A week before this weekend’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, I got a call from a fellow journalist who was heading to Virginia and wanted to know if I was planning on bringing a helmet, a gasmask, or both. There had been much hype surrounding the rally, and both white nationalists and members of Antifa had engaged in a fiery tit-for-tat online about who was going to kick whose ass the hardest. “Virginia’s an open carry state,” my friend said. “Are you going to bring a flack jacket?”

I scoffed and told him that the talk of violence was wildly overblown. There was no way the cops were going to let the two groups come within a city block of each other. I advised him to pick a side to cover during the actual rally, since the police likely wouldn’t even allow journalists to pass between the two camps.

For the last six years I have spent an inordinate amount of time among the American radical right, reporting for my book. Among the first things I learned is that a white nationalist rally is much like the weigh-in of a professional boxing match. There is a lot of finger-pointing and why-I-oughta’s, but all from a safe distance, affording nationalists and counter-protesters the luxury of saving face while remaining blissfully unmolested. It is a song and dance that both far-right groups and Antifa understand, and have come to rely on.

For the most part, white nationalists, Antifa, and law enforcement know their parts and play them well.

Cases in point: At my first white nationalist rally, put on by the National Socialist Movement in Trenton, New Jersey, in 2011, there was plenty of talk of riots, counter-protester-bashing, and glorious battle. At another NSM rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a couple of years later, the nationalists stretched and did martial arts in the parking lot before heading to the city courthouse. It was all bluster. At both rallies the cops had arranged for the nationalists to park at a pre-ordained location so they could be marched safely to the rally site, give their speeches, and be marched off again. In Trenton the NSM were even bused in by police so they could maintain order. Furthermore, in both instances city centers were so tightly cordoned off that the NSM’s speakers weren’t loud enough to carry their message of racial superiority anywhere near earshot of bystanders and counter-protesters.

In April of this year, it was feared that a rally in Pikeville, Kentucky, hosted by the Nationalist Front, an umbrella white nationalist group that includes many of the most prominent groups from Charlottesville, would turn into a blood bath. Stores and businesses in downtown Pikeville closed for the day. Antifa was out in force, as were white nationalists. It transpired the way it usually did. The members of the Nationalist Front were escorted by police to a cordoned-off area from which they shouted at members of Antifa who were also cordoned off and shouting back. Mean stares, slurs, and threats of “You’re lucky these cops are here or I’d…” abounded. Then everyone went home.