About 100 masked marchers moved rapidly via downtown Boston Saturday, most carrying matching khaki pants, blue shirts, gaiters overlaying their faces, ball caps and sun shades.
They carried riot shields and American flags, at instances marching alongside parts of the Freedom Path, as a drummer quickly performed.
However the marchers Saturday had been a part of a white nationalist group, Patriot Entrance, whose members imagine that their white European ancestors conquered America and bequeathed it to them, and nobody else.
The group started assembling at Haymarket in Boston round 12:30 p.m. Saturday. A Boston police dispatcher reported that the group started “unloading shields and flags from a UHaul” earlier than marching to Again Bay Station and dispersing round 1:30 p.m.
The Boston Herald reported one Black man acquired accidents throughout an altercation with the group close to Dartmouth and Stuart streets. A Herald photographer caught a picture of the person being pushed by marchers with shields.
Boston police and the division’s Civil Rights Unit are investigating the incident, a Boston police spokesperson advised the Boston Globe.
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Who’re they?
Flyers discovered close to Boston Public Library after the group marched via had been from the Patriot Entrance. The group is described by the Anti-Defamation League as a “white supremacist group whose members preserve that their ancestors conquered America and bequeathed it to them, and nobody else.” The group can also be recognized for conducting flash demonstrations, wherein group members seem and protest rapidly, then go away.
If the khaki pants, blue shirts and masks look acquainted, it’s not the group’s first splash within the information. Final month, 31 individuals had been arrested in Idaho after a 911 name a couple of group dressed like a “little military” had been seen getting right into a transferring truck with riot gear.
CNN reported the group was headed to a Delight within the Park occasion, however had been pulled over and arrested earlier than they may get there.
Previous exercise in Massachusetts
Saturday’s march wasn’t the group’s first exercise in Massachusetts. Final week, the group posted on its Gab social media web page that members had positioned posters in Southborough.
And in 2019, three males who met whereas taking part in video video games on-line had been arraigned on weapons expenses and an assault and battery cost after police say they wearing face masks and hoods whereas hanging white nationalist propaganda in East Boston.
In truth, the Anti-Defamation League stories that since 2019, the group has been answerable for the overwhelming majority of white supremacist propaganda distributed in america.
The group itself stories having had 141 “cases of activism” in Massachusetts, which it says consists of “posters, banners, stencils, hikes, meals drives, coaching meets, trash pickups, and flyer handouts.”
Their views
The group relies in Texas and led by Thomas Ryan Rousseau. Movies and images shot by observers Saturday confirmed a person who matched Rousseau with the marchers.
Patriot Entrance break up off from Vanguard America in 2017. In response to the Southern Poverty Legislation Middle, the group fashioned within the aftermath of the lethal “Unite the Proper” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 12, 2017.
Vanguard is a neo-Nazi group that participated within the demonstration, wherein one particular person was murdered and 35 injured.
Rousseau was one of many Vanguard leaders through the rally, earlier than leaving to type his personal group.
The group’s web site leans closely on the significance of the “European race” and says it “should reforge themselves as a brand new collective able to asserting our proper to cultural independence.”
The group says that “an unwavering resistance will meet all enemies of the individuals and the nation, each overseas and home.” The group’s manifesto calls the U.S. “a bleeding carcass bereft of the ethical foundations which made it highly effective.”
But, American imagery is essential and distinguished within the group’s supplies.
Reactions
Reactions to the group’s fast march in Boston Saturday had been swift and condemning.
“To the white supremacists who ran via downtown in the present day: Once we march, we don’t cover our faces. Your hate is as cowardly as it’s disgusting, and it goes towards all that Boston stands for,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu wrote on Twitter Saturday.
Boston Metropolis Council President Ed Flynn posted to Twitter: “I’m outraged and disgusted on the white supremacist group protesting in the present day in #Boston. It’s essential to name out hate and intimidation once we see it, educate youngsters on horrors of the previous & stand w/the Jewish neighborhood, our immigrant neighbors & communities of coloration.”
Noah R. Bombard, masslive.com
