Neo-Nazis outnumbered at Olympia rally
OLYMPIA – What was touted as one of the biggest neo-Nazi gatherings on the West Coast this year drew 14 members Monday, including two photographers.
The group, which includes members with Spokane ties, spent its allotted two hours making speeches and trading insults with hundreds of dancing, drumming, jeering and mocking protesters.
“Nazis go home! Nazis go home!” the demonstrators chanted. The two sides were kept apart by a fence, two roads, a grassy strip and dozens of state troopers in riot helmets. There were no arrests.
Community leaders, state workers and police had spent weeks preparing for the rally. State crews set up concrete barricades and the fence. Community members held a daylong diversity celebration in a downtown park Sunday.
On Monday, the State Patrol had 275 troopers and support staff at the event. Bomb technicians combed the area. Troopers kept watch from the Capitol roof. A mobile command post was set up outside the governor’s mansion. Out of sight, state riot squads waited in the Statehouse basement. And a State Patrol Cessna circled overhead, keeping watch for disturbances in the crowd.
“It’s really about safety,” said State Patrol Sgt. Monica Hunter.
She said the scope of the security was based on the group’s rallies in other cities, some of which sparked rioting. Hunter had no immediate estimate of the cost to taxpayers, although she said none of the troopers was working overtime.
The neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Movement, applied for the rally permit in January. Members estimated turnout at about 100 people, although in a recent interview, permit applicant Justin Boyer revised that number to maybe 50.
In a speech, group member Shawn Stuart claimed the group could have brought many more than 14. “This is all our headquarters will allow us to have,” he said.
Members spent much of the rally videotaping their speeches and photographing themselves in front of the Capitol columns. The speeches extolled whites and blasted gays, immigrants, Jews, demonstrators and the news media. Between speakers, they shouted “Sieg Heil” and gave the straight-armed Nazi salute.
“I’m a separatist and I defy you. I defy everything you stand for,” taunted NSM member Nigel Fovargue, flanked by young men holding swastika flags.
“Nazis go home!” chanted the crowd.
Other NSM members at the rally included “Jim Ramm,” a former Eastern Washington University student whose real name is Matthew Ernest Ramsey, as well as a former Spokane resident named John Brandt. Brandt now lives in Snohomish County.
The counterdemonstrators’ tactics varied widely. Some stood at the police line, bellowing obscenities. Others mocked the Nazis with clownish outfits.
“I could show you my underwear with the swastikas on it,” said Pat Tassoni, who wasn’t kidding. He wore a jester hat, a fake Hitler mustache, and was carrying a flag made from a bedsheet.
Elsewhere in the crowd, people shouted into megaphones and blew bubbles.
Robert Guerrero, a Tacoma member of Alaska’s Tlingit tribe, beat a drum. “Their numbers are always small,” he said of the neo-Nazis. “As a Native American, I say they’re immigrants. And if they want immigrants gone, I say this kind can go.”