The far-right "Patriot Front" rallied today in front of the United States Capitol and marched throughout Washington DC, protected at all stages by MPD, who kept press & counter-protesters away from them.
Their avowed fascist leader Thomas Rousseau led chants & spoke at Capitol.
Patriot Front marched through the National Mall, filming themselves as they passed locations like the WWII and Lincoln memorials with a roving police perimeter surrounding them.
They ultimately crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge into Virginia.
After crossing into Virginia, about half of the "Patriot Front" members loaded into U-Haul moving trucks and were driven away.
The remaining 75 or so members stood in a shield formation behind a police line.
Officers detoured traffic in the area & closed one side of the bridge.
It wasn't until more than an hour later that another or one of the earlier U-Hauls came to pick up the remaining "Patriot Front" members who had been standing still surrounded by cops until then.
Only about half of them fit, leaving 30-40 more standing on the side of the road.
Officers circled their vehicles around the remaining 30-40 Patriot Front members and let traffic begin again.
Totaling more than three hours after reaching their exit point, a U-Haul picked up the remaining members from the side of the road at Arlington National Cemetery.
Here is my full @N2Sreports summary video reel of today's unexpected rally by the fascist group "Patriot Front" throughout Washington DC.
The rally was a surprise, so my video begins roughly an hour after they apparently entered the city.
To be very clear, I don't use the term "fascist" sparingly; the group was led tonight by its founder Thomas Rousseau (seen throughout the footage, the only member not wearing a mask), who openly said he identifies as a fascist at Charlottesville.
For more on the background of Patriot Front, I'd recommend this very thorough story by @thencarolsaid and @frizimmermann at @propublica.
propublica.org/article/they-a…
Added odd element to this story: Apparently a fake account on Twitter that appears to have belonged to Patriot Front itself was the first one to tweet about this.
@washingtonpost wrote about it, but @conspirator0 I think caught this first.
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/…
It was after that that antifascist accounts began talking about it.
I personally didn’t arrive until more than half hour after seeing these; some journalists didn’t arrive until the masked group had reached their apparent pickup space where they were guarded by police for hours.
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