MR. NICKERSON'S TRIP TO DC WAS ORGANIZED BY AN ANTI-LGBTQ ORGANIZATION.
TRAVELING TO DC TO SUPPORT A LAME DUCK PRESIDENT & PROTEST THE ELECTION DEFINES MR. NICKERSON'S IGNORANCE.
Cape Cod restaurant owner shaken by backlash for being at Trump rally
EASTHAM — Hundreds of angry emails and texts. Hundreds of critical social-media posts. Calls to boycott his business. And as of Monday night, death threats.
That’s what greeted Nathan Nickerson, owner of Arnold’s Lobster & Clam Bar since he took part in the pro-Trump march to the U.S. Capitol last week and then talked “nonchalantly” to Boston radio personality Howie Carr about the experience. As he returned to his Washington, D.C., hotel on Jan. 6, Nickerson told Carr: "I was actually enjoying it all. It was kind of fun."
At that point, Nickerson said Monday, he had listened to President Trump and others speak and then he only experienced a largely peaceful march to the Capitol. He regrets that radio interview and said he didn’t learn until later that what was billed as a “Stop the Steal” rally in support of overturning the election became a deadly storming of the halls of Congress by Trump’s supporters.
The insurgents stormed the Capitol building as the House and Senate were in the process of counting the Electoral College vote.
A firestorm of criticism leveled against him and his 40-year-old restaurant was spurred by Nickerson’s own words, his presence at the rally and the social-media distribution of a controversial photo of a man in a shirt promoting "Civil War” that Nickerson and an administrator of an Eastham community Facebook page say is not him.
On Monday night, Nickerson said, he received multiple death threats by phone.
"It's just really gotten out of hand," he said Tuesday. "I've done nothing wrong. I didn't go (to Washington, D.C) to do anything wrong. ... I wasn't at that riot. I didn't know about that riot. This is just reprehensible."
Nickerson is among rally participants nationwide who have faced backlash in their jobs and small businesses after being part of a march organized to support Trump’s disproven claims of a rigged election that ended with a mob violently threatening U.S. lawmakers, leaving five dead, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, a military veteran. Many more people and police officers were injured.
Nickerson saw none of that he insisted Monday and said he has been "shell-shocked" by the outpouring of anger against him in the past week.
“I’m not a criminal. I would never, ever disrespect the Capitol like that,” he said, noting he, his wife and daughter have spent sleepless nights since his return. "I wasn't a part of that gang that trashed the Capitol building. ... For the people down here to put me in a category with those wretched people is just beyond comprehension."
While he was at the Capitol, Nickerson said Monday, he had been on another side of the building from where the entrance is located and had only watched as some people climbed over a small wall. He smelled and saw tear gas but had seen no violence before leaving the scene, he said.
After talking to Carr, a conservative talk show host, and learning of the violence, Nickerson acknowledged on Facebook that same day that he was "at the Trump rally" to "support Donald Trump for President" because he is “extremely worried about the direction the country is heading in.” But he wanted to let the Eastham community know that he "detests in the strongest terms those vile actions" at what he experienced as a peaceful protest and supports punishment for the guilty.
“If I had known this (violence) was going to happen, I would never ever have gone. My bad.”
By the time he returned to Cape Cod, Nickerson said he was receiving "a torrent of horrible, vile, vulgar emails (that said) I'm a domestic terrorist, I'm a seditionist, a Nazi, that I went there to create a civil war. It's just insanity. I've never experienced that kind of hatred before."
He is "furious" and "sad" about what people are saying about him after 60 years in Eastham and his many contributions to the community. While he said he hopes to change a few minds and promote civil discussion by telling his story, he has hired an attorney and private detective.
"We're going after as many people as we can for defamation of character. ... They're going to go to court. ... I'm going to fight back."
Nickerson responded to the multiple calls on social mediato boycott Arnold's — which is now closed for the season — saying the restaurant "has been there for 40 years, it's a great place and people love it."
He blames both Republicans and Democrats for the angry division in the country.
MR NICKERSON CLEARLY HASN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION!
"If I have to sell my business and I can't make it because (now people) won't eat there" out of anger over his involvement in the rally, he said, "then I guess that's what I have to do. I have no choice. I don't have control of anything. ... The only thing you can do is be the best person you can be."
He was surprised by the negative response he received for attending the rally.
"Why would anyone give a damn about what I think, where I go or what I do? I'm nothing," Nickerson said, adding that he accepted a friend's invitation to got the Washington, D.C., to see the president.
"Would I go again with what I know now? Absolutely not. It'd be stupid," he said. "I was naive. I was dumb to go without thinking of the feedback. In hindsight, with what it's cost my family, I would not put them through that again."
Nickerson took down his Facebook post explaining why he attended the rally and disavowing the violence, and took down all social media for himself and Arnold’s because of the strong negative reaction his trip has caused. But enough people copied his post that it has been making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter, and many people clearly don’t believe at least some of what he says.
A Jan. 8 post by Cape Cod Women for Change — with a Facebook page followed by close to 11,600 people — had 789 comments by Tuesday afternoon and had been shared 287 times. The group also shared a link to the Howie Carr Jan. 6 podcast that included the interview with Nickerson.
Identifying Nickerson as the owner of Arnold’s and showing the post that confirmed he had been at the Washington, D.C., rally, the organization noted: “We use our voices to speak out against hatred and injustice, we can do the same with our wallets. When we know a business uses their profits to promote what we abhor, we make those choices. If you make that choice, be sure to TELL them that you made the choice and why.”
Hundreds of responses supported a boycott of Arnold’s, with one woman who shared the post with her friends vowing: “I shall be reposting this all summer so that anyone who comes to the Cape sees it."
“This guy is just trying to keep his customers,” one commenter warned. “Don’t fall for his palaver. We’re not that gullible, Mr. Nickerson. You chose to go, now have the backbone to deal with the consequences.”
“The ONLY rationale for being there on Wednesday was to disrupt the democratic process. People thought it was fine and dandy until they started losing their jobs and their businesses took a hit,” said another.
In a written statement to the Times on Monday, the Cape Cod Women for Change leadership said that Nickerson had complained on another radio show that day about the group sharing his Facebook account of his trip. Nickerson was interviewed by Ed Lambert on WXTK and mentioned the group's posts.
“His (Facebook) post was his way of defending his actions. … If Mr. Nickerson did not want his trip to be public, perhaps he should have kept it to himself,” the group's statement read. Saying that “the terrorist attacks at our Capitol were abhorrent,” the leadership noted: “We encouraged people to consider (Nickerson’s) statement and make their own decisions. … If people in our own communities participated (in the protest) our followers want to know and will share with us, and we will share. People can choose to support this or not. If they are local business owners, locals can decide if they want to support those businesses.”
Nickerson said Monday that if people who have criticized him on social media don’t want to eat at Arnold's, that’s fine with him. "I don't want them there."
In the past few days, the social media frenzy and pressure on Nickerson’s family have ramped up as multiple other Facebook posts, as well as emails (including one to the Times), showed a photo of a man purported to be Nickerson wearing a Trump hat and a shirt that reads "MAGA Civil War, January 6, 2021."
Nickerson said Monday that the photo isn't of him. He said he had agreed at the last minute to join his friend in Washington on Jan. 6, largely to see memorials and a living president up close, and that he owns no clothes supporting Trump. He said he was wearing a black jacket and black hat, submitting to the Times a photo that he said was taken that day in Washington.
"The photo is not Nate," Debbie Abbott, one of the administrators for an Eastham community Facebook page, wrote to the Times on Tuesday. "It’s my understanding the photo was on someone’s thread, NOT one of the two Eastham FB pages. Farther down was a screenshot of Nate’s 'apology.' Somehow they got paired together by someone else. You know how FB works."
"I have no proof one way or the other," wrote an administrator Nancy Daniels, but "people from town who know him, swear that it is not him."
Nickerson isn’t the only person at the march who has been facing a backlash since what many are calling an “insurrection” at the nation's Capitol. At least 20 businesses nationwide have been flagged on online review sites such as Yelp for unusual review activity since Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. Arnold’s is one of them, with the review option for the Eastham restaurant disabled and replaced by an “unusual activity alert” that says in part: “This business recently received increased public attention, which often means people come to this page to post their views on the news rather than actual consumer experiences with the business.”
According to MassLive, Jeff Eller, who owns Eller’s restaurant in Cherry Valley in central Massachusetts, has faced similar social media criticism and boycott calls after describing the “peaceful protest” as a positive experience.
Neither Nickerson nor Wendy Northcross, CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, had heard Monday of any other Cape businesses getting similar backlash. "I hope that I'm the only one," Nickerson said. "I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy."
According to the Associated Press, people ranging from a printing company employee in Maryland to a CEO at a data analytics firm in Chicago — most of whom went inside the Capitol building — have been fired for participating in the riot.
Nickerson called his experience "beyond bizarre" and said "It's really, really sad that we can't talk about our differences. That we can't love — we're using hate instead of love. It's just so un-Christian, it's just so wrong. And what are we teaching our children?"
Trump is frequently criticized for the hate speech and the kind of name-calling Nickerson complained about from his detractors. He said there is "no way" that he supports that kind of talk from Trump.
In his Jan. 6 Facebook post, he said, “I am not particularly fond of (Trump) personally,” and Nickerson noted Monday that he has a special-needs child and was "totally disgusted" when Trump made fun of a reporter who has a disability during a November 2015 campaign rally.
"I support what (Trump) has done for the country," Nickerson said Monday. "I don't pay attention to the personalities. ...What I look at is their list of accomplishments. What have they done to promote our country, to make it a better, safer, more peaceful, more prosperous (place)? ... I don't vote right down the line of the party."
He declined to more specific.
"I'm not going to get into it because no matter what I say, people will tear me to shreds. ... I believe you need to look at their (Trump or president-elect Joe Biden's) platform and what they've accomplished. I'm sorry what I see is not what everyone else sees."
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