Actually, in my neck of the woods, watermelon-wearing guys don’t get much media attention - just part of the scenery on game day.
For an insider look addressing the OP- read William F. Buckley Jr’s novel GETTING IT RIGHT, which basically gets into his struggle to keep Ayn-Randians & John-Birchers (or more accurately Robert-Welchers) from taking over the U.S. Conservative movement.
How’s that working out for ya? If they’re capable of taking over your movement, they’re not on the fringe, by definition.
Best thing to do: Keep saying what you believe in and want to do. Don’t let the opposition, of whatever stripe, define your movement for you by associating loonies with you. Of course, it’s best not to let the loonies represent you at all - keep your pit bulls out in the yard, not in the house.
This thread reminds me of way back when, about 1989, when I was in an anti-abortion group. One 4th of July in Seattle, the then-governor of Washington came to Pike Place Market to give a speech about abortion rights, so my group got its small (maybe a dozen people) self together with signs, and went to make a counter-protest. We stood across the street and sang, mostly. None of us yelled at them, that much I remember.
Anyway, on the governor side of the street, in the little park there, were a lot of women’s rights activists…and all the loonie hangers-on. You had the communist party with its table set up, the Save the Whales, and on, and on. They were loud and disruptive and although I’m sure they were also interested in abortion rights, they were using the organized gathering as their own soapbox.
By the time we were escorted away by police for our own safety, there were a number of policemen on horses separating ‘our’ side of the street from ‘their’ side of the street, and some of our signs had been wrenched from our hands and torn into bits by a roaring, cheering, jubilant crowd from the other side of the street.
If I’d been one of the organizers of the speech from the governor, I’d have been mortified. But maybe whoever it was, was grateful to be able to dissociate their group from what happened by saying “They weren’t with us”, while simultaneously being glad that we had been threatened, our property damaged, and ultimately left under police guard for our own safety. I have no idea.
Whatever, it sure did bring out the loonie fringe.