White Nationalists Plan Protest At Texas A&M On 9/11

COLLEGE STATION, TX — Texas A&M University’s Rudder Fountain will become the epicenter of a white lives matter protest on September 11. The event, organized by Preston Wiginton, will take place from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. — on a Monday.

The announcement comes on the heels of white supremacists protesting at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, an event that saw protesters clashing with counter protesters in the streets. Three people have been killed, including two state troopers and a woman who was a victim of a man driving his car into a crowd of people.

The Charlottesville Unite the Right event became national news with top lawmakers from both sides of the aisle condemning white supremacists, Neo-Nazis and the KKK. Protesters who opposed the removal of a statue depicting Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee clashed with counter-protesters supporting the move. Some among the former wore Nazi armbands and waved Confederate flags while shouting white pride and anti-Semitic rants: "You will not change us!" they shouted. "Jews will not change us!"

Wiginton was the organizer of Richard Spencer speaking at Texas A&M last December. Many folks in the Brazos Valley protested Spencer’s appearance, but it went on anyway.

The September 11 event in College Station will include speakers Sacco Vandal of "The Right Stuff" and Ken Reed of White Lives Matter, Houston, according to the A&M student newspaper The Battalion.

“The event will be to protest the liberal anti-white agenda which includes white guilt which leads to white genocide,” Wiginton told The Battalion. “And the other purpose of the event will be to sponsor white identity and white pride in which white lives do matter. This is not an anti-brown event or anti-black event this is an anti-liberal event.”

Texas A&M student body president Bobby Brooks said he plans to work with fellow students to confront the issue as the event nears.

"I will never know what it is like to be a student of color at Texas A&M University and in this world, but I acknowledge that this rally, offensively hosted on September 11th, signifies hatred," Brooks told The Battalion. "As Aggies, we are better than people who attempt to derail our safety and our right to receive an education."

The white supremacy movement members claim allegiance to President Donald Trump, and Trump didn't vehemently go after the protesters like he's typically know to do to those who oppose him. He did release this statement, though:

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides."

Top Texas lawmakers took to Twitter on Saturday condemning the protests in Charlottesville as Donald Trump was being blasted for his weak response to the racist-fueled violence.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz tweeted: "These bigots want to tear our country apart, but they will fail. America is far better than this." ... and then, "I urge the Department of Justice to immediately investigate and prosecute today's grotesque act of domestic terrorism."

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick sent out this message:

The planned date of the protest at Texas A&M is exactly 16 years after Islamic extremists flew planes into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and another that got redirected into a field in Pennsylvania.

Wigington said planning the event had nothing to do with the specific date.

“Primarily because it is the second week after school starts and Monday is a busy day on campus,” Wiginton said. “It has nothing to do with 9/11, the twin tower situation. I find that the millennial generation doesn't even relate to 9/11 and it was the date that was open.”

Top image: Free speech demonstrators march holding flags and banners during the Unite the Right free speech rally at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA on August 12, 2017.

Photo by Emily Molli/NurPhoto via Getty Images