The white nationalist rally in Washington will likely be outnumbered by counter-protesters

More people are likely heading to Washington to fight racism than to support it.

Organizers of last year's "Unite the Right" rally, the white nationalist march that turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia, are holding a second demonstration in Washington, D.C., on Sunday. Only a few hundred participants are expected at the "white civil rights" protest, and they will probably be well outnumbered by anti-racist counter-protesters.

"[These neo-Nazi groups] are pretty famous for overestimating their turnout and backing down when it turns out that there's a really massive response to what they're doing," a Georgetown professor of justice and peace studies, Mark Lance, told The Hill. In addition to the main event permit, the National Parks Service has granted permits to groups including D.C. United Against Hate and New York Black Lives Matter.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"We have people coming to our city for the sole purpose of spewing hate," Mayor Muriel Bowser said of Unite the Right. "We denounce hate, we denounce anti-Semitism, and we denounce the rhetoric we expect to hear this Sunday."