With their permit denied, their Facebook page deleted, their opposition energized, and their in-group conflicts increasingly aired in public, a group of white nationalists and supremacists planning a Super Bowl weekend rally at Stone Mountain, nearby Atlanta, have seemingly all but abandoned the event.
“The event was undermined by people who were supposed to be on my side,” white supremacist organizer John Michael Estes said in a Facebook video Wednesday that was flagged by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“All I can say is short of me showing up by myself, there is no hope of an event,” Estes said.
“We will take the fight to the courts and other political and media platforms to preserve our freedom of speech and will have an event at a later time when we have everything we need to secure our perimeters legally and have a successful event,” wrote another organizer, Michael Weaver, as quoted by the Journal-Constitution.
Anti-fascists organizing in opposition to the event still plan on showing up in force Saturday, they said on Twitter, but the tenor of their plans — sans organized racists — had grown considerably more celebratory.
F.L.O.W.E.R. Statement on the Rock Stone Mountain Capitulation!#noklan https://t.co/RWxGd8xbL2 pic.twitter.com/uAuQllscnz
— F.L.O.W.E.R. (@flowerunited) January 31, 2019
Read the Journal-Constitution’s report here.
