Photos, Video Give Closeup View Of Uptown White Supremacist Rally

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS-INWOOD, NY — Videos and photos providing a closer look at the men who held a white supremacist rally in Northern Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park — dropping a banner reading "end the invasion, stop immigration" — are circulating on the internet.

Neighborhood blog The Uptown Collective first shared the images while calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio to investigate the hateful display. The rally was held by the group Identity Evropa in late July. The anti-immigration banner was dropped from the Billings Arcade after the group held a "build the wall" protest in front of the Mexican Consulate in Midtown earlier in the day.

"Again Mr. Mayor and the NYPD we now have pictures and videos of some of the thugs that threw smoke bombs and hung a massive and hateful banner in Fort Tryon Park last week," The Uptown Collective wrote in a post on its Facebook page. "When will the arrests commence? ‬Has an investigation even started? Uptown wants to know!!!"

A video from the rally shows members of Identity Evropa attempting to block the view of the person taking the video. The white supremacists rush the videographer while singing the lyrics to the "Star Spangled Banner." At one point, a white supremacist runs up and shouts "touch me, touch me" after the man taking the video tells him to back off.

Identity Evropa has been designated a white supremacist group by both the Anti Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group popularized the slogan "you will not replace us" during the deadly August 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to the ADL. The group was founded in 2016 and has been "at the forefront of the racist 'alt-right's' effort to recruit white, college-aged men and transform them into the fashionable new face of white nationalism," according to the SPLC.

Community members, local elected officials and advocacy groups held a vigil in Fort Tryon park days after Identity Evropa's rally to reject the hateful message. Many people who spoke at the vigil blamed President Donald Trump for empowering white supremacist groups like Identity Evropa through anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric.

Lead Photo by Brendan Krisel/Patch. Photo is from the community vigil in response to the White Supremacist Rally.