White Lives Matter Rally (Part 1) (Patreon)

Enjoy our coverage of the ‘White Lives Matter’ protest and counter-rally at Huntington Beach Pier in Huntington Beach, CA earlier this April, where around 30 ‘WLM’ attendees were vastly outnumbered by local liberals, antifascists and Black Lives Matter supporters.

Jokes aside, this event is important to me for a few reasons. In a world where the terms ‘nazi’ and ‘klansman’ are thrown around loosely — especially in the protest community — to describe a wide range of alternative right-wing groups, like the Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys, and Oathkeepers, it is important to understand that following the Capitol Riot on January 6, right-wing hate cells are moving into a new, sneakier era of optics. 

What I mean is this — the symbols of hate and far-right extremism will rarely, if ever, be on public display, as they were on January 6, or at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, back in 2017. It seems that fascist action is moving into a new era, and one marked by Tucker Carlson-style dogwhistling and making statements like ‘White Lives Matter,’ which carry plausible deniability in regard to racism and generally, fall under the ‘all lives matter’ umbrella. This means that tracking hate will get harder. But we will do it.

- Andrew