C H A P T E R 1
V I O L E N C E E RUP T S :
EXTREMISM TURNING
TO HATE
I
n the early morning of August 12, 2017, the usually quiet
college town of Charlottesville, Virginia, was anything but
quiet. A large group was gathering to protest the city’s decision to
remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, the famous
leader of Southern troops during the American Civil War (1861–
1865). The Unite the Right rally attracted a number of extreme
alt-right, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist groups, all of whom
stand against removing Confederate symbols from the American
South. These protesters support Confederate symbols as a part of
southern culture. They also support the Confederate belief in the
superiority of the white race over other minorities, particularly
blacks. (In this book,
white
refers to people who can trace their
ancestral roots to Europe.) They view removing Confederate
symbols—such as flags and statues—as attacks on the white race.
On this day, they wanted to use the Charlottesville rally to take a
public stand in support of their racial views.
The rally was scheduled to kick off at noon on Saturday. But
rallygoers started arriving at Emancipation Park around eight
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