Five Fun Moments of Protest at the “American Renaissance” Conference

This past weekend, white nationalists, Nazis, and KKK members met at the “American Renaissance” conference. About 150 protesters traveled all the way out into rural Tennessee to oppose these suit-and-tie bigots. It was the largest protest ever seen at this fascist event. Run by notorious racist and eugenics supporter Jared Taylor, the conference is a sort of annual think tank event. It’s where racists make plans to oppress people and deny non-white people’s right to exist, promote eugenics and forced sterilization, discuss the need to urge or force white women to join their movement, and build momentum for genocide.

It was strangely satisfying to meet these racists eye to eye to protest them, heckle, harass, and taunt. During many moments, we were having so much fun roasting the racists that it felt more like a comedy show. Whether serious or tongue-in-cheek, it was still necessary and grounding to stand in protest against their hate.

Here are five memorable moments from this past weekend, some good and some painful. Enjoy!

1) Getting Hit by A Racist’s Car

Yep, some white nationalists actually drove into me. A young man and woman in a little gray car were exiting the conference parking lot. I was actually trying to film another conference attendee in the parking lot, walking with a group of activists and press, when the two honked and drove straight towards us. I turned and verbally confronted them, at which point I stopped walking and looked straight at the male driver. He stopped. Then, he went. Not the kind of stop-and-go traffic I wanted to be in.

Lurching forward, the car bumped into me, with the car’s bumper pushing into my thighs and sending me backwards. (Don’t worry, I was not hurt. I am not made of glass.) I stood my ground and kept my footing, wondering if I should leap over their car if it lurched again. Instead, they stopped. I yelled at them, “Be a human being. You can’t run over people who aren’t white. You can’t run over women. You can’t run us over!”

RACISTS from white nationalist @AmRenaissance conference almost ran me over with their car this weekend. They support genocide so… #AmRen pic.twitter.com/DuesDAQ5w5

— Lacy MacAuley (@lacymacauley) July 31, 2017

I captured this little moment on camera. The young white woman in the passenger seat was holding Jared Taylor’s scaremongering book about white nationalism, “If We Do Nothing” up to her face. She was trying to try to conceal her identity from the camera, but all I could think about was the pressure she must be getting to have like twelve white babies.

Well, let this be a lesson. If we do nothing as activists, I guess the right is going to run us over. Let’s stop their momentum!

2) Taunting a “White Sharia” True Believer

“It’s a good idea,” said a young man about “white sharia.” I captured a video of this unpleasant encounter. I had noticed he was wearing a T-Shirt for “Daily Stormer,” one of the most popular websites of the “Alt Right,” while walking to the back of the hotel and conference center with two friends. Antifascist activists walked several times to the back of the building, where fascists were visible high on a veranda, taking smoke breaks and schmoozing.

“White sharia,” as I wrote for One People’s Project, re-posted on ItsGoingDown.org, is a movement among white men to call for extreme oppression of white women, in order to reverse women’s rights and force us to have their white babies. It is a desperate grab to increase their birth rate, control and oppress us, take what little property women actually own, and force women out of the workplace and worldly affairs, and back into family and domestic work.

“How many women do you actually know?” I asked, “Say like, you know how they feel about their mom–?“

“I think that’s the point, is that I don’t care how women feel,” he said. My two clever friends proceeded to taunt him. He wasn’t much of a talker, though, and wasn’t offering much sport. I decided on a direct approach. I told him that I would never give up my rights as a woman and never allow men to oppress me.

“I will never bow!” I yelled.

“No?” he asked.

As he spoke, he took an aggressive step towards me, well within punching range, and looked down on me from the six-inch tall patio. I guess this young man was hoping I would be intimidated. Instead, I stepped up onto his patio myself, mocking his posturing. “Oh, I can stand on a little ledge, too! Oh, look, I’m so strong!” His demeanor quickly returned to ignorant silence. I told him again that women will never let white men take their rights.

“Over my fucking dead body!” I said.

“It probably will be,” he said. Such is the cruelty of “white sharia.” I felt empathy toward whatever women must have to deal with this young man in his daily life.

In an article I wrote last week about “white sharia,” I noted:

“While some men may be just using the “white sharia” meme for the lulz, others are true believers in the need to oppress women. Some actually believe there will be a future of forcing women back into traditional roles like some real-world version of The Handmaid’s Tale. And even if disaffected and malcontent white men are just doing all of this in jest, it still pushes them toward oppression, abuse, and brutality in the subconscious slurry of their minds. We must stop the far right, and ensure that “white sharia” remains a juvenile fantasy.”

This young man in his Daily Stormer T-shirt certainly seemed like a true believer, complete with his physical threat toward me.

Roughly ten minutes later, I was engaging a different young man who has been spotted with Nazi Richard Spencer and famed KKK lawyer Sam Dickson. (One People’s Project’s code name for this guy is “Hitler Youth.”) I told him that white women would never accept their movement or “white sharia.” He laughed and said that “white sharia” was “a joke.” I told him that their little joke is dangerous for women, and clearly not everyone is in on the joke.

Regardless of the gravity of their sexist agenda, it was profoundly satisfying to be able to taunt a real “white sharia” believer.

3) A Rumble and A Tumble

Can fingers shoot lightning bolts? Holding his hands out like Emperor Palpatine, the white supremacist conference attendee William Markley turned toward me with wild eyes, panting and ready to fight.

Markley had just pushed my friend, John Carico, down a steep incline. I had watched John take this spill while sprinting toward the fighting pair. I guess John had shouted the word “fascist!” through Markley’s hotel window as he walked by, prompting Markley to run out of his hotel room and onto the patio to fight John. John’s bushy beard, long hair, and bandana probably marked him as an activist to Markley. When the altercation began, a group of nearby antifascist activists took off running toward our friend, who was about fifty feet from anyone else.

After a sprint, I arrived to confront Markley’s lightning bolt fingers of death. I can’t really say what happened next, but by the end, several people had taken a delightful tumble down the steep incline, myself included. Markley the Errant Fascist looked pretty hurt, and both John and Markley were in the lake at the bottom of the hill. Both were arrested soaking wet. John had a satisfied look in his eyes.

Both have the same charge of “disorderly conduct.” If you wish to support antifascist activist John Carico, you can get more information on his Facebook Page.

And guess what? Someone got a helicopter ride! The fascists are always threatening to take antifa on “helicopter rides,” meaning they want to kill us. But it was Markley who got a ride, sent via life-flight helicopter to the Nashville hospital, according to the law enforcement personnel we spoke with. (This has yet to be confirmed, but that’s what we were told, so we are rolling with it… until the fascists themselves deny it!) Markley also got a wicked black eye, a busted lip, and scratches and bruises. We hope he heals up and stops attacking people.

You can buy a T-shirt with “John Carico’s Helicopter Rides.” It says, “Sending the Alt-Right to Life Flight.” How is that for some hard evidence of the relative “violence” of antifa versus the brutalism of the right. The “Alt Right” has memes that show antifa being thrown to our death from a helicopter. Antifa makes T-shirts showing fascists getting sent to the hospital – after they attack us.

This attack did not please Grandpa Jared Taylor, the conference head, as noted in our article on Idavox the following day:

“According to other attendees, a visibly angry Jared Taylor began his remarks that day noting that one of the attendees “disobeyed” him by engaging in a physical altercation with protesters and that he was “disappointed”.

4) A Dubious Moment Between Two White Nationalist VIPs

A former skinhead who turned into a Swedish mining company executive? Who now bank-rolls the anti-immigration movement in Europe and white racists in the United States? Someone that important would never just come out of the conference and start letting people heckle and roast him, right? He would never need Grandpa Jared Taylor, the conference organizer, to come and rescue him from our tauntfest, right?

Well, that’s exactly what happened. Daniel Friberg, CEO of Wiking Mineral, came outside ostensibly to sit in the fresh air and do some smart-phoning. We had other plans.

“Oh hey, that’s Daniel Friberg from Sweden! He’s been trying to kick immigrants out of Europe,” said Daryle Lamont Jenkins, the genius behind the One People’s Project.

FASCIST Daniel Friberg from Sweden gets into argument with #antifa. Jared Taylor has to pull him back into @AmRenaissance conference. pic.twitter.com/9xuLqHACf9

— Lacy MacAuley (@lacymacauley) July 29, 2017

We proceeded to heckle him. I asked him many times whether he knew how many elements of Swedish culture come from the fertile crescent area, Egypt, and, yes, the area of Syria. (Let’s start with Christianity, which was born partly in modern-day Syria.) He sipped his cup of coffee with a cocky look on his face. We harassed him for relishing coffee, which is a plant that came from what’s now modern-day Ethiopia.

That’s when Jared Taylor himself, head honcho of the whole conference, stepped out of the door and walked directly to Friberg. It looked like a rescue mission. Placing a hand on Friberg’s shoulder, he directed Friberg to go back inside the building. Friberg took one last, longing glance towards our group of hecklers before he walked inside through the doors, with Taylor walking just behind.

Afterwards, I posted a video of the encounter on Twitter. This prompted Friberg himself to send me a reply saying, “Dear Lacy, please stop stalking me. I already said no to a date with you, and I won’t change my mind no matter how much you nag me about it.”

I responded, “Sure, having you creepily stutter about killing migrants as you get drunk and expect your #whitesharia sounds like a fun date? Disgusting :(“

Dating a genocide fan? Yuck. Why does the right wing always go there? Oh, right. Sexism. They are never exactly sure how to react to the fact that many of their critics are, in fact, women – unlike their side, which is almost entirely men. Women have principles, words, logic, heart, and a hell of a lot of fight in them. But maybe all they see is someone to date or not date, as if life were one big OKCupid, which is perhaps the main place they contact any women at all. Besides maybe getting rejected at bars?

White nationalist @jartaylor slaps Swedish activist @Daniel_Friberg at @AmRenaissance. VERY REAL NEWS. Images by @Aequitas_Battle. #AmRen 😉 pic.twitter.com/JEfLAv0G0h

— Lacy MacAuley (@lacymacauley) July 30, 2017

After the Twitter exchange, I had a little fun and re-posted some photos that a friend had taken that appeared to show Jared Taylor slapping Friberg.

“I told you, Danny, never fraternize with the enemy!” said Taylor in our fictional scenario, as he slaps Friberg across the cheek. Taylor’s hands are the soft and flaccid hands of an academic. Friberg’s ex-skinhead fist could destroy Taylor. Ah, but Taylor knows he is the boss here. The slap goes unchecked.

“I’m sorry, Opa Jared, it won’t happen again!” said the fictional Friberg. “Don’t worry, I will keep giving you all the money like I promised.”

“Good, good,” says fictional Taylor, with an acidic smile.

You have to fight fascism like hell. But you also have to have laughs along the way.

5) Piranha Feeding Frenzy on Twitter

The young “Alt Right” generation of conference attendees noticed that I was Tweeting about them during the weekend, and took to Twitter to attack. Mostly using their no-name accounts, not brave enough to use their real names, they attempted to troll me. Instead of getting upset, I decided to just give them bait. They attacked like piranhas.

“Here fashy, fashy, fashy!” The conference had occurred outside a hotel and conference center with heavily tinted windows. Inside were the worst of the worst, like Nazi Richard Spencer, violent “Identity Evropa” head Nathan Damigo, wants-to-be-famous Charlottesville “Unite the Right” racist Jason Kessler, old-hand KKK lawyer Sam Dickson, and many more bigoted misanthropes. We couldn’t see them inside, but they could see us outside. However, we discovered that our cameras could see through the windows and capture images of them, if we held them right up to the glass. At intervals, we were able to get close enough to the glass to get images, which revealed that they were all facing toward us as if the window were a giant movie screen. “Don’t tap on the glass!”

It’s not surprising that they were watching us like we were the best movie ever. Maybe we were a lot more interesting, creative, and engaging than their same-same world, their white in-group state where everyone looks the same, acts the same, and thinks the same. Profoundly boring. A fish tank of white sameness that no one would look twice at while visiting the aquarium.

We need to keep opposing these fascists, white nationalists, misogynists, racists, and Nazis. And we need to hold fast to our principles. Because we actually are the best movie ever, and we all want a happy ending. These may be dangerous times, when the world is in danger of tipping toward fascism. But I believe that with humor, love, and integrity, we will prevail.

Here's what Twitter looked like during racist @AmRenaissance conference. Sure had fun baiting "fashies" 🙂 #AmRenhttps://t.co/vszLPBFiRH

— Lacy MacAuley (@lacymacauley) July 31, 2017