White Lives Matter Marchers Despondent After Failure: 'I Was the Only Person To Show Up'
Attempts to organize far-right "White Lives Matter" marches in cities across the country failed spectacularly, with a number of planned events having almost no attendees or canceled entirely.
White supremacists, neo-Nazis and other extremists had coordinated dozens of rallies in cities such as Fort Texas, Chicago, Illinois and Orlando, Florida, all due to take place at 1 p.m. on Sunday.
The marches were planned and discussed on social media and encrypted messaging app Telegram.
However, there was no real indication that many of the White Lives Marches would be highly attended, with several dedicated channels for individual marches in cities having only a handful of subscribers.
The largest of the White Lives Matter rallies appears to have taken place in Huntington Beach, California, but the white supremacists were still vastly outnumbered by more than 200 counter-protesters.
An unlawful assembly was later declared after physical altercations broke out between the two opposing sides.
Elsewhere, other planned White Lives Matter saw almost no attendees from the far-right, with some only having a handful being met with large crowds of counter-protesters.
According to NBC News, there was only White Lives Matter marcher in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Sunday, with three showing up outside City Hall in Fort Worth, Texas.
On Telegram, despondent marchers described their disappointment over the failure of the rallies planned in their city.
The administrator who organized a march in Kenner, Louisiana, wrote on Telegram: "No one has shown up to the meetup point, it has been close to two hours since the technical start time for the march. We're gonna call it, the march is canceled. If anyone is still trying to make it, I advise you not to."
One Telegram user in Memphis, Tennessee, described how they "sat around the area" of the protest but "no one showed up" on Sunday.
The organizer of a white supremacist rally in Nashville, Tennessee, also added: "Welp, I was the only person to show up and after being here an hour and a half for nothing I'm going home."
In an almost empty Telegram group for a White Lives Matter protest in Norfolk, Virginia, one woman wrote: "Well that was pitiful."
Organizers of the events were already in disarray days before April 11. As reported by Vice News, Telegram channels planning marches in cities such as Philadelphia and New York turned out to be hoaxes created by antifa to act as a "honeypot" to expose the neo-Nazis and extremists hoping to take part.
At least one person was still seen attending the fake "White Lives Matter" rally outside Trump Tower in New York on Sunday.
Others admins for the marches also expressed fears about the Nazi imagery and racism that was appearing in the channels, which they feared would put people off from joining the movement.
"This event should be 110% optical in the sense of no swastikas or anything that puts normies off. This is the chance to engage with normies," one admin wrote.
Others also expressed concerns about the attention the marches were getting in the media, with police departments across the country stating that they are aware of the planned rallies and would be planning accordingly.
"We hope events such as this will serve as an opportunity for unity rather than a platform to spread hate, bigotry and division," a Huntington Beach Police spokesperson said prior to Sunday's unrest.
"The City of Huntington Beach proudly stands by the values of diversity, equity and inclusion."
