Members of armed groups, who decry violence and racism, say they visited Virginia to defend free speech – but white nationalists had ‘come to fight’

With their loaded assault rifles and pistols, camouflage, combat boots and helmets, it looked like the US army had descended on the pretty college town of Charlottesville, Virginia, as a white supremacy rally turned violent last weekend.

The military did officially turn up, in fact, in the form of the Virginia national guard, called into service to back up the police when a state of emergency was declared at 11am on Saturday morning by Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, who told the far-right marchers to “go home”.

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But they were not the most visible or heavily armed soldier types attempting to police the volatile crowd as rightwing extremists at the “Unite the Right” march were met with counter-demonstrators.

That distinction goes to the militia members brought together as a unit from a handful of the hundreds of unofficial paramilitary groups that have long thrived across America due to the second amendment’s directive: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

With their trigger fingers ready on their loaded, battlefield-style rifles, held across heavy-duty body armour, these quasi-troops turned heads as they murmured to each other via radios and headsets.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest George Curbelo (center) at the protest in Charlottesville on Saturday. Photograph: courtesy George Curbelo

The men in charge of the 32 militia members who came to Charlottesville from six states to form a unit with the mission of “defending free speech” were Christian Yingling, the commanding officer of the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia, and his “second in command” on the day, George Curbelo, the commanding officer of the New York Light Foot Militia.

“We spoke to the Charlottesville police department beforehand and offered to come down there and help with security,” Yingling told the Guardian.

“They said: ‘We cannot invite you in an official capacity, but you are welcome to attend,’ and they gave us an escort into the event,” he added.

Gun laws vary from state to state and even city to city, but Virginia has one of the most relaxed sets of laws in the US. It is legal for civilians to carry weapons openly, including intimidating assault rifles loaded with 30-round magazines, which the Light Foots – but not the police or official military – carried during the Charlottesville event.

Yingling said he had been asked to bring a team to Charlottesville by a local militia, the Virginia Minutemen Militia, to reinforce their numbers, and to be in charge on the day.

But Yingling said the original request for a militia force to attend the event had come from the organizers of the white nationalist rally, who wanted them to act as security.

The militiamen had said: “No, we will not come and defend just you,” Yingling recalled. “It’s important for us to say we were there in a neutral stance.”

In the event, as the rightwing extremists, many carrying clubs and shields, clashed with anti-racism and anti-fascist counter protesters and brawls broke out in a crowd Yingling estimated at almost 6,000, his militia were outnumbered.

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Donald Trump attracted bipartisan outrage for his failure until Monday to condemn the neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan and assorted white supremacy groups who converged on Charlottesville at the weekend chanting racist slogans, using the Third Reich nazi salute and chanting “Heil Hitler” and “Hail Trump”.

Both Yingling and Curbelo fiercely criticized the Charlottesville police department and the Virginia state police for perceived inaction, accusing them of failing to act to separate opposing sides, instead allowing violence to occur as “an excuse” to shut down the event early on.

Speakers, such as the white nationalist Richard Spencer, had planned to address the Unite the Right crowds descending on a public park to defend a statue honoring the Confederate general Robert Lee, which is set to be removed by the Charlottesville authorities. It was the largest event in recent times organized by emboldened far-right racist extremists.

But the police cancelled the event as clashes got completely out of hand. After they ordered the rightwingers to leave the area before the speeches got under way – and also sent away the militia – the suspected neo-Nazi James Fields allegedly drove his car at speed into counter-protesters processing down a narrow street near the city center, killing the progressive activist Heather Heyer and injuring many others. Fields has been charged with second-degree murder and the incident is the subject of a federal civil rights investigation.

Yingling said he abhorred violence and racism and vehemently disagreed with white supremacy but argued it was vital to defend the right to peaceful free speech.

“The first amendment to the US constitution allows you to say anything you want as long as you do it in a peaceful manner,” he said. “When people start putting their hands on each other, though, that’s where our militia draws the line.”

He criticized the Unite the Right rally, saying it represented the most extreme end of the political spectrum.

“These people did not come for free speech, they came to fight. We are not going to allow people to get violent. This was nothing more than an excuse to unite rightwing hate groups. They knew Black Lives Matter would come and antifa would come,” he said, referring to anti-racism activist groups.

Asked about a man in militia garb photographed next to him during the event wearing what looked like a Confederate flag, he said the man was not part of his 32-member unit and he did not condone wearing such insignia.

“We absolutely would not wear something like this, the Confederate symbol, that would align us with these rightwing lunatics,” he said.

Yingling said the Light Foot Militia had hoped to tamp down aggression on all sides so that people could express their views freely, no matter how offensive they were.

“It’s the right to be able to disagree with people and not be physically assaulted for it. What the world saw was two groups of people trying to silence each other and we cannot allow that to happen. Free speech is at the core of who we are as Americans,” he said.

Most militias in the US usually train in military-style exercises in rural areas monthly in order to prepare for any prospect of the breakdown of law and order. Militias on the fringes focus on conspiracy theories about threats to peace and some are linked directly to extreme rightwing and libertarian ideologies.

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Many are more moderate and, as in this case, declare themselves primarily interested in defending what they judge to be fundamental threats to the US constitution, especially the rights encompassed in the first and second amendments – to speak freely and bear arms.

The Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia has an estimated 400 members. Yingling, 47, of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, is a machine tool operator by day and was in the US navy during the first Gulf war.

George Curbelo, 57, lives in Delaware County in the Catskill Mountains region of upstate New York. Not a military veteran, he runs a martial arts school whose students include soldiers and police, he said, learning karate-based defensive hand-to-hand combat techniques.

He said the New York Light Foot Militia numbered around 250. Although it is majority white and Christian, it also includes some people of color, atheists, Jews and a handful of Muslims, Curbelo said.

He described himself as “white Hispanic” by appearance and Cuban and Puerto Rican by heritage. He grew up in a tough neighborhood in New York City’s south Bronx, he said.

His militia trains monthly in skills such as firearms training, “at ranges and live firing on private land”, as well as reconnaissance and navigation across open country.

“In no way do we support white supremacy,” he told the Guardian.

He said rightwingers and counter-protesters screamed at his militia in Charlottesville. “There were eggs thrown at us, we were pepper-sprayed and punched,” he said.

Curbelo praised his militia unit for failing to rise to the abuse and trying to keep the peace, not firing a shot. “We were de-escalating things and treating people injured on all sides, until we were hugely outnumbered,” he said, although he noted: “If I saw me coming at me in all my gear, I would find it intimidating.” Yingling said some Charlottesville residents thanked the militia.

Terry McAuliffe defended the job the local and state police and army reserve did in Charlottesville against criticism from multiple parties. “These folks came armed and our biggest concern was that shots would be fired and we would have a melee,” he told the civil rights campaigner DeRay Mckesson on the podcast Pod Save the People.

But Curbelo was scathing about the police and soldiers. “They stood down. They did nothing. There were enough of them to keep the groups apart but they did not,” he said.

“We have worked with law enforcement at multiple events and every time the police did their jobs, these events have remained peaceful. This was not.”

Curbelo said, meanwhile, that his and other state militias were frequently called upon to patrol the so-called freedom rallies and patriot rallies that are increasing in number and are widely associated with the rightwing. He claimed the events did not represent extremist views. In other cases, the militia choose to attend an event unilaterally to provide security so that speakers can express themselves unhindered, if they believe there may be an attempt to stifle free speech, he said.

“If we were asked to provide security at a Black Lives Matter event, we would. But we haven’t been asked,” he said.

In recent months, he said, his Light Foot militia members have patrolled an anti-sharia law rally in Syracuse, New York, at the request of the organizers, and a freedom rally in Gettysburg in July, where they planned to protect Confederate graves if anyone threatened them. The next event they plan to attend is the so-called Mother of All Rallies patriots’ rally in Washington DC, in September.

But they will not be armed, as that would be prohibited at a protest in Washington, just a few hundred yards from the White House.