Over on the protest side, which was bolstered by about a hundred members of the Democratic Socialists of America, the atmosphere was more carnivalesque.
On one occasion, a member of the far-right infiltrated the protest side, leading to a fist fight, and culminating in his arrest, and in the arrest of a antifascist.
By nightfall, demonstrators filled Tahrir Square in a protest that matched the size and ideological diversity of the early days of the revolt, with Islamists and liberals once again protesting side by side.
Surrounded by soldiers, women in hijab protested side by side with their male classmates, chanting anti-Suharto slogans, denouncing "corruption, collusion and nepotism", and calling for a full-fledged democracy.
That led to an odd confrontation between the union members and Occupy campers — two groups that had protested side by side on Sunday in the "March on Wall Street South" — a reference to Charlotte's status as a banking city.
Egyptians who not long ago were protesting side by side, even members of the same family, now rely on different sources of information, offer widely divergent accounts of what caused Monday's carnage and argue that they are the true defenders of the revolution that ousted President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Televised images of regional leaders from across the country protesting side by side have revived the idea of a Third Front, an assortment of state parties that would function as an alternative to the two national parties, the Congress and B.J.P., which lead the United Progressive Alliance and the National Democratic Alliance, respectively.
In Paris, at the Trocadéro, opposite the Eiffel Tower, human rights organizations like Amnesty International and press freedom groups like Reporters Without Borders protested side by side with representatives of a banned underground Chinese democracy party, Taiwan nationalists and proponents of independence for the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in western China.
Cora Lemonyne, one of the people on the counter-protest side of the dueling rallies, believes that the counter protesting against groups like this is a necessary action and that Storm Alliance's loud denouncement of racism and the extreme-right is simple PR spin.
Opposition leaders must also rein in violent elements on the protesting side.
Just a year ago, Christians and Muslims in Egypt prayed and protested side by side for the rights of all Egyptians.
