WASHINGTON, D.C.—Last year’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, ended in the brutal murder of a 32-year-old counterprotester, Heather Heyer. This year’s event ended with a tiny turnout, two and a half hours ahead of schedule.
The city had been preparing for the rally’s sequel for weeks, and the anticipation was palpable. Several downtown streets were cordoned off early Sunday morning, and police—hundreds of them—were everywhere, on horseback, on bikes, on motorcycles, in vans. There was talk of a confrontation with Antifa, the militant leftist group that has become a regular presence at rallies like these. Counterprotesters gathered at the top of the Foggy Bottom metro station at 2 p.m., waiting for the white-nationalist rallygoers to arrive from Vienna, Virginia. “Can we tase them when they get to the top?” one shirtless and sunburned man asked a police officer.
Washington, D.C., Is the Next Front for the Alt-Right
In the end, though, only about two dozen Unite the Right marchers ascended the escalator from the metro platform—all men, except for one bandana-clad woman. It was a dismal showing for a group that, only a few days before, had been expected to turn out in the hundreds. Both the 2017 Unite the Right rally and this year’s were organized by Jason Kessler, a 34-year-old who identifies not as a white nationalist but as a “white civil rights” leader. Kessler had set up Sunday’s event to keep the momentum going for the movement—but after last year’s tragedy, and the ensuing bad publicity, most alt-right groups chose to stay away.