Patriot Front Members March Through Washington, DC, While Doug Burgum Says Free Speech Protections Apply

Hundreds of masked Patriot Front members marched through Washington on Saturday during Fourth of July festivities, with videos showing men in khaki pants, khaki baseball caps and dark blue shirts taking escalators down to the Washington, DC, underground rail system and boarding metro cars.

“Members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front have orchestrated marches around the United States capital, many obscuring their faces with white fabric masks and sunglasses”

Al Jazeera

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said federal officials had no reason to stop the July 4 rally in Washington because of free speech protections, telling CNN’s “State of the Union” program that the group did nothing illegal.

Al Jazeera

Burgum said the group’s white supremacist, anti-immigrant ideology is “nothing that I could possibly agree with,” but remains protected free speech even if it “makes democracy messy.”

The march moved toward drummers near the U.S. Capitol and the Union Station transit center before the participants took Metro trains to a District of Columbia suburb, according to the Reuters report.

The Patriot Front’s Telegram channel indicated the group expected more than 400 white nationalists to participate in Saturday’s events, and the group’s website appealed to people “born to this nation of our European race” to assert their “right to cultural independence.”

While Burgum told CNN’s “State of the Union” that protesters who criticize President Donald Trump enjoy the same rights, he declined to say whether he condemned Patriot Front or would recommend that Trump condemn it.

Burgum said protesters on Washington’s National Mall who criticize President Donald Trump are “yet they’re allowed to go on because of free speech in our country,” framing the march as protected activity.

Internazionale

Senator Ed Markey called for condemnation, posting on social media: “We cannot be silent in the face of white nationalists marching in our nation’s capitol.”

Al Jazeera reported that experts at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism have described Patriot Front as a fascist organisation dedicated to “creating a white ethnostate in the United States.”

The Al Jazeera account also said critics have accused the administration of President Donald Trump of emboldening such groups, including by spreading false conspiracies like the great replacement theory, a racist belief which posits that white Christians are being supplanted by minorities.

The Al Jazeera report tied Patriot Front’s rise to the group’s creation in 2017 after the “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists and neo-Nazis converged.

“White supremacists’ July 4 march counts as free speech, US interior secretary says Doug Burgum said hundreds of masked Patriot Front members who marched through Washington on Independence Day did nothing illegal Federal officials had no reason to stop a white supremacist group’s July 4 rally in Washington because of free speech protections, US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on Sunday”

South China Morning Post

It recounted that one white supremacist, James Alex Fields Jr, attacked nearby counter-protesters by driving his car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, and said Trump responded by saying, “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.”

In the Reuters account, Burgum downplayed the march as an aberration among July 4 events commemorating the country’s 250th anniversary, and he said the Trump administration had already fixed dozens of monuments and fountains in Washington.

Burgum pointed to a controversial $14.7 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool, which had algae growth, peeling surface material and visible deterioration just weeks after rehabilitation work was completed.

Reuters also reported Burgum repeated Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that vandals damaged the pool’s new liner using box cutters to make gashes hundreds of feet long, and said the company that renovated the pool under a no-bid contract would handle the repairs “because they did a fantastic job” with the remake.