But even with the low turnout, almost no one walked away with the sense that the nation’s divisions were any closer to healing.

Indeed, the streets of downtown Washington were charged Sunday with tension, emotion and noise, particularly in the afternoon, as right-wing agitator Jason Kessler and perhaps 20 fellow members of the far right — some wearing bright red “Make America Great Again” hats, some draped in American flags — marched under heavy police escort from the Metro station in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood to their barricaded and heavily protected rally area near the White House.

“You killed a girl in Charlottesville!” one voice in the crowd yelled, referring to Heather Heyer, a woman who was fatally injured when a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters a year ago.

A similar dynamic to the one in Washington played out in Charlottesville on Sunday, where few if any far-right demonstrators could be found, and where the most palpable tensions developed between left-wing protesters and police, whose presence in the city was heavy and, some argued, heavy-handed.

Only a handful of arrests were reported in Charlottesville on Sunday.

In Washington, the mere threat of another large turnout from the far right, coupled with a large turnout from the far left — among them, hundreds of black-clad, masked and helmeted anti-fascist protesters known as antifa — seemed to indicate that the United States was not over its turn toward European-style politics by street protest.

In Washington, the far-right rally felt as if it was over before it had really begun. It was officially scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m., but the small band of extremists arrived early, finished their demonstration and left before that time.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Richard Fausset © 2018 The New York Times