I’m not 100% sure what you mean by my “credentials”. Do you mean what I write on this site?
To give a few more specifics, I was on the Commons from about 10:30 am to about 12:30 pm, at which point I got tired of the whole thing and left. I saw this up close:
It was exactly as ugly as it looks in the video. I also saw this (and took my own video of it):
The fact that I have to go to “alternative” sites like Breitbart to find any mention of these things that I saw does make me suspicious of the bias of the “mainstream” press.
However, the most damning thing about it was the attitude of the people I talked to. Almost all of them were filled with a vicious self-righteousness and were disinclined to engage in any sort of reasonable discussion, preferring to throw baseless accusations and threats of violence against me. [I also did not seek out Antifa to talk to, in fact I did not talk to Antifa at all since I already know their positions on e.g. political violence. I talked to random people.] And every single one (except the one rally-goer I talked to, of course) defended political violence. This is what I mean when I say the whole thing was a gigantic display of hate, and the behavior of those who are supposedly against hate is deeply troubling.
[Many of the signs at the counter-protest were quite nice (though others were clearly vicious), but talking to the protesters really lowered my opinion of them. The fact that I couldn’t find a single protester willing to agree that the Antifa maybe go a bit too far was quite unnerving.]
I’ve seen the photos of the people with the Kekistan flag, but I didn’t see them personally. Despite the fact that the Kekistan flag is obviously meant to evoke the Nazi flag (specifically this version), I don’t regard it as a sign of neo-Nazism or white supremacy, just of trollery; but I do understand if you think it signifies white supremacy.
The flags I did see from the rally-going side were: several American flags (both current and historical); a Canadian flag; a Palestinian flag; an Israeli flag; an American-ish flag I couldn’t identify (it’s the one in the middle of this photo); and a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. I also saw one sign that said “Blue Lives Matter”.
To counterbalance the Kekistan flags and “Stop White Genocide” shirts I missed, there is also the awful counter-protest stuff I missed, including “Kill All Nazis” and “Nazi Death is Progress” signs, an “America Was Never Great” hat, and a Soviet flag. There’s also some positive stuff at the rally that I missed, such as this rally-goer’s gay pride flag and signs that said “Black Live Do Matter” (which I think supports the not-Nazis hypothesis).
I mentioned the Communism I saw in the counter-protest because it’s the moral equivalent of Nazism (worse, in fact, in terms of lives claimed in toto) — and yet apparently punching “Nazis” (who are usually not Nazis at all) is moral while punching Communists (who are definitely Communists) is beyond the pale. Here’s a whole delegation from Socialist Alternative, including a guy who apparently isn’t terribly bothered by the fact that his shirt features Lenin (who killed millions and laid the groundwork for further mass murder carried on by his successors). I submit that that guy’s shirt is infinitely worse than e.g. the Kekistan flag.
