On August 11-12, 2017, white supremacists from around the country descended on Charlottesville, Virginia. In an orgy of racist violence—ostensibly to prevent a statue of Robert E. Lee (commander of the Confederate army in the Civil War, who fought to keep slavery alive) from being removed from a public park—the coalition of various neo-Nazi, fascist, and white supremacist organizations and individuals chanted anti-Semitic slogans, glorified Hitlerite fascism, beat and assaulted protesters, and finally murdered one protester, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, by ramming a car into anti-fascist demonstrators. See “Heather Heyer: A Hero at a Time When Humanity Needs Heroes,” revcom.us, Aug. 14, 2017. Then-President Donald Trump infamously capped off the bloody weekend by insisting on calling these Nazis “very fine people.”
Heather Heyer
Despite the 2018 conviction of James Fields for the murder of Heyer, most of the fascist, KKK, and Nazi scum have faced no civil or legal repercussions on the state or federal level for the violence and terror that was inflicted in Charlottesville.
Now, over four years later, the lead organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally, 10 organizations and 14 individuals in all, including prominent Nazis Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer, are being sued in federal court. The plaintiffs, nine Virginia residents from varying backgrounds, charge that these organized fascists conspired to commit acts of violence to deny Black people and their allies their civil rights, and they seek damages for the injuries they sustained from the fascist assault.
Amy Spitalnick, executive director of Integrity First for America (IFA), which is backing the civil suit, told Teen Vogue: “The case can really bankrupt and dismantle the leaders in the groups that are at the center of this movement, which, again, will have impacts that extend well beyond Charlottesville.”
Lawyers for the plaintiffs hinge their case on an 1871 (Reconstruction Era) law known as the “Ku Klux Klan Act,” which aimed to protect Black people in the South from being terrorized by the Klan.
As the New York Times reported, “For roughly the first two hours of the trial, the plaintiffs’ lawyers displayed graphic videos, chat postings and emails meant to prove their contention that the organizers planned violence and then executed it.”
Audio was played of defendant Richard Spencer (of “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” fame) from the night of August 12, as word of the car attack and Heyer’s death spread around the world, ranting: “Little fucking kikes. They get ruled by people like me. Little fucking octoroons... my ancestors fucking enslaved those little pieces of fucking shit. I rule the fucking world. Those pieces of fucking shit get ruled by people like me. They look up and see a face like mine looking down at them. That’s how the fucking world works. We are going to destroy this fucking town.”
The lawyers for the defendants, one of whom is the Holocaust-denier James E. Kolenich, who said that “My willingness to get involved is to oppose Jewish influence in society,” insisted that no such conspiracy to commit violence existed, and that what was planned for “Unite The Right” was merely the exercise of protected speech. Extensive leaked chat logs on the Nazis’ Discord server indicate otherwise, showing discussion of weaponry and tactics.1 Predictably, the Nazis used their time to further spread their noxious message. Defendants have used numerous racial slurs, name-dropped Hitler’s work Mein Kampf, and promoted one of their podcasts.
On November 12, Elizabeth Sines, a former law student (now practicing lawyer) and counter-protester on August 11-12 testified, describing the horrific experience of being in the crowd of anti-fascist demonstrators when James Fields plowed his car into human bodies. “It sounded like if you would take a metal baseball bat and slide it across a wooden fence. Sounds like thuds," she said. “You could hear it before you saw it.”
Those on the side of justice were shocked and horrified by the events of Charlottesville: From the torchlight rally of hundreds chanting “Jews will not replace us” through the University and City center which culminated in the surrounding and beating of a small group of counter-demonstrating students, to the brutal beating of DeAndre Harris, to the murder of Heather Heyer…
For many, this was a wake-up call. And it was a preview of what was to come.
Fascist violence has in fact escalated in the years since, inspired by Trump and members of the Republi-fascist party he heads. This took a big leap with the January 6th coup attempt.
Everyone who cares about justice, and has aspirations for a radically different world, and who does not want to live in a white supremacist fascist America, should be watching the development of this trial closely.