TOI correspondent from Washington: Every party has uninvited guests and on America’s 250th birthday bash, they arrived in matching khakis, face masks, dark glasses, and military-style formation.Hours before President Trump extolled the virtues of liberty, democracy and the American experiment in his speech, roughly 400 members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front marched through downtown Washington carrying modified American flags and banners proclaiming “Reclaim America.” Patriot Front, one of the country’s best-known white supremacist organizations, traces its roots to the extremist movement that emerged after the 2017 Charlottesville rally. Uniformed in khakis, navy shirts and white face coverings, members promote a white ethnonationalist vision of America while choreographing marches designed as much for social media as for the streets.The reaction from most Washingtonians was a mix of visceral disgust, because nothing screams “master race” quite like hundreds of grown men hiding their faces behind matching sunglasses and baseball caps while riding the Metro in lockstep. On social media, critics wasted no time tearing down the theatrical display, one observing, “Apparently the dress code for crashing America’s birthday party was khakis and cowardice.“The administration’s response was sketchy at best. Asked if he condemned the march, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said: “Certainly, what they stand for is nothing I could possibly agree with, but one of the foundational principles of the US which makes democracy messy is free speech.” Trump, whose address at the National Mall warned about the “communist menace,” made no mention of the marchers. It’s a pattern: this is the same president who thought there were “very fine people on both sides” at Charlottesville. For a country celebrating a quarter millennium of declaring that “all men are created equal,” the march was an uncomfortable reminder that, 250 years later, some Americans are still questioning that equation.
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