‘There aren’t ‘many sides,’” it declared, a response to President Trump’s much-derided comment last year that seemed to lay the blame for the Charlottesville violence at the feet of both right-wing extremists and counterprotesters.

Ms. Balaschak said she hoped to help show the country that “we’re not O.K. with this at all,” meaning the white nationalists and the president who she believes has emboldened them.

“They’re so confident that the government supports their views that they’re marching around showing their faces in public,” she said. “This isn’t like arguing over the marginal tax rate. This is a very black-and-white situation.”

Among the speakers at a counter rally was Dr. Harriette Wimms, an activist and psychologist from Baltimore. She led a chant of “love wins” as a protester to her right held up a sign that read “Give Nazis a Platform” — and showed a bloody guillotine on a platform.

Ms. Wimms, 50, an African-American, spoke of the overt racism and discrimination that older members of her family had experienced in the past, and how, as a younger woman, she had argued with her parents that times had changed — that a new generation of Americans had renounced bigotry, and that they should no longer be “a little leery of white people.”

But recent events, she said, had complicated her view. Now, she felt that both she and her parents had been right.

Fascism persists in America, she said. But “we are still here, and we will stand strong in love.”