With his host of far-right friends, right-wing operative Ali Alexander has planned a national march on Washington, D.C., this Saturday as part of his so-called Stop the Steal campaign to discredit the results of the 2020 presidential election. He also took a moment to lash out at D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, calling her a bitch and telling her, “fuck you.”
Claiming that tens of thousands of Trump supporters will converge on the capital, Alexander shared details with those watching his Periscope broadcasts Monday. Among those in tow: far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Nick Fuentes’ white nationalist “groypers,” Bikers for Trump, followers of the far-right conspiracy QAnon movement, the Proud Boys, and “famous evangelical pastors.” The rally will be held at 12 p.m. at Freedom Plaza, which sits east of the White House. From there, attendees will march to the Supreme Court building. Additional rallies are scheduled at state capitals and cities across the country at 12 p.m. local time.
Plans for a supposedly massive rally do not, however, jive with a recent public health directive from D.C.'s mayor. On Nov. 5, Bowser issued an order that visitors from out of District—save for Maryland and Virginia, the two states that border the District—would have to get tested for COVID-19 72 hours before traveling to the District.
“Apparently the D.C. mayor is watching my Periscope and her staff, so let me be very, very clear. I am a man of God, and fuck you,” Alexander said, flipping the bird with both hands. “We’re marching on D.C. with or without your permission. We don’t give a damn about your new COVID order. We don’t have to be tested, I’m telling all my speakers that they aren’t gonna be—uh, tested. But maybe we’ll bring tents, maybe we’ll bring lamps, maybe we’ll bring firepits, maybe we’ll bring marshmallows and graham crackers and chocolate and whatever else. It’s our streets, not your streets. We’re the taxpayers, we the people are the citizens of the United States, and we don’t answer to you, you stupid bureaucrat.”
“We’re going down to the Supreme Court, and we’re telling our government that this election and the counting will be transparent, or we’ll get a new election. One or another,” Alexander demanded. “We’re not taking no damn COVID lockdown order, ‘Oh, you have to get tested 72 hours before you come into D.C.’ There are no airports in D.C. There’s BWI, there’s DCA, neither one of those are in D.C. So what is this order really about?”
The order—which was issued four days before Alexander’s announcement and thus couldn’t be a conspiracy to thwart Alexander and his yet-to-be-planned march—could be about the skyrocketing number of COVID-19 cases in states throughout the country.
“The D.C. mayor—and I apologize to the children listening to this, but this is over our rights, OK—she can fuck right off. If she wants, she can arrest me on live television. I’ll make her arrest me and 150 million Americans watch you arrest me,” Alexander said. “The march for Trump is growing, there are not enough jail cells to house everybody that is coming. Maybe enough of us will walk on that stupid street to take some of the stupid paint off of it. You know, so I don't care. I don’t care. Arrest me. So I’m just going to tweet that B-I-T-C-H, you want to arrest me? What a loser.”
Among the people who are helping organize efforts is radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has pushed conspiracy theories about the COVID-19, telling Right Wing Watch in February that he thought the coronavirus was a “manmade bioweapon, produced by the U.S. government.” Along with his outlet InfoWars, Jones pushed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory and claimed that the Sandy Hook school shooting never happened, even encouraging his listeners to harass parents grieving the death of their children. Though Jones has been kicked off of every major social media platform, he was recently featured on Joe Rogan’s popular Spotify podcast. He joined a “Stop the Steal” rally in Phoenix, Arizona, last Thursday.
On a separate Periscope, Alexander said that Jones and InfoWars host Owen Shroyer would bring a caravan of supporters to the D.C. rally, driving through Texas, to Florida and then up the East Coast, claiming “Jones will bring thousands and thousands of cars into D.C.”
Also involved in the “Stop the Steal” campaign is Mike Cernovich, who pushed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory—a precursor to QAnon—that ended when a gunman arrived at a Washington, D.C., pizzeria, where he believed child-sex trafficking was taking place, and shot an interior door.
Alexander noted that Nick Fuentes and his white nationalist followers, also referred to as “groypers,” would be joining the “Stop the Steal” rally as well as people from the “politically incorrect” /pol/ discussion board on 4chan.
A screenshot of the Proud Boys' Telegram page promoting the "Million MAGA March," which is joining Ali Alexander's "Stop the Steal" campaign Saturday.
“There’s something called the ‘MAGA Million March,’ that’s some great young, America Firsters, people in the Nick Fuentes’ audience, people from /pol/, people from 4chan. That whole segment, we’re really excited they're going to meet us at Freedom Plaza at noon,” Alexander said. Alexander also retweeted a video for the joint rally, which featured followers of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory movement. The Proud Boys hate group also promoted the rally on their Telegram page.
Fuentes took part in the 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right melee in Charlottesville, Virginia, where counterprotester Heather Heyer was murdered. After the El Paso shooting in 2019, Feuntes “offered a sympathetic rationalization for the massacre allegedly undertaken by the author of a racist white nationalist screed” and launched into an anti-Semitic tirade, Right Wing Watch reported at the time. He also attacked a conservative gay columnist as a “shabbos goy race traitor.”
Alexander, himself, has a penchant for noting when people are Jewish and speculated on Fuentes’ program this summer that “a number of Jewish people do hate crimes against their own communities to get press,” the Observer reported. Alexander also was a leading activist in the Tea Party movement. Politico reported that Alexander’s PAC received $60,000 in 2016 from the billionaire Robert Mercer, a major funder of Breitbart and other Steve Bannon projects. He mentioned in a Periscope Monday that he may be reaching out to bigger donors.
Since the "Stop the Steal" campaign was rebooted last Wednesday, Alexander, Cernovich, and others have bashed the conservative Fox News for calling states for Joe Biden as well as the RNC’s Ronna McDaniel for not taking up “Stop the Steal” when President Donald Trump began losing. (While Fox News called the election for Biden, that didn't stop Trump-loving Fox News commentators Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham from promoting Saturday's Trump march.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, Alexander has decided that the D.C. rally will not credential media, claiming, “We are the media from now on.” He also claimed that Trump has directed Republicans to use the phrase “Stop the Steal.”
“The RNC and GOP, at the direction of the Trump family, is using the stop the steal name. Everyone is kinda dropping the ‘Protect the Vote’ thing,” Alexander claimed.
Last Friday, right-wing political operative Ed Martin, whose “mentorship and servant leadership” Alexander said he really appreciated, held a sparsely attended “Stop the Steal” rally in front of the National Republican Congressional Committee building in D.C. Another one is planned for 3 p.m. Wednesday.
This post has been updated with news that Fox News commentators Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are promoting the "March for Trump" and that QAnon followers and member of the Proud Boys hate group will be in attendance at the rally. It has also been corrected to reflect the "Stop the Steal" campaign was rebooted last Wednesday, not Thursday.
