Over the weekend, a group of white nationalists invaded Politics and Prose, a bookstore in Northwest Washinton, D.C., to protest a book event and reading. For context, this bookstore is mere minutes away from Comet Ping Pong, the innocuous pizzeria where Pizzagate happened. The book, called Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland, was about race (particularly: whiteness), health, and politics in the U.S.
Jonathan Metzel, a sociology professor at Vanderbilt University and author of the book, was giving a talk at the bookstore when the group decided to descend, reciting bizarre statements like, “this land is our land,” as well as racist propaganda. As evidenced in the videos (which are embedded below), the group of roughly ten men stormed the event, stood in front of the author, and spoke directly to the audience. Someone even held a megaphone.
“You would have the white working class trade their homeland for handouts,” one of the men said. “But we, as nationalists and identitarians, can offer the workers of this country a homeland, their birthright, in addition to health care, good jobs and so forth.”
Audience members (and others in the bookstore) booed them until they exited, making the entire nightmare last between five and ten minutes.
Here are some videos, which have since gone viral on Twitter:
"The crowd didn't really know what to make of it. Everybody thought it was a joke at first," Metzl told News4 in an interview.
As reported by The Washington Post, the protest ended without any damage being done to the bookstore or injury to people in attendance. Still, people were understandably terrified.
“The scary part,” Metzl said on MSNBC’s AM Joy, “was initially when we thought: are they armed?”
Mind you, these neo-Nazis stormed the bookstore as people are barely recovering from the shooting at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California, where one person has been killed, and three more injured, by a white supremacist. So, yeah, people have every right to be afraid that these members of the “alt-right” could turn violent.
“They walked from the front to the back where the event was going on and then lined up abreast in front of the author, facing the audience. And one of the members of the group using a megaphone then proceeded to deliver a white nationalist message to everybody who was here,” Politics and Prose co-owner Bradley Graham told DCist in an interview.
In an interview with NBC Washington, Metzl provided some context for what had gone down prior to the interrupt. According to Metzel, he’d been speaking to a man in the audience who had helped Metzel’s own father and grandfather flee Nazi Austria. Then, these white supremacists rolled in with a videographer and megaphone in tow.
“This was in a very friendly environment at Politics and Prose. [The disturbance] was ironically at the moment in the talk where I was making the claim that America is better when we’re at the most generous, the strongest, the most inclusive ” Metzl explained while on MSNBC. “I see this very well-organized chain of white men and women. … They were very well orchestrated.”
Who are these people? In this case, the man with the megaphone describes the group as “identitarians.” But make no mistake: That’s basically just another way of saying “white supremacists.”
The far-right group has been tied to the Identity Evropa. If you aren’t familiar with them, know that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies them as an extremist group. As they exited the bookstore, the group chanted “AIM,” which is not a reference to the once-popular AOL chat service, but rather the American Identity Movement. Basically, a new name for the same disgusting group.
An antifascism movement has been working to identify members of AIM (and before this, members of Identity Evropa). They believe that they’ve now identified participants in Saturday’s invasion, and are doing their best to expose them.
With Peter Diezel specifically, it’s been noted by the same antifascism group that he’s been active outside of D.C., too. They report that while Diezel is from Indiana, he’s also been active in white supremacy circles in Illinois.
Here’s a video of the interruption, posted by WAMU on YouTube: