Washington, DC: Antifascists Oppose Neo-Nazi Outreach Effort at University

In response to a call by white nationalists for a flyering campaign on April 23rd, at George Washington University comrades from the DC Antifascist Coalition and Mid-Atlantic General Defense Committee organized a counter-demonstration that intended to oppose the efforts of the far-Right to recruit and legitimize itself as a group on college campuses in the DC area.

Unwilling to let fascist recruiting campaigns go unopposed, our comrades coordinated both a counter-messaging flyering campaign and in-person rally, culminating with a demonstration on the campus that ended up in a confrontation with the self-styled “political operative” Jack Posobiec, of “TheRebelMedia,” and openly sympathetic to the Alt-Right.

In the course of the demonstration, an unaffiliated passerby was heckled by right-wing agitators who had accompanied Posobiec for the purposes of inciting violence for propaganda purposes to feed their false narrative of the “violent” left. In response to being filmed without consent and being verbally and physically threatened by the fascists, the passerby attempted to block the camera from filming them and was subsequently detained by the police for assault. Both Posobiec and the agitator were left unmolested by the pigs, showing just how interested the ‘protectors’ are in maintaining order rather than actually silencing those that would recruit for violent causes. Posobiec even posted a video on Twitter and squealing that he was “assaulted,” while eyewitnesses say that the only visible motion that occurred was to block Posobiec from filming the face of someone who had said clearly “stop filming me”–conveniently cut from the video posted.

In solidarity, our comrades relocated to the 2nd District station of the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) where our sympathetic passerby had been taken to be detained, and publicly demanded their release, unfortunately without success. Nonetheless, the disruption of the white nationalist agenda was complete, and many far-right recruiting posters were torn down across campus, in addition to various ad-hoc speakers being disrupted and discouraged. The agenda of the far right will not go unopposed, and tonight was only one notch of many in support of equality, freedom and anti-fascism.

This day’s events are just yet another in a long line of attempts by neo-fascists on the far-right to recruit those that are equally disillusioned with neoliberal global policies that seemingly have no answer to mounting needs for basic human necessities aside from austerity. Where collaboration and coordination are concerned, the far-right is frequently inept, and incapable, a product of their brazen misunderstanding of individualism. This makes it essential that each and every mobilization that elements of the far-right do manage to get out of the planning stages is opposed by freedom-loving anarchists and socialists that understand that these efforts to recruit others to the far-right cause constitute a clear and present threat to everyone that doesn’t fit the mold deemed ‘acceptable’ by the white nationalists and neo-Nazi threats.

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