reconsidering their tactics, and with other people reconsidering their involvement altogether.

If attendance is very high, on the other hand, it likely means that the Charlottesville rally was an energizing event for the alt-right, even with its culmination in a terrorist attack, and that would be cause for serious concern. If attendance is high and the participants include more of the same Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacists in garish costumes and armed to the teeth, it would be hard to interpret that as anything less than extremely alarming.

If attendance is low, on the other hand, while met with very large and peaceful counter-protests, that would be an extremely encouraging turn of events, highlighting the marginal nature of the movement and helping to reinforce a strong social center standing in opposition to the latest wave of racist extremism to rock America.

And of course, there are many possible outcomes in between these two poles, which will require unpacking. A large turnout from the alt-right but an even larger presence of peaceful counter-protesters might bode well for the overall mood of the country but reinforce the idea that the alt-right is here to stay. A small turnout from both sides would be more difficult to assess. An aggressive showing by antifa groups looking to meet violence with violence could lead to further escalation.

There is one more wild card to consider: the president of the United States, who is scheduled to hold a press conference on Monday. Based on his past failures to repudiate white nationalism, theres a good chance he will continue to hedge his language with weak equivocations. But the political pressure to say more is rapidly mounting, and the president may find himself backed into a corner.

If President Trump somehow manages to issue a convincing and unequivocal condemnation of Unite the Right specifically and white nationalism more broadly, and if he can do it without visibly seething about the necessity, the reaction from the alt-right should be fascinating and informative. Given his history, its a very long shot that the president will be able to successfully check all of those boxes, but its not impossible.

If the president successfully repudiates the alt-right, its anyones guess what happens next. Some portion of the alt-right is more enamored of Trumpism than of white nationalism. These are not mutually exclusive categories at the moment, but if Trump manages to change that dynamic, its unclear where the chips may fall.

Would the alt-right turn against the president en masse, or in part? And if so, what impact would that have on his already flagging poll numbers? Would some be enraged and adopt an even more violent posture? Would they be discouraged? Would they shrug it off? Or would they splinter into yet more factions, stealing their momentum and forcing a massive retrenchment?

The last outcome is probably the most likely, in the unlikely event that the president can muster the moral courage to take and maintain a strong stand without simultaneously undermining it in some way.

The only certainty is that the week ahead is bound to be interesting and consequential. By the time we reach the other side, Americans will likely have a much clearer picture of the shape and direction of white-nationalist extremism in America. I wish I felt more optimistic about what we will see.

Originally posted here:
What the Next Round of Alt-Right Rallies Will Reveal - The Atlantic

Alt-right protests against Googles allegedly anti-white-male diversity policies were already being planned before the white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville this last weekend. And organizers of the March on Google in (at last count) nine cities are trying to distinguish themselves from the motley gang of neo-Nazis, Kluxers, and open white supremacists who held the Unite the Right rally in Virginia. They issued a statement that closely tracks the evasive take on Charlottesville of you-know-who in the White House:

We, the organizers of the March on Google, join the President in condemning the actions in Charlottesville on August 12th. Despite many false rumors from those seeking to discredit us we are in no way associated with any group who organized there.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms any display of hatred and bigotry from any side. It has no place in America. No citizen should ever fear for their safety and security in our society.

But inevitably, given the timing, what looks and feels like a proliferation of far-right public events is going to attract attention, and probably counter-demonstrators. The march will be directed at Google facilities in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., in addition to the companys headquarters, GooglePlex, in Mountain View, California.

The protests, of course, were spurred by the now-infamous memo on Googles hiring practices that made its author, Google engineer James Damore, a conservative hero, particularly after he was fired over it. As Madison Malone Kircher notes, Damore chose to show some solidarity with the alt-right.

Since confirming his firing, Damore has done very little press, but his first public interview, posted online Tuesday evening, is with alt-right YouTuber Stefan Molyneux.

Damore doesnt express any beyond-the-pale views in the interview, but Molyneux a mens-rights blogger and accused cult leader with, uh, unorthodox views on race is, well, a pointed choice for a first-interview host.

The alt-right not those prone to cavorting in sheets or goose-stepping, but the kind of people who view Breitbart News as their daily bread and mobilized for Trumps presidential candidacy has reciprocated this embrace avidly. And that has led to next weekends march, as the San Jose Mercury News reports:

We are going to raise awareness about Googles one-sided bias and campaign against dissenting opinions and voices, activist and protest march organizer Jack Posobiec, a self-identified member of the new right that seeks to distance itself from the white-power politics of the alt-right, told this news organization via Twitter.

Googles firing of James Damore is the flashpoint here, said the pro-Trump Posobiec, known for peddling conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate.

Posobiec was also special projects director for Citizens for Trump, a leading outside pro-Trump group during the 2016 presidential campaign. One problem for him in distinguishing the March on Google from Unite the Right is that he was accused by his own former employer, The Rebel, earlier this year of plagiarizing a video script from Jason Kessler, the white supremacist who organized Unite the Right. Oops.

Its likely next weekends protests will mark a point either of convergence or divergence for the alt-right and white-supremacist groups.

As J.M. Berger observes at Vox, the events in Charlottesville represent an existential challenge to the idea of the alt-right as a playful and essentially harmless online phenomenon:

Charlottesville put to rest the idea that the alt-right can be primarily defined as fun-loving transgressive hipsters or an elaborate practical joke (if anyone still really believed that). Even before the culminating act of terrorism, the rally in Charlottesville illustrated that the umbrella of the alt-right is an effective means to mobilize a highly visible mix of old-school white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Offline, at least, this isnt the new white nationalism; its the old white nationalism as the primary beneficiary of the activity generated by a looser collection of people online.

How the March on Google turns out could have significant implications for the alt-right and for their daddy Donald Trump. Charlottesville was a turning point.

As he dragged his feet on condemning racist violence this weekend, the president was thinking fondly of the nativist demagogue Joe Arpaio.

The 23-year-old would-be terrorist told an FBI informant that he wanted to start the next revolution.

Alabama GOP voters likely to vault the wheezing campaign of Trumps endorsee Luther Strange into a runoff with the grim celebrity theocrat Roy Moore.

In the White House on Monday, Trump said racism is evil and called out white supremacists by name.

Alt-right activists who would like to distinguish themselves from the white supremacists who rioted in Charlottesville will march against Google.

Blending neo-Confederate and Nazi ideology, our white nationalist movement is part of a frightening international phenomenon.

More than words are needed to absolve the GOP and Donald Trump of collaborating with racists. But very direct words are essential as well.

A far stronger response than the president has mustered.

Kenneth Frazier, who runs Merck, said leaders must reject expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy.

And helped its key player escape to the United States.

A former teacher said he expressed white-supremacist views throughout high school, and he was kicked out of the Army after four months.

We still dont know if Trump plans to sabotage Obamacare, which is whats driving up 2018 premiums.

Republicans need to do a lot more than say the right words about Nazis to atone for their role in the revival of the racist right.

Many sides are to blame for the haphazard defense of the presidents response to Charlottesville, but none more so than Trump himself.

The wounds are raw in the city.

It calls the media enemies of the president.

Thirty-two-year-old Heather Heyer had a very strong sense of right and wrong and was dedicated to ending injustice, according to her mother.

By professing neutrality between those who support and oppose racial equality, Trump is joining the generations of pols who whitewashed Jim Crow.

Republicans are continuing to call out the president, this time over white-nationalist violence.

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Don't Look Now, But Alt-Right Demonstrations Are Scheduled for Nine Cities Next Weekend - New York Magazine

Its almost impossible to get Donald Trump to criticize one of his supporters. Last March, when former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke supported his campaign, Trump initially declined to disavow him and at one point blamed a bad earpiece for his failure to do so. A couple weeks later, when a Trump supporter punched an African-American man at a stadium rally, Trump said the man obviously loves the country and suggested he might pay his legal bills.

And, of course, after Saturdays alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one woman dead, Trump blamed many sides and refused to single out white supremacists and neo-Nazis, even as a growing chorus of Republican elected officials called on him to do so.

One reason for Trumps mystifying refusal to criticize the alt-right racism in Charlottesville is that he came under similar pressure during the campaign, didnt buckle, and still won the election.

Last August, Trump hired Steve Bannon to take over his presidential campaign. Bannon was executive chairman of Breitbart News, the hard-right populist website that he had described a month earlier as the platform for the alt-right. Seeking to highlight Trumps unsavory connection to racists and anti-Semites, Hillary Clinton gave an August 25th speech in Reno, Nevada, explicitly warning about the danger of embracing white supremacy. Trump, Clinton declared, is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters. Its a disturbing preview of what kind of president hed beThese are racebaiting ideas, antiMuslim and antiimmigrant ideas, antiwoman--all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the altright. She added: A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

Most Americans had never heard the term alt-right until Clinton highlighted it inher speech. The term was just beginning to enter the political lexicon, a Clinton adviser told me, in an interview for my book Devils Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency. We thought it would be catnip that would fuel peoples curiosity [about the altright] and what Bannons place was in that world. Trumps campaign was built on stoking xenophobic impulses, so you could take a process story on Bannons hire and turn it into a bigger critique of how Trump was uniquely unacceptable.

In one sense, Clintons speech had the desired effect: it sparked a nationwide debate about alt-right racism. But it didnt prompt Trump to fire Bannon or distance himself in any way from his alt-right supporters. And as a political attack, it plainly failed. A month later, Trumps poll numbers had improved.As Bannon told me in Devils Bargain, We polled the race stuff and it doesnt matter. It doesnt move anyone who isnt already in her camp.

Its not clear why Trump has so far refused to call out the neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville whose rally produced deadly violence. He has come under withering criticism not only from Republican senators like Orrin Hatch and Cory Gardner, but also from conservative media outlets like Fox News andthe New York Post.

On Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence offered an explicit condemnation of the Charlottesville instigators during a visit to Colombia. "We have no tolerance for hate and violence from white supremacists, neo-Nazis or the KKK, Pence said at a news conference with Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos. These dangerous fringe groups have no place in American public life and in the American debate, and we condemn them in the strongest possible terms," he said.

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Having survived Clintons attack over alt-right racism, Trump may simply feel impervious to the pressure to speak out more forcefully about Charlottesville. But the differences between the two episodes are significant. Last year, Trump was being attacked by a Democratic political opponent; the basis of the attack was a website most people dont read; and the specter of alt-right violence that Clinton invoked in her speech was theoretical.

Charlottesville was different in every respect: The bloodshed and deadly assault were vividly on display for all to see. Those responsible for it were not Democrats, but Trump supporters (some marchers shouted Heil Trump!). And this time, the calls for Trump to show moral courage and condemn the Nazis and white supremacists are coming from his fellow-Republicans.

Trump may find himself forced to say something more specific or he may continue to refuse, as he did in the campaign. But its hard to imagine his poll numbers improving in the wake of the tragedy, as they did last August. The difference between the two episodes couldnt be more stark or more obvious to everyone except Trump.

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Why Trump Refuses to Call Out Alt-Right Violence - Bloomberg