In a press release sent exclusively to Breitbart News on Tuesday, an alt-right group, ACT for America, planning to stage a protest of Muslims in America canceled its rally after events in Boston, when counter protesters vastly outnumbered attendees of the rally. Instead, like the brave men they are, they’ll be moving the rally online.
None of this is a surprise to prominent people of color, women, or members of the LGBT community who routinely face harassment and threats on Twitter or in comment sections — we’ve all seen what these “online rallies” look like. They’re, frankly, pretty run-of-the-mill for cowards who want to target and verbally attack marginalized people but are too cowardly to do this to people’s faces or themselves face the consequences.
In either case, the press release sent to Breitbart said: “[E]xtremist and radical organizations in the United States and abroad have overrun peaceful events in order to advance their own agendas, and in many cases, violence has been the result.”
Characteristically, the members of racist hate groups whose rhetoric and beliefs motivated the violence — it was a group of white men who beat a young African-American man bloody with poles, and a white nationalist who drove his car into a crowd and killed a young woman protesting racism — refuse to acknowledge that the violence at a rally for white supremacy and restoring the “good ol’ days” colored with lynchings and female subversion, was initiated by members who share their racial hatred.
In either case, their decision to cancel a rally out of fear of counter protesters who have so far been wholly peaceful, is nothing short of ironic. The counter protesters they claim are shutting them down are the same people who show up to rallies and marches without fear of being pepper sprayed and attacked or arrested by police despite being peaceful, the same people white nationalists call “snowflakes.”
ACT For America is reportedly the largest anti-Muslim group in the country, and yet their fear of peaceful protesters to the extent of canceling a live rally and moving to the internet speaks volumes about the far right’s pretense of having a monopoly on bravery.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
