Prominent leftwing intellectuals are allowing their singular, disdain-driven focus on (neo-) liberalism to completely distort their perspective on the Right
Excellent article as always, Thomas. Well reasoned and supported. The one thing I would add is the cost of being wrong if one downplays the rise of fascism. The skeptics warn that about the rise of the police state by wrongly using the fascism label, but seem to disregard the opposite threat. It's a little late to warn (or admit you were wrong) once the fascists are in power.
These guys couldn't be trusted to babysit... A golden retriever.
Now I see where the batshit theories and behavior coming out of the pro-Hamas left comes from. It's entirely constructed theory, nothing natural, no existence of human nature, of our natural instincts permitted. Perfect way to prepare people for cults.
This is how you deny the existence of mass rape and atrocities. All in pursuit of a theoretical future that will never, ever, ehh-verrr happen. Does it bother them that they're on the same side as neo-Nazis now? Literally? Given the latter funded a sign truck to drive around Union Square with false accusations about Israel and thejews?
And in attempting to destroy the village so they could save it, they blew up everything around the village, including themselves.
These fools have no business in education. They're duplicitous, for changing their text to match reality while insisting the reality they had gotten out of touch with so much they had to make a sneaky change isn't really real. Their methods are literally shared with brain-washing.
I stopped reading after he got to the part about that sleazy move with their content. That tells me everything I need to know. They are incapable of honest dealing with humanity, or humans. I know the type. They're going to continue to be wrong and their predictions will be, probably are alreqdy, increasingly out of sync with reality. What they don't edit in secret they'll claim didn't really happen or the cause was outside of their prediction and it may even have been done to make them look bad. Or their movement look bad, but, of course, same thing, right? Either way, they will never be wrong, ever. Just ask them, if it doesn't happen it's not their fault because... But this next thing "DEFINITELY will happen totally certainly... oh it didn't? Not my fault!"
Sound like anyone we know?
If they didn't get jobs in academia they'd have employment records of going from low-level clerical jobs one after another, alienating people over petty diversions, unable to change enough to ever fit somewhere. They're incapable of understanding other people so they put enormous energy into making reality bend to their interpretation of life and their innate feelings. This kind of brain is enormously toxic, and usually they can't cause much damage, but sticking them in front of a captive audience of open-minded neophytes with very little stake in real world risks thanks to the shelter their parents built around them, they don't understand the stakes for the larger world at all either.
This bit of writing explains it aaall to me now.
Congrats left-lefties, you're now so purist you're allied with both fascists and rabidly violent genocidal regimes, meaning Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas... and technically, Bibi, bcuz he is at heart an autocrat, just like those others.
This explains the horseshoe of extremists on the continuum. They close the oval for me. Finally, this illustrates for me why the center MUST hold. And I'm damn determined it will.
In French as in most European languages the word "liberal" meant, and still means "tolerant", for those who use language carefully. At the beginning of the 19th century a semantic shift occurred in its political use. Henceforth, it also meant "supporter of free enterprise". Still now in the European French speaking areas, it means "business friendly". As English spreads as a lingua franca the use of "liberal" denoting the two extremes of the political spectrum: liberal for "leftist", (neo-l)iberal for what in Europe is "far-right" is too often used by the media to create confusion and manipulate public opinion. The same can be said of the term "democrat" when applied to the US Democrat Party. Some in Europe believe that the Party of Clinton, Obama, Biden is a left of center party. Most Europeans ignore that Clinton, Obama, Biden State Department personnel has consistently been a fief of the war-monger neoconservatives who, along European continental categories, can rightly be called fascists. Let's hope the time is near when Europeans will judge parties not on their names but on their stated agenda and program.
The correct term is “Democratic” Party. The term “Democrat” Party is a Republican term used disparagingly. It is a signal of disrespect and bias as I assume you know.
I agree that the Skeptics are off the mark. I also don't see that Fascism and Neo-liberalism are all that incompatible. Trump is dream come true for the "greed is good" crowd. A while back Chomsky pointed out that Fascism "classic" had the government dominating the corporations while what we seem to be heading into is the reverse - the corporations will own the government. Let the Skeptics debate how many Proud Boys can dance on the head of a pin and we'll do whatever we can to keep Trump - as well as his toadies AND puppet masters - out of power.
While the two posts make a reasonably strong case for the technically equating Trumpism with fascism, I think the political implications would hurt the left. Fascism = nazi-ism in the public’s mind. So either:
You get the left to start universally associating Trumpism with fascism and swing voters notice the absence of a few thousand political executions and conclude that the left is once again is crying wolf and everything it says can be ignored.
AND
Since if anything justifies political violence and assassination, it’s trying to stop nazis from seizing power, the left now becomes the ones guilty of stochastic terrorism when someone decides to stop Hitler early with bombs and political assassinations.
OR
You really do persuade millions of pro-Trump supporters that Trumpism is fascism and thus logically, what America needs is fascism. If I wanted to bring the term fascism into the Overton window, I could see no better way than successfully labelling a broadly popular political movement fascist.
Trump was never an aberration. In the 2016 debates, he didn't deviate much from Republican orthodoxy, except his dislike of trade deals and his desire (for now) to not go after Social Security. (He was more willing to cut it in a second term.) That is to say those elements were always there and it has been more of an evolution than a revolution. Trump distinguished himself by saying the quiet part out loud and (shockingly) empathized with the grievances of many in America, probably because of his exclusion from the New York elite (despite his wealth).
Many people on the Left criticize the Democratic Party because they fundamentally mischaracterize the Party. The Democratic Party is more of a consensus Party than the Republican Party. The Democratic Party of Clinton (which included the likes of Richard Shelby and Zell Miller) was to the right of the Democratic Party of Obama (who had Ben Nelson and Bart Stupak) who is to the right of the Democratic Party of Biden (which includes Manchin and +/- Sinema (who is a fascinating character who doesn't neatly fit any prevailing narratives)). There is still an alignment going on and what the Left (in my opinion) fail to recognize is how that divide was accelerated by the Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights. The Left's vision of a more robust safety net cannot be a reality without a concerted effort to incorporate marginalized populations into the net, a movement both the Left and the Right deride as "identity politics". There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth but Trump's electoral victory as being due to economic anxiety was more prevalent on the Left than the mainstream Democratic Party. So much so, there was many people of color in the Democratic Party who believe that the Left think that their rights are taking a back seat to a leftist agenda that doesn't truly acknowledge them.
Ultimately the Left continues to fight a battle where the combatants largely agree but they have to distort the Democratic Party agenda so they don't have to ever reckon with their electoral and political weakness. Sadly, their distortions are seen most prominently in Joe Biden. Biden has been in office since before Reagan so he has always been in favor of what would now be called a more progressive economic program. This is the first time he is in a position to act on it. Also, not to say he has been perfect on Gaza but he has taken the position of a powerful ally and not an imperialist. It is ironic that the Left's major criticism of Biden in Gaza is because he doesn't act like the Left's impression of America. Also, it's clear he does not subscribe to the Louis XIV belief that "L'etat, c'est moi", which allows him to support a ME Democratic state as opposed to a leader he has political disagreements with. The Left, who tend to be indifferent to political parties, would be grateful to countries who don't share that philosophy because they wouldn't want to be mistreated because they have a President, like Trump, who many countries despise.
As a historical reminder, the Left continues to fight this silly battle against neoliberalism, which is nothing more than shadowboxing, all the while leading the way to a situation where their progressive dreams become more impossible to achieve. Despite their beliefs to the contrary, people will remember their role (like they remembered in 2020) and they won't take power. Humility and reality based arguments shouldn't hurt the Left.
Trumpism is the bigger problem and must be dealt with first and foremost. That it's inconvenient to those who want to focus on neoliberalism doesn't belittle it's value.
Trump and his enablers are heading towards implementing a right wing agenda that borders on fascism. The skeptics blame the prevailing ideology of neoliberalism which is another way of saying the endless perpetuation of economic inequality in favor of the rich, the powerful, the decision makers behind the mask of democracy. Of course, the skeptics won't vote Republican. They won't vote for Biden either especially after his shameless capitulation to the most right wing leaders in Israel. Their position is theoretically correct but totally out of touch with political reality. The recent campus protests may be a start, but at present there is no mass movement making the connections between foreign and domestic alignments. To summarize we need to bring a social democratic party into existence. I don't presume to know how that can be done.
I enjoyed your analysis of the current radicalization of the Right, and I think your critic’s invoking of “1968” is emblematic of the current crisis of the anti-Democratic Left, its ambivalence in coming to grips with an energetic authoritarian strain on the Right, and its animus with a perceived center-left liberal elite and its supposed neoliberal groupthink.
Five years ago I wrote this essay to identify this insurgent wing struggling for relevance and at war with and partially within the Democratic Party:
I agree that fascism is an appropriate, useful term to understand what has been happening on the American Right. I also agree that the Skeptics have not provided a lot of empirical evidence that it is de-mobilizing for the Left in the way they have suggested.
But they are, at least, grappling with what works politically, and are not, as you seem to be doing here, assuming and asserting that simply speaking the complicated truth is enough. Scholarly description and diagnosis is one thing; but they are concerned with political action as well.
I'm not convinced, as they are, that it is possible or there is much to gain from resisting the fascism label. But I'm also not seeing folks on the other side of the question coming out strong with a strategy for both emphasizing the fascism threat AND explaining how it couldn't have flourished like it has without Neo-liberalism. I'm open to such an idea, indeed. But it is one of the cardinal flawed assumptions of liberalism that simply appealing to the complicated truth is always the best political strategy. That's simply naive.
So again, my preferred approach is to do the both/and, but, I think that some of the assertions of being disingenuous or resistant to new evidence here are a little off the mark; it's not that Robin and company are disingenuous, it's that they have a different analysis of how politics actually works than Zimmerman and company, and so are trying to do praxis responsibility and realistically. There's a fundamental disagreement about how politics actually works, not some deep well of irrational disdain for neoliberalism.
I got my Fascism prof from last term to read your stuff. I saw him today and told him he had to read it and when we talked about it he recognized the controversy that got TZ to write this. Anyway, I think these pieces are really important.
I do think we need to have a discussion about what fascism is and isn't. TZ acknowledged this in the first part and it's right.
For example, Nazism is fascist the way apples are fruit. The words "apple" and "blueberry" aren't interchangable just because they're both fruit. Actually, it's more complex than that. Nazism is like a granny smith apple, which is a fruit and thus an apple. What I mean is while Nazism is fascist it doesn't represent all fascist movements and suggesting it does is in fact dangerous. And fascism doesn't represent all authoritarian and totalitarian regimes either. Stalin was a totalitarian but he was absolutely not a fascist. He was an extremely dangerous man full of evil and violence but he wasn't a fascist. Hard pass on either of these assholes.
And it gets more complicated. While Trump et al is fascist, I'd argue they're more accurately described as neofascist, which I understand to be transnational instead of the nationalistic obsession of the so called ur fascisms, that formed in Italy, Spain, Germany and Japan, started to form in China and spread to France, Portugal, The Netherlands, etc from 1922-1945. These assholes collaborated but were absolutely going to eventually go to war with each other when no one else was left.
The modern fascist movement is global and seeking not to coexist but to unify.
Today’s fascists have a strong nationalistic streak. From what I read the fascists in Europe are anti-EU so I have doubts about the claim that they are transnationalists. Putin is a fascist and certainly supports them but he clearly is all about Mother Russia dominating, not partnering.
Please see Chapter 4, titled "The Anatomy of Fascism Denial," in my December 2021 book 'This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America': https://www.amazon.com/This-Happened-Here-Amerikaners-Neoliberals-ebook/dp/B09MSQHJKB I am not one to crave a lot of attention but the invisibility of my work (as a Marxist) on Amerikaner Trumpism-fascism and on intelllectual fascism-denial has reached a level of absurdity that I find darkly amusing :) I took on academic and left fascism-deniers one by one in great detail. The chapter includes a section on specifically left-identified Trumpism-fascism-denial. I coined the phrase "Trumpenleft" something as a joke in 2018 or 2019...turned out it was no joke.
I can't take anyone arguing there was Black participation at Charlottesville seriously. West and other activists went there to counter-protest and were surrounded in a church by people carrying torches, wearing polo shirts and khaki pants.
Excellent article as always, Thomas. Well reasoned and supported. The one thing I would add is the cost of being wrong if one downplays the rise of fascism. The skeptics warn that about the rise of the police state by wrongly using the fascism label, but seem to disregard the opposite threat. It's a little late to warn (or admit you were wrong) once the fascists are in power.
The mental self-stroking... omg.
And that's the guy I agree with.
These guys couldn't be trusted to babysit... A golden retriever.
Now I see where the batshit theories and behavior coming out of the pro-Hamas left comes from. It's entirely constructed theory, nothing natural, no existence of human nature, of our natural instincts permitted. Perfect way to prepare people for cults.
This is how you deny the existence of mass rape and atrocities. All in pursuit of a theoretical future that will never, ever, ehh-verrr happen. Does it bother them that they're on the same side as neo-Nazis now? Literally? Given the latter funded a sign truck to drive around Union Square with false accusations about Israel and thejews?
And in attempting to destroy the village so they could save it, they blew up everything around the village, including themselves.
These fools have no business in education. They're duplicitous, for changing their text to match reality while insisting the reality they had gotten out of touch with so much they had to make a sneaky change isn't really real. Their methods are literally shared with brain-washing.
I stopped reading after he got to the part about that sleazy move with their content. That tells me everything I need to know. They are incapable of honest dealing with humanity, or humans. I know the type. They're going to continue to be wrong and their predictions will be, probably are alreqdy, increasingly out of sync with reality. What they don't edit in secret they'll claim didn't really happen or the cause was outside of their prediction and it may even have been done to make them look bad. Or their movement look bad, but, of course, same thing, right? Either way, they will never be wrong, ever. Just ask them, if it doesn't happen it's not their fault because... But this next thing "DEFINITELY will happen totally certainly... oh it didn't? Not my fault!"
Sound like anyone we know?
If they didn't get jobs in academia they'd have employment records of going from low-level clerical jobs one after another, alienating people over petty diversions, unable to change enough to ever fit somewhere. They're incapable of understanding other people so they put enormous energy into making reality bend to their interpretation of life and their innate feelings. This kind of brain is enormously toxic, and usually they can't cause much damage, but sticking them in front of a captive audience of open-minded neophytes with very little stake in real world risks thanks to the shelter their parents built around them, they don't understand the stakes for the larger world at all either.
This bit of writing explains it aaall to me now.
Congrats left-lefties, you're now so purist you're allied with both fascists and rabidly violent genocidal regimes, meaning Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas... and technically, Bibi, bcuz he is at heart an autocrat, just like those others.
This explains the horseshoe of extremists on the continuum. They close the oval for me. Finally, this illustrates for me why the center MUST hold. And I'm damn determined it will.
In French as in most European languages the word "liberal" meant, and still means "tolerant", for those who use language carefully. At the beginning of the 19th century a semantic shift occurred in its political use. Henceforth, it also meant "supporter of free enterprise". Still now in the European French speaking areas, it means "business friendly". As English spreads as a lingua franca the use of "liberal" denoting the two extremes of the political spectrum: liberal for "leftist", (neo-l)iberal for what in Europe is "far-right" is too often used by the media to create confusion and manipulate public opinion. The same can be said of the term "democrat" when applied to the US Democrat Party. Some in Europe believe that the Party of Clinton, Obama, Biden is a left of center party. Most Europeans ignore that Clinton, Obama, Biden State Department personnel has consistently been a fief of the war-monger neoconservatives who, along European continental categories, can rightly be called fascists. Let's hope the time is near when Europeans will judge parties not on their names but on their stated agenda and program.
The correct term is “Democratic” Party. The term “Democrat” Party is a Republican term used disparagingly. It is a signal of disrespect and bias as I assume you know.
I agree that the Skeptics are off the mark. I also don't see that Fascism and Neo-liberalism are all that incompatible. Trump is dream come true for the "greed is good" crowd. A while back Chomsky pointed out that Fascism "classic" had the government dominating the corporations while what we seem to be heading into is the reverse - the corporations will own the government. Let the Skeptics debate how many Proud Boys can dance on the head of a pin and we'll do whatever we can to keep Trump - as well as his toadies AND puppet masters - out of power.
While the two posts make a reasonably strong case for the technically equating Trumpism with fascism, I think the political implications would hurt the left. Fascism = nazi-ism in the public’s mind. So either:
You get the left to start universally associating Trumpism with fascism and swing voters notice the absence of a few thousand political executions and conclude that the left is once again is crying wolf and everything it says can be ignored.
AND
Since if anything justifies political violence and assassination, it’s trying to stop nazis from seizing power, the left now becomes the ones guilty of stochastic terrorism when someone decides to stop Hitler early with bombs and political assassinations.
OR
You really do persuade millions of pro-Trump supporters that Trumpism is fascism and thus logically, what America needs is fascism. If I wanted to bring the term fascism into the Overton window, I could see no better way than successfully labelling a broadly popular political movement fascist.
Gotta say, after reading these two thoughtful, reasonable posts about the "fascism debate," I was a bit surprised by the comments!
Trump was never an aberration. In the 2016 debates, he didn't deviate much from Republican orthodoxy, except his dislike of trade deals and his desire (for now) to not go after Social Security. (He was more willing to cut it in a second term.) That is to say those elements were always there and it has been more of an evolution than a revolution. Trump distinguished himself by saying the quiet part out loud and (shockingly) empathized with the grievances of many in America, probably because of his exclusion from the New York elite (despite his wealth).
Many people on the Left criticize the Democratic Party because they fundamentally mischaracterize the Party. The Democratic Party is more of a consensus Party than the Republican Party. The Democratic Party of Clinton (which included the likes of Richard Shelby and Zell Miller) was to the right of the Democratic Party of Obama (who had Ben Nelson and Bart Stupak) who is to the right of the Democratic Party of Biden (which includes Manchin and +/- Sinema (who is a fascinating character who doesn't neatly fit any prevailing narratives)). There is still an alignment going on and what the Left (in my opinion) fail to recognize is how that divide was accelerated by the Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights. The Left's vision of a more robust safety net cannot be a reality without a concerted effort to incorporate marginalized populations into the net, a movement both the Left and the Right deride as "identity politics". There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth but Trump's electoral victory as being due to economic anxiety was more prevalent on the Left than the mainstream Democratic Party. So much so, there was many people of color in the Democratic Party who believe that the Left think that their rights are taking a back seat to a leftist agenda that doesn't truly acknowledge them.
Ultimately the Left continues to fight a battle where the combatants largely agree but they have to distort the Democratic Party agenda so they don't have to ever reckon with their electoral and political weakness. Sadly, their distortions are seen most prominently in Joe Biden. Biden has been in office since before Reagan so he has always been in favor of what would now be called a more progressive economic program. This is the first time he is in a position to act on it. Also, not to say he has been perfect on Gaza but he has taken the position of a powerful ally and not an imperialist. It is ironic that the Left's major criticism of Biden in Gaza is because he doesn't act like the Left's impression of America. Also, it's clear he does not subscribe to the Louis XIV belief that "L'etat, c'est moi", which allows him to support a ME Democratic state as opposed to a leader he has political disagreements with. The Left, who tend to be indifferent to political parties, would be grateful to countries who don't share that philosophy because they wouldn't want to be mistreated because they have a President, like Trump, who many countries despise.
As a historical reminder, the Left continues to fight this silly battle against neoliberalism, which is nothing more than shadowboxing, all the while leading the way to a situation where their progressive dreams become more impossible to achieve. Despite their beliefs to the contrary, people will remember their role (like they remembered in 2020) and they won't take power. Humility and reality based arguments shouldn't hurt the Left.
Trumpism is the bigger problem and must be dealt with first and foremost. That it's inconvenient to those who want to focus on neoliberalism doesn't belittle it's value.
Well said.
"Owning the libs" seems to be a major attraction to both MAGA and the crowd described in this article.
Trump and his enablers are heading towards implementing a right wing agenda that borders on fascism. The skeptics blame the prevailing ideology of neoliberalism which is another way of saying the endless perpetuation of economic inequality in favor of the rich, the powerful, the decision makers behind the mask of democracy. Of course, the skeptics won't vote Republican. They won't vote for Biden either especially after his shameless capitulation to the most right wing leaders in Israel. Their position is theoretically correct but totally out of touch with political reality. The recent campus protests may be a start, but at present there is no mass movement making the connections between foreign and domestic alignments. To summarize we need to bring a social democratic party into existence. I don't presume to know how that can be done.
I enjoyed your analysis of the current radicalization of the Right, and I think your critic’s invoking of “1968” is emblematic of the current crisis of the anti-Democratic Left, its ambivalence in coming to grips with an energetic authoritarian strain on the Right, and its animus with a perceived center-left liberal elite and its supposed neoliberal groupthink.
Five years ago I wrote this essay to identify this insurgent wing struggling for relevance and at war with and partially within the Democratic Party:
https://jake309.medium.com/democrats-lets-not-fall-into-the-chicago-1968-trap-273d67080c05
I agree that fascism is an appropriate, useful term to understand what has been happening on the American Right. I also agree that the Skeptics have not provided a lot of empirical evidence that it is de-mobilizing for the Left in the way they have suggested.
But they are, at least, grappling with what works politically, and are not, as you seem to be doing here, assuming and asserting that simply speaking the complicated truth is enough. Scholarly description and diagnosis is one thing; but they are concerned with political action as well.
I'm not convinced, as they are, that it is possible or there is much to gain from resisting the fascism label. But I'm also not seeing folks on the other side of the question coming out strong with a strategy for both emphasizing the fascism threat AND explaining how it couldn't have flourished like it has without Neo-liberalism. I'm open to such an idea, indeed. But it is one of the cardinal flawed assumptions of liberalism that simply appealing to the complicated truth is always the best political strategy. That's simply naive.
So again, my preferred approach is to do the both/and, but, I think that some of the assertions of being disingenuous or resistant to new evidence here are a little off the mark; it's not that Robin and company are disingenuous, it's that they have a different analysis of how politics actually works than Zimmerman and company, and so are trying to do praxis responsibility and realistically. There's a fundamental disagreement about how politics actually works, not some deep well of irrational disdain for neoliberalism.
I got my Fascism prof from last term to read your stuff. I saw him today and told him he had to read it and when we talked about it he recognized the controversy that got TZ to write this. Anyway, I think these pieces are really important.
I do think we need to have a discussion about what fascism is and isn't. TZ acknowledged this in the first part and it's right.
For example, Nazism is fascist the way apples are fruit. The words "apple" and "blueberry" aren't interchangable just because they're both fruit. Actually, it's more complex than that. Nazism is like a granny smith apple, which is a fruit and thus an apple. What I mean is while Nazism is fascist it doesn't represent all fascist movements and suggesting it does is in fact dangerous. And fascism doesn't represent all authoritarian and totalitarian regimes either. Stalin was a totalitarian but he was absolutely not a fascist. He was an extremely dangerous man full of evil and violence but he wasn't a fascist. Hard pass on either of these assholes.
And it gets more complicated. While Trump et al is fascist, I'd argue they're more accurately described as neofascist, which I understand to be transnational instead of the nationalistic obsession of the so called ur fascisms, that formed in Italy, Spain, Germany and Japan, started to form in China and spread to France, Portugal, The Netherlands, etc from 1922-1945. These assholes collaborated but were absolutely going to eventually go to war with each other when no one else was left.
The modern fascist movement is global and seeking not to coexist but to unify.
Today’s fascists have a strong nationalistic streak. From what I read the fascists in Europe are anti-EU so I have doubts about the claim that they are transnationalists. Putin is a fascist and certainly supports them but he clearly is all about Mother Russia dominating, not partnering.
I notice Ben Burgis has posted a response to the Marantz article. I wonder what Thomas’ response will be...
Please see Chapter 4, titled "The Anatomy of Fascism Denial," in my December 2021 book 'This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America': https://www.amazon.com/This-Happened-Here-Amerikaners-Neoliberals-ebook/dp/B09MSQHJKB I am not one to crave a lot of attention but the invisibility of my work (as a Marxist) on Amerikaner Trumpism-fascism and on intelllectual fascism-denial has reached a level of absurdity that I find darkly amusing :) I took on academic and left fascism-deniers one by one in great detail. The chapter includes a section on specifically left-identified Trumpism-fascism-denial. I coined the phrase "Trumpenleft" something as a joke in 2018 or 2019...turned out it was no joke.
Also https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/12/two-stupid-titles-a-deflating-anthology-and-the-remarkable-persistence-of-academic-fascism-denial/
I can't take anyone arguing there was Black participation at Charlottesville seriously. West and other activists went there to counter-protest and were surrounded in a church by people carrying torches, wearing polo shirts and khaki pants.