Khaki-clad fascists on State St.
Never Ending Books' Sunday night post.
A group of neo-Nazis showed up on State Street Saturday night.
Their destination: Never Ending Books, the long-running free bookstore, arts and nonprofit community space. Whatever the purpose of their visit was, it was met with a larger gathering of Never Ending Books supporters, and a police intervention.
The incident — which ended without violence — occurred while Never Ending Books was hosting a show of improvised music from the New Haven-based FIM collective.
“We got word that these guys were on their way,” said Conor Perreault, a Volume Two board member. “I heard third-or-fourth hand” through the board members’ group chat; “people saw them walking down the street before they got to us. They saw them headed our way.”
As CT Communists posted on Instagram, “There was an attempted fascist attack in New Haven last night outside the Never Ending Books community space. RCA [Revolutionary Communists of America] members mobilized to protect this space where we have meetings, as did as some members of the DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] and other activists.”
Perrault and a couple other board members arrived to find “a crowd of people gathering,” somewhere between 20 and 30 people, “because they had also heard that these people were coming.”
“We waited for a long time,” Perrault said, and “suddenly there were seven or eight guys on the other side of the street,” wearing black masks and khakis.
Perreault recalled that the people on both sides of the street started “yelling at each other back and forth.” The people on the other side of the street from Never Ending Books “started chanting” and giving the Nazi salute. They also gave a chant that Perrault later learned was to signify an anti-Communist action.
“The people on our side of the street were shouting ‘Whose streets? Our streets!’” Perrault said. “That went on for a couple minutes, and then the cops showed up.”
The police went first to the Never Ending Books side of the street. The Never Ending Books crew gave a statement. Then the police crossed the street to talk to the neo-Nazis.
“They refused to talk to the officers and refused to identify themselves.” said Police Chief Karl Jacobson. “They just dispersed.”
After the neo-Nazis left, “we hung out for a bit because there was some fear that they would come back,” Perrault said. But they did not. FIM ended its show early, and “everyone went home because the snow had started falling.”
Volume Two announced what had happened Saturday night in a Sunday evening social media post, emphasizing that “everyone is safe and there was no violence” and that “all scheduled events will continue as planned.”
It is unclear exactly which neo-Nazi group showed up on State Street on Saturday. “We are following up to see where the group came from,” Jacobson said. The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies 31 neo-Nazi groups across the country, at least one of which — the Nationalist Social Club (NSC-131) — is widely known to operate in Connecticut. Another group — the Atlantic Nationalist Club, which has an account on X — originates in New Jersey but described itself as “recruiting” in Connecticut in October and holding a “sparring meet” in Hamden in December.
“It appears to have been a very targeted, hateful demonstration,” said Mayor Justin Elicker. “I’m glad that everyone’s okay.”
Elicker added that “we won’t stand for it. People should feel welcome in our community to be themselves, and such a hateful group targeting an establishment that welcomes so many people in our community is unacceptable.”
Neither Perrault nor Jacobson know why the neo-Nazis chose Never Ending Books specifically for their demonstration. Asked to speculate, Perrault offered that it may be because of the store’s obvious political leanings. “There is a Communist group that meets at the shop,” he said. “They could have just Googled ‘communist’ and ‘New Haven’ and we would have come up.”
But “first things first, we don’t have any intention of changing the kind of events that happen at the shop,” Perrault added. “The books are still free.”
That said, “internally, we have some conversations about how we want to deal with crises,” and about “being careful and paying attention to each other, so when these kinds of things come up, we can be supportive of each other the way we were Saturday night.”
“We’re a community-centered place,” Perrault said. “Community is what got us through last night and community will get us through whatever comes.”