fb-pixelNeo-Nazis rally with burning swastika in Georgia after anti-racism protesters arrested for wearing masks - The Boston Globe Skip to main content

Neo-Nazis rally with burning swastika in Georgia after anti-racism protesters arrested for wearing masks

Members of the National Socialist Movement, one of the largest neo-Nazi groups in the US, hold a swastika burning after a rally on Saturday, in Draketown, Ga.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The neo-Nazis were running late, so the counterprotesters began without them, lining the streets of Newnan, Ga., on Saturday afternoon.

The target of their counterprotest was the National Socialist Movement, the neo-Nazis who had planned a public rally. But things quickly went awry for the counterprotesters who were wearing masks or bandannas that concealed their faces — a problem in the eyes of some police officers. Around 2:30 p.m., police began to point their guns at a crowd of the anti-racism protesters gathered on a sidewalk.

‘‘State law requires you to remove your masks right now,’’ one SWAT officer told the crowd, according to video footage from the scene. ‘‘You will do it right now or you will be arrested.’’

Advertisement



An anti-racist protester was arrested by police in Newnan, Ga., on Saturday.HYOSUB SHIN

Within minutes, several counterprotesters were in handcuffs. Video footage from the scene showed SWAT officers pulling some counterprotesters off the curb and throwing them to the ground. One man wearing a bandanna over his face was arrested as counterprotesters chanted, ‘‘Hands up, don’t shoot!’’ The officers continued to yell, ‘‘Remove your masks!’’

More than 700 officers had swarmed the town due to the rally, many of them in full riot gear carrying military-style weapons.

Riot police stood between protesters and members and neo-Nazis during Saturday’s rally.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

As it turns out, the state law police cited before arresting those protesting racism in masks has a rather ironic origin: It was passed in Georgia in 1951 to combat those promoting racism in hoods.

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, throughout the latter half of the 20th century, police enforced the Anti-Mask Act against members of the white-hooded Ku Klux Klan in effort to quell their public gatherings. In more recent years, however, it has been used against masked counterprotesters at white supremacist rallies.

Jeremy Ortega, a 19-year-old charged with a misdemeanor for wearing a mask, told the Journal-Constitution that people were trying to hide their identities to avoid being targeted by the white power groups. He is among at least 10 counterprotesters arrested Saturday, though not all were arrested for wearing masks. Some were arrested for obstructing a roadway, the Journal-Constitution reported.

Advertisement



The neo-Nazis marched into town wearing all black, bearing flags and yelling ‘‘white power,’’ the Newnan Times-Herald reported. There were no arrests.

After the rally in Newnan, the neo-Nazis reportedly returned to Draketown, Ga., where photographs show them burning a swastika.

Members of the National Socialist Movement held a swastika burning Saturday in Draketown, Ga.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Ortega said he is considering a lawsuit against the police.

‘‘They were trying to stop us, and we were trying to dial down the racist stuff,’’ he told the news outlet. ‘‘We were peacefully protesting, yet they put guns in our faces and told us to take our masks off. It made no sense.’’

Counterprotesters chant in opposition to the neo-Nazis Saturday in Newnan.BITA HONARVAR/AFP/Getty Images

As of Sunday night, all the arrested counterprotesters had been released from jail on bail, according to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provides financial support to those who get arrested while protesting.

The Coweta County Sheriff’s Office reported no injuries to officers or protesters, saying that the rally was ‘‘very peaceful for the most part,’’ despite a ‘‘handful of arrests.’’

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups in the United States, anti-mask laws were passed in at least 18 states by the end of the 20th century, most between the 1920s and 1950s. In Georgia, the Anti-Mask Act was enacted two years after a Klan parade in Wrightsville, Ga., on the eve of an election reportedly kept 400 black people from going to vote, among the incidents that lawmakers cited in pushing for its passage.

Advertisement



The law has been challenged multiple times on the grounds that it violates the First Amendment’s protection of free speech, but the Georgia Supreme Court rejected that argument in 1990.

At that time, Shane J. Miller waltzed into a Georgia town dressed in full Ku Klux Klan regalia and was quickly arrested. He argued that wearing the white hood was protected symbolic speech. But the justices, in a 6 to 1 opinion, focused on the intimidating nature of a ‘‘masked vigilantes.’’

‘‘We know that ‘public disguise is a particularly effective means of committing crimes of violence and intimidation. From the beginning of time the mask or hood has been the criminal’s dress. It conceals evidence, hinders apprehension and calms the criminal’s inward cowardly fear,’’’ the court said. ‘‘A nameless, faceless figure strikes terror in the human heart. But, remove the mask, and the nightmarish form is reduced to its true dimensions. The face betrays not only identity, but human frailty.’’

But the Act, the justices wrote, ‘‘is content neutral,’’ and therefore isn’t intended to only apply to Klansmen.

Across the country, over the past decade, anti-mask laws have been applied to Occupy Wall Street protesters wearing Guy Fawkes-style masks in New York and Antifa protesters in Alabama at an event hosted by Richard Spencer, a leader of the white nationalist movement. In Georgia in 2016, eight counterprotesters in masks were arrested while protesting white supremacists.

Advertisement



Like the protesters Saturday, they found little reason for the police to consider the masks threatening.

‘‘It was just a tool for them to suppress the crowd, one counterprotester told the Journal-Constitution then.