The poor turnout underscores how the country’s unpopular and disorganized extremist movements have been driven underground. In semi-private, encrypted chats, neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists planned rallies in dozens of cities Sunday to promote their racist movements and spread their ideologies to larger audiences. Hyped by organizers as events that would make “the whole world tremble,” the rallies ran into a major problem: Hardly anyone showed up. The “White Lives Matter” rallies, the first major real-world organizing efforts by white supremacists since 2018, were planned on the encrypted app Telegram after many aligned groups were alleged to have taken part in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S Capitol. The poor showing underscores how the country’s unpopular and disorganized extremist movements have been driven underground by increased scrutiny from the media, law enforcement agencies and far-left activists who infiltrate their private online spaces and disrupt their attempts to communicate and organize. Few “White Lives Matter” marchers showed up Sunday, but anti-racist and anti-fascist groups gathered just the same. In Raleigh, North Carolina, a small crowd of antifa and anti-racist protesters gathered at the park where the “White Lives Matter” march was planned. They marched around downtown behind a large white sign that read, “WE ACCEPT YOUR SURRENDER.” The lackluster events were documented by livestreams and photos posted to Twitter. In Philadelphia, activists tweeted photos of a counterprotest picnic with pizza and Tastykake snacks. In New York City, over a dozen counterprotesters stood seemingly unopposed across the street from Trump Tower, where a “White Lives Matter” rally was expected.
via nbcnews; ‘White Lives Matter’ rallies flop as hardly anyone shows up
siehe auch: Racists try to organize ‘White Lives Matter’ rallies around nation, but fall flat on their faces. A single man wearing a neo-Nazi “Siege” skull mask showed up to demonstrate at the “White Lives Matter” rally in New York City outside the Trump Tower. “Well that was pitiful,” wrote a would-be participant in a racist “White Lives Matter” protest in Norfolk, Virginia, in a nearly-empty Telegram channel devoted to the event. Among her fellow far-right ideologues, it was a common sentiment. The events, planned at over a dozen locales around the country this past weekend, were intended as a kind of rallying point for white nationalist and far-right groups of varying stripes, but instead turned out to be almost a complete bust, with only tiny handfuls of marchers showing up in most locations. The largest turnout was in Huntington Beach, California, where several dozen “pro-white” marchers were met by several hundred counterprotesters. Indeed, the weekend’s events turned out mainly to be large draws for antifascists and Black Lives Matter protesters and their supporters. At one of the events—in Raleigh, North Carolina—the small crowd of counterprotesters who turned out encountered no one else at the park where the event had been planned. So they wound up marching around the city’s downtown behind a large white sign reading: “WE ACCEPT YOUR SURRENDER.”