The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last
year ripped away the last shred of plausible deniability about the white
supremacist fascism of the so-called alt-right. A neo-Nazi plowed his
Dodge Charger into a crowd of anti-fascist counterprotesters, killing
32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring others. A young black man was beaten
bloody by racists with metal poles in a parking lot near a police
station. White supremacists marched Klan-like, with burning torches and
Nazi salutes, around a Confederate statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee while
chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” It was a gruesome pastiche of
19th-century American and 20th-century European race hate, newly
emboldened under Donald Trump. The president later declared that there were some “very fine people on both sides” — a remark that winked at the side with swastikas and “Sieg Heils.”
The tragic events of that day make it all the more vile that the white
nationalist organizer of “Unite the Right,” Jason Kessler, is planning
an event to mark the deadly demonstration. The approval for the
“anniversary” rally outside the White House was granted by the National
Park Service. The application offered plans for an estimated 400
demonstrators in Washington’s Lafayette Park who would be “protesting
civil rights abuse in Charlottesville, Va / white civil rights.” Kessler
initially applied to hold “Unite the Right 2” in Charlottesville, and
is now suing the city because it denied him a permit due to safety
concerns. The lawsuit seeks to allow the demonstration to go ahead in
Charlottesville, as well as in Washington, D.C., on August 12 — exactly a
year after Heyer’s brutal death.
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Source: The Intercept_
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