In Boston, Everybody Won, and Nobody Died

On the bandstand, the Boston Free Speech Coalition hangs out a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. South of the Common, the patter of distant helicopters announces the arrival of a Black Lives Matter march, raising the number of counter-demonstrators to as many as 40,000. On the slope opposite the bandstand, a platoon of black-clad antifa, the self-styled “antifascists,” trots through the protesters chanting, “No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!”

In the crowd on the slope, two scrawny young white men in red Trump baseball caps survey the scene.

“It’s about that time,” one says.

“It is,” said the other.

A few minutes later, they appear on the path at the foot of the slope, surrounded by half a dozen policemen. As they advance into the counter-protest, hundreds of people converge on them from all sides. Further up the slope, people stop amiable conversations so they can run down to shout insults. The antifa run up in close formation, blocking the path. The crowd is so dense that the two young men’s location is identifiable only from the policemen’s hi-vis vests. Water bottles and hard objects are thrown; many of them hit the police. There is pushing and shoving; the police cannot move forward or back, and more people keep rushing to the scene, chanting, “Shame! Shame!” Everybody is shouting, the police included. If someone produces a knife or a pepper spray, the crowd will panic and the police will reach for their guns.

In the end, the antifa relent. The police hurry the two young men to safety.

***

The rally on the bandstand was organized by the Boston Free Speech Coalition. The group appeared online earlier this year and conducted its first rally in Boston in May. After neo-Nazis and white nationalists rioted during the “ Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and after the killing there of counter-demonstrator Heather Heyer, Boston Free Speech sought to distance itself from the hate groups.

“We are a coalition of libertarians, progressives, conservatives, and independents,” Boston Free Speech’s Facebook page insists. “While we maintain that every individual is entitled to their freedom of speech and defend that basic human right, we will not be offering a platform to racism or bigotry. We denounce the politics of supremacy and violence.”

Boston Free Speech claims to oppose “all instances of censorship,” and advocate “dialogue and reason” as the way to “defeat and disarm toxic ideas and ideologies.” It hoped that the Boston Common rally could be “a tide-changing peaceful event.” Bostonians could set a “shining example” of unity around the “common goal” of preserving free speech while “respectfully discussing our differences of opinion.”

It is impossible to reconcile these statements with the initial roster of speakers for Saturday’s rally. After Charlottesville, the Boston Free Speech Coalition disinvited the Orlando, Fla., agitator who goes by the name of Augustus Invictus. Apart from being one of the Charlottesville organizers, Mr. Invictus, a Holocaust denier, has called for a “second American civil war.” John Medlar, Boston Free Speech’s spokesman, said that Invictus had been disinvited because of “high emotions” and “panic and disorder” after Charlottesville—a matter of strategy, not ethics.

Another speaker, Gavin McInnes, dropped out at the last minute. In the nineties, McInnes, an English-born Canadian, was a co-founder of Vice magazine, which expanded into a smutty millennial media group. These days, McInnes is an alt-right Howard Stern, a libertarian irritant who speaks at anti-sharia rallies and denounces television commercials that propagate unmanly images of men as “cuckmercials.” To counter the cucking of the Western male, McInnes has founded a “pro-Western fraternal organization” called the Proud Boys.

The Proud Boys sounds like the name of a transvestite disco act (McInnes got the name from that manly Disney musical Aladdin and its song “Proud of Your Boy”). And in reality, the Proud Boys have nothing to be proud of. Jason Kessler, chief organizer of the Charlottesville rally, was a Proud Boy before McInnes expelled him, allegedly for racism. It is not known if Kessler had achieved the third level of Proud Boy status, in which members promised to abstain from masturbation and acquire a Proud Boy tattoo.

McInnes, a media professional, has been trying to maintain his reputation for controversy and provocation without becoming fatally associated with the racists. He denounced the Charlottesville rally in advance. He dropped out of the Boston rally too, saying that he did not want to expose his Proud Boys to the accusation that they were “ambassadors” for Alex Fields, Jr., the white nationalist accused of killing Heather Hayes with his car in Charlottesville.

Another Proud Boy, Kyle Chapman, did honor his invitation to the Boston rally. On his Twitter page, Chapman describes himself as an “American Nationalist” and “Renegade” who is “leading the fight to destroy neo-Marxism and antifa.” Chapman is better known as the physical representative of an Internet meme, Based Stickman. Chapman acquired this nickname after being filmed at the pro-Trump march in Berkeley, California last March, fighting counter-demonstrators with a wooden stick, a Captain America-style shield, and a gas mask and shin pads.

After the Berkeley riot, Gavin McInnes announced that Chapman had formed a Proud Boys’ “military division,” the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights. Chapman currently faces a felony charge for his part in the disturbances. “These charges are completely bogus,” Chapman insists on his Twitter page. “This is nothing more than state led intimidation. I never had a lead pipe.”

Chapman has three prior felony convictions and has spent a total of ten years in prison for theft, robbery and possession of illegal firearms. Since the Berkeley riot, he has launched a website, selling branded Based Stickman apparel. He livestreamed the Boston Common rally from the bandstand.

“I’m going to go ahead and give you a look at what we’re facing today,” Stickman said, taking a last pull at his cigarette as the camera turned to view the counter-demonstration. The way Stickman saw it, he was a victim, set up by the media for a rerun of the Alamo o.

“We have about 8,000 opposition who’ve surrounded the area we’re in… No sticks, nothing today here, guys, we’re totally disarmed… There’s about three dozen of us.” He claimed that Facebook were “strangling” his live feed, and that the police were about to feed him to the lions. “We’ve just gotten some information that there is a potential stand-down order going on with the Boston Police Department… Just letting you know… We are surrounded by 8,000-plus violent alt-left protesters… I will not stand down.”

***

Counterprotesters during the Free Speech Rally on August 19, 2017, at Boston Commons in Boston Photo credit: Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images.

Meanwhile on the hill, several thousand “violent alt-left protesters” made small talk, admired each others’ posters and costumes, and checked that everyone was wearing sunblock.

“This is Boston,” said Kevin Doherty, who was handing out free bottles of water. “The white supremacists had the run of the place in Charlottesville. This isn’t going to be anything like that.”

It had been rumored that local members of the KKK would be joining the Free Speech Rally, but if they were in the crowd, they must have left their hoods at home. “Stay the hell out of Boston,” Mayor Marty Walsh had advised. “We don’t want you here.”

Gustav Le Bon, who launched the study of crowd psychology in the nineteenth century, believed that people in crowds regress to an earlier evolutionary stage. Most of the counter-demonstrators on Boston Common seemed to have regressed to the early Seventies, and the recurring dream of a rainbow coalition. Everybody was doing their own thing.

The further up the hill I went, the nicer people became. A well-heeled couple in “Bermuda” baseball caps who seemed to have strolled over from Beacon Hill stood next to a young man wearing a little black dress. Yet nearby, people carried large homemade placards with slogans like “MVP for KKK,” “Make Germany Prussia Again,” and “Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist Nazi POTUS.” Others had scrawled phrases like “Fuck Nazis” on paper plates.

The atmosphere of the counter-protest was not as violent as these sentiments. Nor, with the exception of the small antifa group, was there the whiff of militarism that leaks from the alt-right. So President Trump was wrong to characterize the crowd as “anti-police agitators.” But no one seemed troubled by the verbal aggression on the placards, or the gratuitous offensiveness of calling Mike Pence the candidate of the KKK. And the pervasive civility made the rhetorical intemperance all the more incongruous. The counter-demonstrators had the literal high ground, and they believed that they held the moral high ground too. They did not, however, have a permit for their protest. Nor did they seem troubled when the antifa group physically intimidated and shouted down supporters of the Free Speech Coalition.

Down at the front, a young black woman filmed the counter-protest. She was looking for ideas for her job at an advertising agency.

“I’m astounded by the numbers today,” she said. She gestured to the Free Speech Coalition, corralled on their bandstand like a circus act. “They’re outnumbered. It speaks volumes.”

“This is a city that believes in freedom of speech,” said a woman who teaches in a local school. We stood at the top of the hill, watching the police whizz back and forth on their mountain bikes. “But we’re protesting hate speech. Boston doesn’t stand for people coming into our city spreading hate.”

“Boston hates you!” the crowd at the bottom of the hill shouted at the bandstand, “Boston hates you!”

“There are a lot of different agendas here today,” the teacher admitted as the haters hated the hate-spreaders. The crowd roared as the Black Lives Matter march entered the park. In a coalition beyond the dreams of Marx and Lenin, the rainbow flag of gay liberation flew next to the hammer and sickle of the socialist workers. The Free Speech Coalition speakers retreated, sheltering on the bandstand like rats clambering onto a sinking ship.

“I came to see them with my unfiltered eyes,” said a serious young man who was wearing black jeans, a black t-shirt, and a black bike helmet. “Not through media, not through my friends. He thought it “absolutely arrogant” of the alt-right to appoint itself the defender of freedom of speech, but he wondered if the counter-demonstrators were playing into the bigots’ hands. “It’s a great ruse on their part, to make it seem like we’re all here to protest their freedom of speech.”

“Why are you wearing that helmet?” the girl in front of him asked. “You’re making my friend nervous.”

“So someone doesn’t hit me from behind,” he replied. He explained that he had reason to believe that “the KKK” were in the crowd, carrying concealed weapons. The marchers’ website had warned that “state violence” was likely too. He was not entirely paranoid. Around this time, the police arrested a man in a “Trump” hat carrying a concealed firearm.

A group of young black men wandered past, shirtless and tattooed, their pants worn rakishly at the knee. I asked one why he had come.

“For the rights, the rights for all,” he said. “We have to spread peace, that’s what we stand up for.” He was not a regular demonstrator. “This is actually my first time. I’m actually enjoying myself. I brought my friends out too. We’ve got to support everybody, not just us.”

Did he have a message for conservatives and Republicans as they consider the consequences of their alliances with Donald Trump and the alt-right?

“Yes.” He said it thoughtfully, as if surprised by his response. “Do you know how it feels to have a heart?”

***

The Free Speech speakers were not a “coalition of libertarians, progressives, conservatives, and independents,” but a congeries of self-publicists and bigots.

Garret Kirkland wanted to speak for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. His Twitter feed contains links to a Press TV broadcast of a lecture by that well known free speech advocate Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbollah, and to pro-Putin propaganda that claims the Assad regime has not used chemical weapons.

Shiva Ayyadurai is an Indian-born scientist and entrepreneur who is running for the Senate as a Republican. He claims to be the inventor of email, and has challenged Elizabeth Warren to a DNA test to determine who is a “real” Indian.

Joe Biggs has worked for Alex Jones’ InfoWars website. An Airborne veteran, he tweets as “RamboBiggs” and describes his work-life balance as “Freelance reporter. Shit talker. Hunter.”

“Nazi scum, go home!” the masked “antifa” group chanted. “Stand up! Fight back!” A veteran of the Afghanistan war explained to an interviewer that he had “come to support my First Amendment rights,” and denied that he was a fascist or a racist. The antifa group called him a “Nazi” anyway. They shouted him down, then trotted off, arms linked, to block a lone Trump supporter.

“Peace! No fighting!” A female demonstrator cried. Another counter-demonstrator, understandably confused by the black shirts and militia-style conduct of the antifa, shouted, “Nazi scum, take your masks off!” at the antifa.

Periodically, the antifa group circled the edge of the counter-demonstration, as if to secure the inevitable “safe space.” All were white and in their twenties. None of them looked like he knew how to handle himself outside a graduate seminar. To keep up morale, now and then one of them would shout “antifascista!” in an Italian accent, and another would shout “antifascista” in reply. They probably had no idea that Mussolini, the biggest Italian black shirt of all, began like them, on the violent edge of the left, as an anarcho-syndicalist.

As the masked, black-clad antifa patrol passed, many of the younger demonstrators whooped and cheered, or burst into applause. Some of the young demonstrators had inked their names and contact phone numbers on their forearms in case they were beaten unconscious. Many had brought neck scarves and face masks in case of tear gas, or in case their parents saw them on the news. Young people are excited by the thought of violence, especially when it feels justified.

***

The Boston Free Speech Coalition’s spokesman is John Medlar, a twenty-three year-old from the Boston suburb of Newton. Medlar studies film at Fitchburg State University, where he leads a chapter of the libertarian group Young Americans for Liberty, an offshoot of Students for Ron Paul.

John Medlar’s Facebook page is topped by quotes from Patton, Gandhi, Pope John Paul II, and himself: “Life is Awsome [sic.].” Medlar plays computer games, and writes and performs songs. In 2009, he released a self-made album of Christian rap songs, Diamonds In Your Eyes, on the CDBaby website. In 2013, he broadened his repertoire with a comic dance track, “Embrace The Ass.” In July, he posted to his YouTube page a homemade video in which frog-like soldiers march across the screen to a composition called the “Kekistani Anthem.”

The fictional land of Kekistan, and its frog-headed god Kek, originated among players of the World of Warcraft computer game, and became an online in-joke among the alt-right. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) calls the invocation of Kek “a favorite new way for white nationalists to troll liberals, while spreading their meme-driven strategy.” The Key flag’s design mimics the Reichskriegsflagge, the war flag of Germany’s military between 1867 and 1945, but in green, and with a frog’s head instead of the swastika.

Like “Embrace the Ass,” the Kek meme is puerile and frivolous, a pastiche of politics as it used to be practiced. But, just as Medlar’s online foolery led to thousands of people massing on Boston Common for an open-air face-off on the limits of the First Amendment, so the Proud Boys and the Kek-baiters have floated to the surface of American politics, wrapped, inevitably, in the flag and waving the Constitution.

Joe Biggs has 399,000 followers on Twitter. To paraphrase a recurring slogan among Saturday’s counter-demonstrators, if you’re not already appalled, you’re not paying attention. The Southern Poverty Law Center also notes that the computer gamers were delighted when they found out that the Egyptian god Kek was a bringer of darkness and chaos.

***

Protesters face off with riot police escorting conservative activists following a march in Boston against a planned ‘Free Speech Rally’ just one week after the violent ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Virginia left one woman dead and dozens more injured on August 19, 2017 in Boston, United States. Photo credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

The Free Speech event was meant to start at noon and end at 2 p.m. Just before 1 p.m., the organizers and speakers agreed to leave the band stand under police escort. One of the organizers admitted that their event “fell apart.” Really, John Medlar and his friends were lucky that it did—and luckier still that the police protected them from the counter-demonstration. They were in over the heads.

Stickman posted a picture of him and his friends, squeezed into a minivan. They looked sweaty, nervous, and pleased with themselves—proud boys, relieved to get away safely after playing with fire.

“We can’t hear you!” the counter-protesters chanted as the speakers crept away. “We can’t hear you!” The idea that the radical left are the defenders of free speech is an irony as black as their shirts. The antifa in particular are the spindly twins of the neofascist militiamen.

In the park, the counter-protesters divided into two camps. The BLM protesters gathered on one side, the socialist groups on another. Eventually, the antifa and the police got to grips. The Police Department tweeted a request that people stop throwing “urine, bottles, and other harmful projectiles at our officers.” Twenty-seven people were arrested.

“Today the world saw how violent these leftist ass clowns are becoming,” Joe Biggs tweeted. “Glorious.”

Based Stickman agreed. “The left showed their ass today.”

Boston antifa posted a photo showing their members setting fire to a “Free Speech” banner and an American flag.

Everybody won, and nobody died. But as I left the Common and the police chased young black men up the hill that leads to the golden-domed State House, I wondered if we were not all losers. For the last five decades, the commissars of the campus left have restricted free speech with the tactic that Herbert Marcuse advocated in his essay “Repressive Tolerance” (1965): “the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements” of the right, and the promotion of left-wing ideas as a compensatory “liberating tolerance.”

In this, the alt-right and the neofascists who claim to defend free speech are truly reactionary. They are also unfit for the task of defence, morally and intellectually. The First Amendment is a beautiful idea, a plea for the better aspects of human character, and the premise of all the other American rights. Americans believe these rights to be natural, but they are paper flowers, an optimistic outgrowth of the radical Whig thought of 18th-century Britain.

The framers of the Constutiona assumed that the exercise of free speech required self-restraint and strong education. Neither is in strong supply in today’s America, where free speech, like any other law, is a weapon. As Shakespeare said, “How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea / Whose action is no stronger than a flower?”

Dominic Green is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.