Nazis in America

President Trump provoked fury with his half-hearted condemnation of the white supremacist march in Virginia last week, during which an anti-fascist protester was killed. Heather Heyer died when an alleged right-wing activist drove a car into a crowd of anti-fascists in the university city of Charlottesville. Trump initially said “many sides” were to blame for the violence. After criticism from politicians and the media, he made a further statement condemning white supremacists, before stating again on Tuesday that there was “blame on both sides”.

Extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan had gathered in Charlottesville to protest at plans to remove a statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a public park. Some openly carried assault rifles, wore paramilitary uniforms and chanted Nazi slogans. James Alex Fields Jr, 20, was charged with Heyer’s murder.

What the editorials said

The violence in Charlottesville gave Trump a perfect chance to distance himself from the white supremacists and neo-nazis who have always “cheered him on”, said The New York Times. “He blew it.” Even in his later statement, he refused to assign blame for Heyer’s murder, saying only that she had been “tragically killed”. Trump’s conduct contrasts sharply with other right-wing Republicans – notably his old rival Ted Cruz – who didn’t hesitate to condemn, said The Guardian. Trump has failed utterly in a president’s first duty, to speak for the nation in “traumatic times”.

But the “deeper” problem highlighted by the Charlottesville clashes, said The Wall Street Journal, is the rise of divisive “identity politics”. Increasingly, extremists of every kind are stirring up trouble between Americans of different politics, race, gender or religion. The Left must take some responsibility for this state of affairs: witness its efforts to silence dissenting voices on college campuses. Trump is more “symptom than cause” of America’s true sickness.