Unite the Right rally
The Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11 to 12, 2017. Marchers included members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and far-right militias. The organizers' stated goals included the unification of the American white nationalist movement and opposing the proposed removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville's former Lee Park.
The event had hundreds of participants and sparked a national debate over Confederate iconography, racial violence, and white supremacy. The rally occurred amid the controversy which was generated by the removal of Confederate monuments by local governments following the Charleston church shooting in 2015, in which a white supremacist shot and killed nine at a black church.
The rally turned violent after protesters clashed with counter-protesters, resulting in more than 30 injured. In the afternoon of August 12, self-identified white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters about away from the rally site, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 people. Fields fled the scene in his car but was arrested soon afterward. In 2018, he was tried and convicted in Virginia state court of first-degree murder, malicious wounding, and other crimes. The following year, Fields pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes in a plea agreement to avoid the death penalty in this trial.
US president Donald Trump's remarks about the rally generated negative responses, which were criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the far-right protesters and the counter-protesters. The rally and resulting death and injuries resulted in a backlash against white supremacist groups in the United States. After Charlottesville refused to approve another march, Unite the Right held an anniversary rally on August 11–12, 2018, called "Unite the Right 2", in Washington, D.C.
Description
The Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11 to 12, 2017. Marchers included members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and far-right militias. Some groups chanted racist and antisemitic slogans and carried weapons, Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols, the valknut, Confederate battle flags, Deus vult crosses, flags, and other symbols of various past and present antisemitic and anti-Islamic groups. The organizers' stated goals included the unification of the American white nationalist movement and opposing the proposed removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville's former Lee Park. The event had hundreds of participants.The rally turned violent after protesters clashed with counter-protesters, resulting in more than 30 injured. On the morning of August 12, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency, stating that public safety could not be safeguarded without additional powers. Within an hour, at 11:22 a.m., the Virginia State Police declared the rally to be an unlawful assembly.
At around 1:45 p.m., self-identified white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters about away from the rally site, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 people. Fields fled the scene in his car but was arrested soon afterward. He was tried and convicted in Virginia state court of first-degree murder, malicious wounding, and other crimes in 2018, with the jury recommending a sentence of life imprisonment plus 419 years. The following year, Fields pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes in a plea agreement to avoid the death penalty in this trial.
The rally sparked a national debate over Confederate iconography, racial violence, and white supremacy. US president Donald Trump's remarks about the rally generated negative responses. In his initial statement following the rally, Trump condemned the "display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides". This first statement and his subsequent defenses of it, Trump referred to "very fine people on both sides" while clarifying that he was not referring to the neo-Nazis and white nationalists. These statements were criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the far right protesters and the counter-protesters.
The rally and resulting death and injuries resulted in a backlash against white supremacist groups in the United States. A number of groups that participated in the rally had events canceled by universities, and their financial and social media accounts closed by major companies. Some Twitter users led a campaign to identify and publicly shame marchers at the rally from photographs; at least one rally attendee was dismissed from his job as a result of the campaign. While the organizers intended for the rally to unite far-right groups with the goal of playing a larger role in American politics, the backlash and resultant infighting between alt-right leaders has been credited with causing a decline in the movement.
Background
The rally occurred amid the controversy which was generated by the removal of Confederate monuments by local governments following the Charleston church shooting in 2015, in which Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, shot and killed nine members of a black church, including the minister, and wounded another member of the church. In the wake of the Charleston church shooting in June 2015, efforts were made across the South to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces and rename streets honoring notable figures from the Confederacy. While often successful, these efforts faced a backlash from people concerned about protecting their Confederate heritage. The August 11–12 Unite the Right rally was organized by Charlottesville native and white supremacist Jason Kessler to protest the Charlottesville City Council's decision to remove the Robert E. Lee statue honoring the Confederate general, as well as the renaming of the statue's eponymous park. Kessler took up the cause in March 2016 when then Charlottesville Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy held a press conference to call for removal of the statue. Kessler called Bellamy "anti-white" and the demand to remove the statue an effort to "attack white history". Lee Park became the site of numerous neo-Confederate events throughout the spring of 2017, including a campaign rally by Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart, which further politicized this public space.Summer rallies in Charlottesville
On May 13, 2017, National Policy Institute Chairman and white supremacist Richard Spencer led a nighttime rally in Charlottesville to protest the city's plans to remove the statue of Lee. The event involved over 100 protesters, from various alt-right groups from around the country, chanting "You will not replace us!", "Jews will not replace us!" and "Russia is our friend!" while holding lit torches near the statue, a spectacle which many Charlottesville residents found intimidating, and which the mayor denounced as a "harken back to the days of the KKK." The next night, hundreds of anti-racist Charlottesville residents held a candlelight counterprotest in response. Throughout early to mid-2017, tensions mounted as neo-Confederate and alt-right groups' sporadic gatherings in Charlottesville's downtown parks and pedestrian mall were confronted by anti-racist activists, resulting in occasional scuffles and some arrests. On July 8, 2017, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a group from Pelham, North Carolina, held a rally at the Stonewall Jackson statue in Charlottesville. In opposition to the rally, the Charlottesville Clergy Collective created a safe space two blocks from the Klan rally at First United Methodist Church, which was used by over 600 people. About 50 Klan members were drowned out by 1,000 counterprotesters, who gathered at a loud but nonviolent rally dubbed by anti-racist organizers as the "#BlocKKKParty". After the Klan group's departure the Charlottesville Police Department declared the remaining counterprotesters to be an unlawful assembly, and ordered their dispersalan order which, given the din of the crowd and the police helicopter hovering overhead, went unheard by many in the crowd. Although the Charlottesville chief of police had denied permission for the measure, the Virginia State Police acted upon an order and fired three tear gas canisters into a group of counterprotesters. Police and city government officials later defended the action, which anti-racist counter-demonstrators and legal observer organizations characterized as police brutality. The resulting mistrust between law enforcement and local activists clouded the remainder of the summer, setting the stage for the August 12 Unite the Right rally.Protesters
Among the far-right groups engaged in organizing the march were the Stormer Book Clubs of the neo-Nazi news website The Daily Stormer, The Right Stuff, the National Policy Institute, and four groups that form the Nationalist Front: the neo-Confederate League of the South and Identity Dixie, the neo-Nazi groups Traditionalist Worker Party, Vanguard America, and the National Socialist Movement. Other groups involved in the rally were the Ku Klux Klan, the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, the neo-Nazi White supremacist group Identity Evropa, the Southern California-based fight club Rise Above Movement, the American Guard, the Detroit Right Wingswho were condemned by the Detroit Red Wings NHL team for their use of the team's logo, True Cascadia, the Canada-based ARM and Hammer Brothers, and Anti-Communist Action.Prominent far-right figures in attendance included Spencer, entertainer and internet troll Baked Alaska, lawyer Augustus Invictus, former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke, Identity Evropa leader Nathan Damigo, Traditionalist Workers Party leader Matthew Heimbach, Right Stuff founder Mike Enoch, Joshua Jordan of The Daily Stormer and the Traditionalist Workers Party, League of the South founder and leader Michael Hill, Red Ice host and founder Henrik Palmgren, The Rebel Media commentator Faith Goldy, Right Side Broadcasting Network host Nick Fuentes, YouTube personality James Allsup, Altright.com European editor Daniel Friberg, former Business Insider CTO Pax Dickinson, Right Stuff blogger Johnny Monoxide, Daily Stormer writers Robert "Azzmador" Ray and Gabriel "Zeiger" Sohier-Chaput, Daily Caller contributor and rally organizer Jason Kessler, and Radical Agenda host Christopher Cantwell.
Gavin McInnes, the leader of the self-described "Western chauvinist" Proud Boys was invited to attend but declined because of an unwillingness "to be associated with explicit neo-Nazis" although the militia wing of the group, the aforementioned Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights, did attend. In June, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch blog, ahead of the rally, McInnes declared that "we need to distance ourselves from them", but "after backlash to the original disavowal flared-up from Alt-Right circles, the statement was withdrawn and replaced with another distancing the Proud Boys from the event yet also encouraging those who 'feel compelled' to attend".
Teddy Joseph Von Nukem later rose to fame after being photographed in the most widely recognized images of the protest.
Airbnb cancelled a number of bookings and accounts when it learned that they were being used by attendees at the rally, citing a request that users endorse a commitment to "accept people regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age".
In February 2023, the city of Enid, Oklahoma, elected Judson Blevins, a participant in the rally and a former Oklahoma organizer for Identity Evropa, to its city commission. Blevins has faced opposition from the community since taking office in May 2023. Although city commissioners tabled a measure to censure Blevins, citizens collected enough signatures for a recall election in April 2024. Retired pastor and former Republican congressional candidate Wade Burleson is among Blevins' supporters. Blevins lost the recall, by 268 votes.