“Whose streets? Our streets!”
“Whose streets? Our streets!”
With that stirring chant, Delhi women looked to reclaim public spaces that have long been unsafe for them...
...Wait, no, sorry. That’s not women in Delhi, that’s white men in Virginia, USA on Friday, 11 August, protesting the planned removal of a statue of Robert E Lee – a ‘Confederate hero’ who fought to keep slavery in the Civil War.
Friday saw the beginning of ‘Unite the Right’ rallies, as hundreds of mostly white men carrying torches marched through the campus of University of Virginia to protest ‘identity politics’ and the proposed removal of the Confederate statue in an attempt to undo the glorification of slavery-era racism in the state – something the movement calls the ‘erasure of white history’.
By Saturday morning, the alt-right – complete with Nazi flags and slogans (“Blood and soil!”) – had descended on Charlottesville in earnest, and in the ensuing protest and counter-protests, one woman (Heather Heyer) was killed as an alleged Nazi sympathiser ploughed through a crowd of counter-protesters, injuring 19 others.
VICE managed to capture and document much of the Unite the Right rallies – at what might be a watershed moment in America – in this 22-minute documentary.
The documentary follows a Unite the Right organiser, Christopher Cantwell, at the UVA march, through to the crowd of Charlottesville protesters as they were attacked by the speeding vehicle.
After Heyer’s death, when asked how he feels about the rallies he has organised, he gives a shockingly callous response that borders on gloating:
The fact that none of our people killed anybody unjustly, and nobody on our side died – I’d go ahead and call that points for us.Christopher Cantwell, Organiser, ‘Unite the Right’
As more ‘Unite the Right’ rallies are planned in nine states, in the country that was instrumental in defeating Nazi Germany, Cantwell offers another chilling quote (one of many):
The Backlash
The day after Heather Heyer’s death, another Unite the Right organiser, Jason Kessler, came out to address the public at Charlottesville City Hall. Even before he started to speak, he was jeered at, booed, even physically attacked partway through his speech and had to be protected by police. His attackers and detractors, as seen in the VICE documentary chanting 'Nazis go home', appear to be majority white.
The backlash against the rallies across the US has been fiery. American Twitter is abuzz with talk of civil war, as armed Right Wing militias show up to protests, with the Left proclaiming zero-tolerance for Nazis and in turn defending the use of violence against them – this is a significant shift from the standard political sledging we have been seeing thus far.
Social networking sites, Facebook and Instagram, have also moved to ban the accounts of Cantwell and eight other white supremacists, and he claims his PayPal account has been frozen too.
US law enforcement has seemingly taken a dim view of the violence at Unite the Right rallies, with Cantwell claiming there is a warrant for his arrest and making a video in his own defence where he appears distressed at the fallout of the rallies – in a manner starkly at odds with his blustery, aggressive persona in the VICE video: (Don't miss the transphobic comments on Chelsea Manning, and admission of being jailed before.)
All the King’s Men
As this unfolds, where does US President Donald Trump stand? Since the weekend's events, he has delivered three statements – the first shortly after Heather Heyes' death, condemning the "hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides".
After heavy criticism for his choice of phrase and the fact that alt-right and Nazi groups were emboldened by his refusal to call them out or name them specifically, Trump came back with a more detailed statement in which he called the KKK, Neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups "repugnant to all we hold dear".
This succeeded in cooling tempers, with many taking solace from the pointed condemnation, hoping the US President is no Nazi sympathiser.
But wait, there's more.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday from Trump Tower, the US President veered wildly off script, saying the "alt-left" bears blame in the events too, saying that not all the people at the rallies were Nazis or white supremacists (#NotAllNationalists?), and defending their protest of the removal of Confederate statues – neatly demolishing the goodwill he had gathered from his last statement.
Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging at [indiscernible] – excuse me – what about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? [...] What about the fact that they came charging – they came charging with clubs in their hands swinging clubs. [...] Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E Lee. So this week, it’s Robert E Lee, I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?Donald Trump, US President
But there's reason to be hopeful. The American people are fired up.
As many as 4,000 gathered in Charlottesville at UVA's campus on Wednesday to demonstrate against racism and violence, in numbers that dwarfed the Unite the Right protests.
May the better side win.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)