The Conversation (0)
Sophia Ankel
Apr 29, 2019
PICTURE:
Twitter/Catherine Wiggniton
A small group of white nationalists marched into a public reading at a bookstore in Washington DC, chanting: "This Land is Our Land".
The incident, which was recorded and posted on social media, occurred at the Politics and Prose bookstore on Saturday afternoon, which was hosting a talk by sociology and psychiatry professor Jonathan Metzl, who recently released his book "Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland".
The group of around 10 people stormed into the bookstore, before lining up at the front of the room, chanting "this land is our land". They were met with boo's from the people attending the reading, as one of them yelled into a megaphone:
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.
The group has since come out and identified themselves as "identitarians", which is a a group that has been linked to the American neo-Nazi organisation Identity Evropa.
While no one was hurt during the incident and there was little confrontation, people on social media couldn't help but to express their views.
Metzl himself handled the whole situation very calmly, brilliantly asking the audience: "Does anyone want to process that before I get back to what I was saying?" after the group had left.
He also took to Twitter to write about his experience, noting that, ironically, he was speaking to someone who had helped his father and grandfather flee Nazi Austria only five minutes before the protest broke out.
Metzl has since spoken to NBC Washington, saying that that the incident was "symbolic" for him. He also added:
In case anybody's wondering what's happening right now, they're illustrating my point.
HT HuffPost
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