Thousands of Leftists Converge on Boston to Protest Nazis By Debra Heine
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/08/20/thousands-of-leftists-converge-on-boston-to-protest-nazis-end-up-protesting-free-speech-advocates-instead/
They end up protesting free speech advocates instead.
Tens of thousands of left-wing activists converged on Boston Saturday to protest “white supremacism” during a “free speech” rally in which organizers disavowed white supremacism. The counter-protesters were under the impression that the free speech rally would be similar to the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last week that became violent and left a woman dead. But they were wrong. The rally was organized by a free speech group with no connection to white nationalists or Nazis. The protest on Saturday seemed to be either a result of mass hysteria fanned by a rabidly anti-Trump MSM, or a massive astroturf effort funded by the usual suspects on the organized left. Or a combination of the two.
An organizer for Boston Free Speech, the group behind the rally, told Boston.com that the group is not associated with the white supremacists and wrote in a Facebook post prior to the event that hate groups were not welcome.
John Medlar said his group is mostly comprised of Boston-area students in their mid-teens to mid-20s.
While Medlar defined Boston Free Speech as “intentionally neutral libertarians,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a blog post Monday that the rally “has been organized under the auspices of the alt lite,” also known as the New Right, a “loosely-connected movement whose adherents generally shun white supremacist thinking, but who are in step with the alt right in their hatred of feminists and [ illegal] immigrants, among others.”
Medlar disagreed with this characterization of the rally’s organizers and said he wished the league had reached out to his group directly instead of rushing to judgment.
“We are a grassroots coalition of local progressives, libertarians, and conservatives,” he wrote in an email to Boston.com. “… The topic of our event is free speech itself, and issues related to free speech. [Every] speaker at this event was invited to speak about issues related to free speech, not their other personal politics.”
Medlar, a 23-year-old Newton native, said Boston Free Speech is not associated with any of the groups from the Charlottesville rally, echoing statements put out by the group on Facebook Tuesday, Saturday, and June 17.
Medlar told Boston.com that most of the groups that are involved with his organization are currently “right wing” because they are the ones who “feel their free speech is mostly under threat.” In response to a report in the Boston Herald Friday alleging that members of the Massachusetts Ku Klux Klan were planning to attend the free speech rally, he said on Facebook that his group “reserves the right to dismiss anyone” at their event.
“If we are made aware, at any time, that hate groups are attending our rally we will ask them to exercise their free speech elsewhere,” the post said. CONTINUE AT SITE
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