[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8heKgARP7kA]Washington, DC — About 75 anti-racist protesters confronted neo-fascist personalities at City Club of Washington on Saturday, February 24 during their “Night for Freedom” dinner meeting which featured speaker Milo Yiannopoulos, a discredited fringe conservative. The dinner was also attended by a collection of neo-fascist and ultra-right conservatives such as American Renaissance publisher Jared Taylor; Mike Flynn, Jr..–son of Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn Sr.–who pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI in the Mueller investigation; and known Alt-Light personalities Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich.
City Club of DC is located next to the well-known Warner Theatre on 13th Street, NW, a few blocks from Trump International Hotel.
The dinner followed the end of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which was held at the Gaylord Convention Center at the National Harbor Maryland, on February 21-24. CPAC featured a collection of far-right incendiary speakers, including French ultra-nationalist Marion Le Pen, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch.
A line of DC Metropolitan Police blocked protesters from entering the $100-a plate-banquet on Saturday while Alt-Right attendees stood behind police trading taunts with protesters. Yiannopoulos neither showed his face at the doors nor participated in provocations, but alt-right social media personalities Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec did. They joined several others to videotape protesters from behind police lines while trading insults. Mike Flynn, Jr., appeared briefly to watch.
Protesters blew loudly into vuvuzelas to drown out Alt-right insults, while behind them, protest organizers projected light messages on the venue. Among them were the messages “Alt-Right is WRONG,” “Real Men Respect Women” and “Dismantle White Supremacy.”
One protester was successful in gaining access to the venue after buying a $100 ticket before the event. Jason Charter, a political organizer and anti-racist, said that he made it downstairs into the venue but was denied a seat after someone at the door noticed he was wearing a few anti-police and peace buttons. “You’re telling me this is a ‘night for freedom’ but I’m not allowed in to celebrate freedom even though I have a paid ticket?” Charter said he told the doorman. The doorman refunded his ticket, and he was escorted out.
There was one brief physical confrontation when a police officer pushed a protester away from the police line, but there were no other incidents or arrests reported.
Daryl Lamont, founder of One Peoples Project, said that the action was a success, because despite attempts by Cernovich to keep the venue secret, protesters were still able to find and disrupt it at the door. And, unlike in Charlottesville, the action was peaceful because the attendees were themselves not violent. “We’re not the instigators when it comes to the violence,” he said. “What happened in Charlottesville is that they came to pick a fight, and when they pick a fight, antifa gives it to them.”
Jenkins was also emphatic that antifa were keeping tabs on neo-fascist and related hate groups in the U.S., and that it “was only going to go so far.” Jenkins, who has studied hate groups for nearly three decades, said that the recent flourishing of hate group activity was not going to grow much more as long as people “come out” to protests and challenge their ideology whenever they appear.
Jenkins also criticized CPAC for moral decay and “devolving” into a “do-nothing” group “accomplishing nothing of substance.” “In the past CPAC at least tried to get something done but now it has devolved to a troll convention,” Jenkins said. CPAC’s demise began, in his opinion, when “Briebart news hit the scene.”
On January 19, 2017, the day before Trump’s inauguration, Cernovich joined Richard Spencer and other neo-fascists for a banquet celebration of the election result at the National Press Club, a few blocks away from City Club of Washington, DC. Anti-fascist organizers held a counter-celebration they called the “Deploraball” in the street in protest of the neo-Nazi gathering. The Deploraball resulted in many confrontations between neo-fascists and counter-protesters and several arrests. The National Press Club banned the Cernovich/Spencer group from future engagements because of the disruption it caused and security concerns. Since last year, the Spencer/Cernovich/Posobiec union splintered after an ideological disagreement over a Shakespeare-in-the Park disruption, perpetrated by Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec in Central Park.
In November 2016, protesters sniffed out the location of a white supremacist dinner organized by Richard Spencer at Maggiano’s in Friendship Heights on the night before his annual National Policy Institute group meeting. During the dinner meeting, protesters stormed the restaurant and confronted the neo-Nazi gathering, while restaurant staff blocked protester’s access to the stairs. Police responded, but no one was arrested. As word of the neo-Nazi meeting spread in the Friendship Heights community, Maggiano’s management apologized and donated all its proceeds from the event to the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League. The incident was seen as an embarrassment to both the community and the restaurant.
It is not clear if the City Club event will result in a similar community backlash. The “Night for Freedom” dinner concluded without significant incident.
