7 Stabbed as Calif. Neo-Nazi Rally Turns Bloody

Group says rally was reaction to anti-Trump protests
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 27, 2016 2:15 AM CDT
7 Stabbed at Calif. Neo-Nazi Rally
Members of the group called ANTIFA Sacramento (Anti-Fascism Action) stage a counter-protest against the Traditionalist Worker Party and the Golden State Skinheads at the California state Capitol.   (Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee via AP)

There were chaotic and bloody scenes outside California's Capitol building Sunday when a far-right group calling itself the Traditionalist Worker Party tried to hold a rally. Witnesses tell the Los Angeles Times that things turned violent as soon as a few dozen members of the white supremacist group turned up at the Sacramento rally, where they were met by hundreds of anti-Nazi demonstrators. At least nine people were hospitalized—seven of them with stab wounds—and many others suffered cuts, scrapes, and bruises. A Sacramento police spokesman tells the AP that the group had a permit to hold the rally and at least 100 police officers had been there to try to keep order.

The TWP, formed last year as an offshoot of the Traditionalist Youth Network, another white nationalist group, had said the rally aimed to show the "precarious situation our race is in." But "the purpose of the protest was actually a reaction around the Donald Trump rallies where working-class white Americans were trying to peacefully organize, not on racial terms," group spokesman Matt Parrott tells the Sacramento Bee. Parrott is believed to be the father-in-law of TWP leader Matthew Heimbach, who was described by the Washington Post earlier this year as the "next David Duke" after he was filmed shoving a protester at a Trump rally in Kentucky. Before the rally, Heimbach tweeted a photo of some "brave comrades." (A Jewish man rescued a KKK leader during similar violence at a protest in Anaheim earlier this year.)

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