With all eyes focused on preparations for the president’s forthcoming July 4 celebration on the National Mall, another potential conflagration planned for the holiday weekend in D.C. has somewhat escaped broader notice—one that includes prominent far-right groups and online personalities who will face a counter protest organized by local D.C. organizations.

The “Demand Free Speech Freedom Rally” is slated for Saturday, July 6 in Freedom Plaza at noon. Coming on the heels of the Trumpified Independence Day celebration, some of the president’s more extreme supporters are expected to attend.

The event is being billed as a defense of free speech and it is slated to include prominent far-right personalities who have been banned by Twitter, including anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer and and alt-right personality Milo Yiannopoulos. The permit for the event has been approved by the National Park Service.

The rally also prominently features a number of people associated with the self-identified “Western chauvinist” group Proud Boys. The current leader, Enrique Tarrio, is listed as a supervisor on the permit, according to the Daily Beast. And the advertised speaker list includes the the Proud Boys’ founder Gavin McInnes and former Trump advisor Roger Stone, who has close ties to the group. Proud Boys rallies have featured a number of violent incidents since the group was founded in 2016.

Other advertised speakers have since said that they are not participating or are reevaluating whether to be a part of the rally, the Daily Beast reports, including Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec (both of whom pushed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory.)

Other less prominent speakers on the bill include six candidates for Congress, YouTuber Joey Salads among them, and Ramin Parsa, a Christian pastor who started a GoFundMe after his arrest at the Mall of America last summer.

“We’re letting speakers know they should focus on tech censorship,” says Luke Rohlfing, a prominent Proud Boy and one of the event’s organizers. “It’s going to be very exciting.”

In addition to the daytime rally, the Demand Free Speech group has been advertising a “VIP Lounge Event” in the evening. Months ago, organizers started selling $200 tickets for a gathering at the pool on the roof of U Street NW’s VIDA Fitness, only for the venue to say that the group had never booked it. A separate, more recent Eventbrite page listed the address of the new Spy Museum for an “evening with some of Big Tech’s most censored voices … at one of Washington D.C.’s hottest spots!” However, the museum stated on Tuesday that “this event is not taking place at the Spy Museum.”

It’s unclear where the VIP event is now taking place, if at all. The organizer listed on the Eventbrite page has not responded to a request for comment.

Counter protesters organizing under the banner of “All Out D.C.” have taken responsibility for the cancellation of the event at the Spy Museum.

“Antifascists are doing their job and exposing this [event] for what it is, which is a fascist demonstration that is publicly trying to put on a face of respectability, but we know it’s there to promote hate and violence,” says Dylan Petrohilos, an organizer with All Out D.C. “This is one of the largest right wing mobilizations since Unite the Right.”

The last time D.C. expected a rally from similar participants was Unite the Right 2, in which a few dozen rallygoers were outnumbered by thousands of counterprotesters. The city spent approximately $2.6 million to handle the event.

Comprised of more than 20 local organizations—including Sanctuary DMV, Black Lives Matter DC, Smash Racism DC, and more—All Out D.C. acquired a permit for a counter demonstration at nearby Pershing Park on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. The group held an event on Tuesday night to outline their plans for the weekend.

Petrohilos says they’re expecting members of Identity Evropa to show up. Private chat records released by the left-wing media outlet Unicorn Riot indicate that members of the group—which has rebranded itself as the American Identity Movement—plan to attend the rally (the same group was seemingly also behind a disruption at a Politics and Prose book talk in April). Both the Proud Boys and Identity Evropa are listed as extremist groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“We need to be sure our neighborhoods are safe from fascists,” Petrohilos tells DCist.

D.C. police are aware of the dual events on Saturday, and are preparing for them. “We will be staffed accordingly,” Metropolitan Police Department chief Peter Newsham said during a press conference last week. “This is not out of the ordinary here in Washington D.C., so we’ll be ready for it.”

When asked to describe the rallies at hand, Newsham said, “I think I could potentially be politically incorrect if I were to answer that question, so I will say there are folks with differing views who are coming down to voice their concerns, whatever they may be.”

Rohlfing says he and other event organizers are in close contact with MPD about Saturday’s rally. “I gotta give props to D.C. police because they are, unlike a lot of cities, taking this seriously and doing everything they can do to keep us safe,” he says.

Petrohilos says he’s concerned about MPD’s presence on Saturday. He was among those charged with felony rioting in connection with protests on Inauguration Day in 2017, charges that were ultimately dropped. The city and D.C. police still face a series of lawsuits over alleged excessive force and unlawful arrests stemming from that day.

Organizers of Demand Free Speech event claim that All Out D.C. is planning violence, including a potential acid attack, following clashes between Proud Boys and antifascists last weekend in Portland, OR.

“The antifa who are protesting this are openly calling for violence,” says Rohlfing. “While they’re saying they’re the tolerant ones, they’re going to be yelling all sorts of violent threats.”

Petrohilos says that is “not based in reality … There are no plans for acid attacks. Promising violence from the left will bring people out in a way that will bolster their numbers.”

According to the Daily Beast, the Demand Free Speech organizers wrote in their permit to the National Park Service that they’re expecting as many as 1,000 participants, though “there could be more or less.”

Counterprotesters expect that the president’s fans in town for the Fourth may join the event. “Trump is bringing in thousands of potential supporters and the far right is trying to capitalize on that,” says Petrohilos.

But as Right Wing Watch noted, the permit indicates that the Demand Free Speech folks have only rented one toilet for the event.

Previously:
An Alt-Right Pool Party Loses Its Pool

This story has been updated with comment from Luke Rohlfing and to clarify Petrohilos’ role on Inauguration Day. It has also been corrected to indicate that the National Park Service issued the permit for the event.