The few hundred marchers and supporters who turned out for the Straight Pride Parade in Boston on Saturday were vastly outnumbered by thousands of counterprotesters—that was the main takeaway from the major media outlets that covered the event. But the parade-goers were outnumbered by police, too, as hundreds of officers from throughout the Boston area—many in riot gear—were assigned downtown to protect the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos, the disgraced alt-right darling and parade grand marshal, and “floats” such as this:

One of the Boston Straight Pride Parade floats is a car with a piece of paper reading, Blue Lives Matter taped to it. pic.twitter.com/oZsaCCi8Ap — Sam Bishop (@sebishop99) August 31, 2019

The turnout was as predictable as the result: Police pepper sprayed countless protesters and arrested 34 of them. The vice president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the local police union, claimed those arrested were “here to create havoc,” while the ACLU of Massachusetts is now investigating police misconduct in the course of the protests. Once again, a small group of far-right malcontents had succeeded, if nothing else, in fomenting conflict and enlisting state power in that effort.

Right-wing extremists have been staging these confrontations in cities across the country, now under the banner of “straight pride.” The Boston organizers are openly allied with alt-right groups like the Proud Boys. One of them attended a violent Patriot Prayer rally in Portland in 2018 and was photographed there in riot regalia. Still, the city of Boston approved a permit application filed by these organizers’ group, Super Happy Fun America, because, as Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said in June, “The City of Boston cannot deny a permit based on an organization’s values.”

These rallies are part of a broader right-wing assault—both figurative and literal—on LGBTQ people. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs reported a spike in anti-LGBTQ hate violence between May 15 and July 15 and counted 22 anti-LGBTQ protests. Neo-Nazi groups crashed Pride events in Detroit and Knoxville. “Collectively, all of these incidents demonstrate the growing hostility, backlash, and sinister nature of many of the far right’s efforts against the LGBTQ community,” said the NCAVP report.

There were 18 protests alone targeting Drag Queen Story Hour events, in which drag queens read to children and their family members at local public libraries. “Put on black clothes grab a Nazi flag, put on some iron cross patches and protest a drag queen story hour in your town or state,” one 4chan user posted in June. But these attacks are not fringe affairs confined to internet hinterlands; they are designed to propel anti-LGBTQ talking points into the mainstream. During the height of Pride, right-wing commentator Laura Ingraham told her podcast listeners that Drag Queen Story Hour is “the left’s new cultural warpath to gender bend our kids into submission.”