Page 4 - My FlipBook
P. 4

C H A P T E R 1



                           VIOLENCE ERUPTS:

              EXTREMISM TURNING




                               TO HATE











                n the early morning of August 12, 2017, the usually quiet
              Icollege 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






         4
   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9