The Far-Right Alliance Is Over

We were promised a showdown at high noon. Instead, Washington DC was host to two pitifully-attended competing rallies this Sunday, followed by a Twitter slapfight between two 39-year-old men. What was scheduled to be a single rally for free speech at the Lincoln Memorial was cleaved in two when several speakers became aware they were sharing the bill with an avowed white supremacist. With that split, any tenuous alliance that may have existed in America’s political far right is now rapidly waning, along with its membership.

Across from the White House in shady Lafayette Park, a who’s who of right wing Twitterati whom the vast majority Americans still have never heard of—Mike Cernovich, Laura Loomer, Jack Posobiec, Cassandra Fairbanks, Lucian Wintrich, Kyle Prescott—were posing for selfies with fans and taking turns at a makeshift podium. But despite over 600,000 Twitter followers combined and direct access to mid-level conservative outlets like The Rebel, Big League Politics, and Gateway Pundit, the Rally Against Political Violence managed to draw 150 people at most to the nation’s capitol. Gathering to cheerlead the president was the typical cadre of young, white, meme-fluent men, but families and veterans as well. Many on the outskirts claimed to be tourists, and Lafayette Park’s crowd was outnumbered by the anti-abortion gaggle in front of the White House gates. The event’s keynote speaker, former Trump advisor Roger Stone, was a no-show.