Dozens of Neo-Nazis demonstrated exterior the house of Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) on Saturday night time, in an intimidating show of hate. Members of the group NSC-131 — which seeks to create a white-only ethnostate in New England — marched Saturday night time via the Boston suburb of Arlington, uniformed in khakis, black jackets, face masks, and baseball caps.
The NSC-131 members moved below cowl of darkness, co-opting the progressive activist chant, “Whose streets? Our streets!” The neo-Nazis then lined up on the sidewalk throughout the road from the Healey’s residence, which was protected by state troopers. The group’s members lit purple visitors flares, and held these aloft with stiff arm Hitler salutes. They unfurled a banner studying: “WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE.”
The motion by NSC-131 was an in-the-streets response to civil rights expenses introduced in opposition to the group by the state late final 12 months. A 26-page criticism was lodged by Massachusetts Lawyer Normal Andrea Pleasure Campbell (D) in December. Campbell denounced the group’s efforts to “goal and terrorize individuals throughout Massachusetts and intervene with their rights,” and insisted the state of Massachusetts is devoted to “holding this neo-Nazi group and its leaders accountable.”
That authorized criticism hits NSC-131 for actions that “unlawfully goal and disrupt LGBTQ+ occasions,” together with drag queen story hours; “unlawfully goal immigrants primarily based on race and nationwide origin,” together with by trespassing at inns the place asylum seekers have been supplied non permanent housing; “unlawfully assault members of the general public,” with frequent brawling at NSC-131 marches; and for quite a few efforts to “disrupt public peace and security.”
NSC-131 leaders posted video of the encounter exterior the governor’s residence on Telegram, a social community favored by many extremists, together with a message declaring that the purpose of the protest was “to indicate the world that lawfare is not going to intimidate New England Nationalists,” in addition to to whine about what the hate group phrases a “migrant invasion.”
A name to Healey’s workplace looking for remark was not instantly returned. This was, in reality, the second motion by NSC-131 focusing on the governor’s residence. In mid-October, members of the neo-Nazi group equally marched at Healey’s residence declaring: “New England is ours, the remainder should go.” On the time the governor launched an announcement blasting “these Neo-Nazis and white supremacists” for “making an attempt to scare individuals from exercising their rights,” including: “We received’t tolerate it in Massachusetts.”
NSC-131 is an offshoot of one other far-right hate group, Patriot Entrance, and is tactically comparable in staging flash-mob actions just like the march on Healey’s residence. However not like Patriot Entrance, which coats its white nationalism in a veneer of patriotism, NSC-131 is unabashedly Nazi in its ideology and iconography. “By utilizing the Swastika and the symbols of dreaded Nazi Germany,” the group has said in its literature, “we place ourselves in essentially the most stark opposition doable to every little thing that we might change in trendy society.”
The neo-Nazi group has, nonetheless, tried to make inroads with the MAGA crowd by coopting the problems animating the GOP base, declaring that “it’s Nazism … to oppose Drag Queen Story Hour and Important Race Concept.”
The group has additionally launched a considerably less-caustic, tradlife political motion referred to as the Individuals’s Initiative of New England, or PINE — which has distributed fliers at Donald Trump rallies. PINE requires the succession of New England from america, and for the removing of non-whites — with the intention, it has written in manifestoes posted to Substack, of making a authorities that “represents” the area’s white “supermajority and founding inventory.”