Boston anti-racists shut down another far-right rally

In August, only a week after the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, tens of thousands of counterprotesters in Boston took to the street to protest a right-wing rally in their own town.

It wasn’t enough.

On Saturday, a few dozen right-wing protesters held another rally for “free speech” in Boston, met again by hundreds more counter-demonstrators. Though they hadn’t secured a permit, dozens of police and multiple helicopters were deployed to protect the far right as they lectured the protesters for over an hour about being tolerant of fringe ideas.

This isn’t the second, but the third of such rallies in Boston. The first, organized by local teenagers, drew a few hundred right-wingers — a motley assortment of militiamen, white nationalists, reactionaries, libertarians, trolls and brawlers.

The makeup of Saturday’s rally was distinctly different, including a combination of campus conservatives and libertarians.

The rally was called “Resist Marxism,” in the recent spirit of far right groups taking up the looming specter of communist revolution as their recent boogeyman. Still, the paranoia of an impending threat to white people was as present as it was at the first Boston “free speech” rally.

“This white guilt nonsense has to end,” said one speaker, who alleged fantastically that roving groups of black men were roaming the streets of America cities hitting white women based on the color of their skin. “Why should I feel guilty about something I never did? My grandfather never enslaved anybody.”

Out in the cold, anti-fascists with the newly formed Bay State Red Sentinels stood alongside black liberation activists, socialists and Veterans For Peace, chanting the now typical, “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist U.S.A.!” The far right warned they’d be back nonetheless.

“I hope you’ll join us in the spring, when it’s a little warmer,” one speaker said.