Sacha Baron Cohen is being suspected as the performer who pulled a prank on a far-right rally by disguising himself as a caricature country singer who shows racist tendencies to an overt and sarcastic level.
Matt Marshall, who founded and formerly lead the Washington Three Percent organization, admitted his defeat in an interview with NPR. Saying that he was duped, he explained how an event his organization planned ended with a racist singalong that mired the image of his movement.
The organization supports and follows the Patriot and Militia movement, considered by many as a far-right ideology. Founded in 2008, the movement is an amalgamation of all things ‘conservative’ in rural America including tax protestors, active militia participants and Doomsday preparers.
Marshall said that he organized and was emceeing for a rally that took place last Saturday. It was to be a big rally for all the so-called conservative organizations in the nearby area, although third-party analyzers consider most of them to be anti-government in their stance.
NPR reports that the ‘trolling’ exemplifies the difficulties that far-right movements are facing in the US. Marshall himself admitted that the ugly finale for a rally he organized was kick in the head for him.
The event was especially damaging because Marshall is running for a seat in the local legislature body. Thus, Marshall said that he had spent years persuading people that the movement he supported was not a racist one, but a fundamentally ‘American’ take on politics.
However, he and his colleagues were having difficulty selling their ideas in deep-blue Washington state. This is why they were happy to hear from ‘Back To Work USA’, an organization supposedly based in California that said they wanted to help conservatives reach out to voters in blue states.
Marshall said that he and his colleagues did doubt whether the offer from this mysterious organization was too good to be true, as they said they would pay for everything and even invite one half of the legendary Gatlin Brothers.
Marshall estimates that the entire prank must have cost the organizers some $50,000. He said that he knew something was awry when a performer who was wearing the three colors of the American flag with clown disguise suddenly showed up on stage.
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