(Editors note: On July 25, a planned rally to protest immigrant detentions at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility was faced with a counter protest. See a portion of the profanity-laced confrontation here.)
Jake Lang takes himself very seriously. The vest, the vibes, the shouted slurs- some familiar, some requiring a quick google- the tools of an edgelord on a mission. The thing is, it’s hard to be intimidating when everyone’s laughing at you.
Lang found that out fast when he sashayed into Plymouth to the dulcet and subtle tones of “Ice, Ice, Baby.” The irony of this as his theme song is rich: Vanilla Ice was a one-hit wonder who took himself way too seriously, and this song was a punchline for far longer than it ever was a “hit”. It’s revival is both annoying and hilarious- perfectly suited for the public simping demonstrations of pro-ICE factions, as well as Lang – a man who has yet to get the memo that he’s more of a meme than anything else.
Lang didn’t come to Plymouth to test out the fried clams or deep dive into our local rock lore. He actually walked into a planned rally outside the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, one that included a speech from Senator Ed Markey. He and his people tried to push into the speakers’ area, clearly hoping to disrupt or shut the event down entirely. They never got the chance. Local activists surrounded him, drowned out his hate speech with noise and mockery, and held the line. There was no police intervention, no hands laid on him. Markey and every other speaker delivered their remarks uninterrupted. The rally that Lang came to crash went on exactly as planned, and he became the sideshow instead of the story.
The January 6th participant (or J-6er as they call themselves) is a pardoned rioter, professional provocateur, and a man who’s built a career out of turning his own racist grievances and inferiority complex into content. He brought the usual script: hateful rhetoric and jarring slurs about Muslims, Jews, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ folks, women- you name it, he hates them, basically.
What he did not bring was an audience willing to play along. He was perhaps expecting that he wouldn’t find much pushback in Plymouth, maybe an easy audience that would be caught off guard enough to quietly let him through and take the stage while we clutched our pearls and fainted over his disgusting rhetoric.
Instead, he found a new hyper-specific group to hate on: South Shore women with heavy Boston accents, fluent in mockery, and unruffled by his (poor) attempt at swagger. They blared noise to drown out his hate speech and prevented him from capturing a clean clip. They undermined his attempt to project dominance by laughing derisively in his face. Insults were hurled. Jokes were made. Lang appeared the most rattled when a disruptor danced in front of him, blocking him from his audience. The man is clearly more comfortable getting sucker-punched than he is being made a fool, which is surprising given the vast experience he’s had in that role.
But there were no fists and no confrontation he could spin into martyrdom. What he got was ridicule, delivered with the kind of off-the-cuff, unimpressed precision that a Boston accent captures so perfectly.
There’s history behind this move, and it’s old and storied. Using humor to undermine fascism goes back to the Third Reich itself – Norwegians mocked the Nazi occupation with jokes and cartoons, and Charlie Chaplin turned Hitler into a punchline with “The Great Dictator” while the war was still being fought. There’s a literal clown costume version of this tactic that is newer, dating to the early two-thousands: the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army in Edinburgh, and the Coup Clutz Clowns who out-marched white supremacists in Olympia, Washington. In Wunsiedel, Germany, locals once turned a neo-Nazi march into an accidental fundraiser, pledging money for every step the marchers took, until the Nazis were unknowingly walking a check straight to an anti-extremism nonprofit. Portland, Oregon perfected it more recently: after a federal agent pepper-sprayed a protester’s inflatable frog costume outside the city’s ICE facility, the response was more inflatable frogs, plus dinosaurs, raccoons, and unicorns, dancing in formation until the feds had nothing left to point cameras at but a costume party. The math has never changed: guys like this run on fear, but it’s hard to look intimidating while getting laughed at or danced on.
None of this was luck. Plymouth has built a strong, female-led grassroots anti-hate activist community over the years, some working individually and some organized into local mutual aid and political advocacy groups. One particular planner has become especially adept at countering these far-right agitators, and her talents were put to good use Saturday as she literally chased Jake Lang out of town. (Thanks Rita!)
So here’s the real headline. Jake Lang didn’t get run out of Plymouth because anyone touched him. He got run out by women, armed with thick South Shore accents, who refused to be shocked into silence and gave him laughter and mockery instead. The rally went on exactly as planned without him. And whatever he managed to salvage for content, it’s missing the one ingredient his entire brand runs on: anyone taking him seriously.
– Meg Ash