The neo-Nazis who sparked the knife fight at a pro-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump rally in Sacramento, Calif., have a new plan: crash the Republican National Convention.
“We’re essentially just going to show up and make sure that the Donald Trump supporters are defended from the leftish thugs,” Matt Parrott, spokesman for the Traditionalist Worker Party, told McClatchyDC.
Parrott claimed about 30 members of his group would come to the Cleveland convention, which is expected to draw thousands of pro- and anti-Trump protesters.
“I think everybody is concerned about the potential for violence at the convention,” Ryan Lenz, senior writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said, according to McClatchy.
The Traditionalist Worker Party, formed in January, 2015, is a white-nationalist group that aims to “lead Americans toward a peaceful and prosperous future free from economic exploitation, federal tyranny, and anti-Christian degeneracy.”
Matthew Heimbach, chairman of the group, gained national media attention in 2013 when he founded a campus white supremacist group at Towson University in Maryland. A video of Heimbach shoving a Black Lives Matter protester at a Trump rally went viral earlier this year.
The chairman did not actually attend his own pro-Trump rally, which turned bloody when fighting broke out between the white nationalist group and hundreds of anti-fascist protesters. At least 10 people were injured, although police have made no arrests.
The white supremacist group declared it “won” the fight.
“We will not stand down. Our event was a victory by all metrics….we provoked the leftists into showing their true colors,” Parrott wrote online in a fundraising pitch.
But the anti-Trump groups appear unfazed by Heimbach’s crew.
“We are marching on the Republican National Convention to send a message against Islamophobia, race discrimination, and anti-immigrant sentiments,” Mick Kelly, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Trump and March on the RNC, told The Daily Beast. “We are very capable of taking care of ourselves.”
In preparation for the event, Cleveland has allegedly bought 2,000 sets of riot gear.
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