Year later, racists cling to shadows
Many now avoid public protests like Charlottesville
A year ago, white supremacists were ready for a show of unity in Charlottesville, Va.
Hundreds traveled to the city for a rally in support of their belief that white people are superior. But the gathering quickly became violent, and an anti-racism protester was killed when a neo-Nazi man rammed a car into a crowd.
Since then, many supporters of “white rights” who frequently appeared on campuses or smaller gatherings throughout the country have become less visible, even as the number of neoNazi groups has increased, according to members of white supremacy groups, anti-racism activists and others.
The spectacle of Charlottesville has kept the farright movement more splintered than united, even as demonstrations such as one in Portland, Ore., earlier this month still draw rightwing extremists and counterprotesters.
Several leaders of white supremacist groups have said during the last year, often via social media, that their followers should avoid such public events.
Michael Hill, who leads the Alabama-based proConfederate group League of the South, told his followers in a May podcast that they do not have “anything to gain” from another Charlottesville.
Brad Griffin, a prominent blogger who has pushed for a “Jew-free, white ethnostate in North America” on his website Occidental Dissent, wrote that racists should be careful about showing up at public gatherings. “I don’t believe we should engage with them at all anymore,” Griffin wrote last month of counter-demonstrators.
Before and since Charlottesville, civil rights groups warned that the country could be facing a new era, with racists becoming more emboldened to display their views in violent demonstrations.
That movement, many now say, has slowed down.
“One of the most important effects of the postCharlottesville year has been the inability for these right-wing extremist groups to unite the way they had hoped to,” said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “The backlash that came from that event has led to infighting and division, which has led to pressure on these groups in ways we have not seen.”
The weekend in Charlottesville last year ended with the death of 32-yearold counterprotester Heather Heyer, a helicopter crash that killed two state troopers and scores of injuries.
President Donald Trump’s reaction, where he assigned blame to “both sides,” further fueled tensions as vigils took place across the country.
In some cases, white supremacists were ostracized in their communities. Some were banned from online fundraising portals or fired from their jobs. Others chose not to expose themselves to the criticism that comes with public events.
An attempt to bring scores of white supremacists back to Charlottesville on Sunday to mark the one-year anniversary fizzled.
The city declined to host an official commemoration, though churches plan healing services and university students announced a protest against racism.
Instead of Charlottesville, organizer Jason Kessler plans to hold a “white civil rights” anniversary rally Sunday in Washington across from the White House. The event will not be “about hating anybody,” but rather about supporting a race that “is becoming a minority in the United States,” he said.
Even some of those who agree with him have disassociated themselves.
In the last year, other extremist groups that were present in Charlottesville, including the Traditionalist Workers Party and Vanguard America, splintered.
James Fields, the Ohio man charged in Heyer’s death, had posed with Vanguard America at the 2017 rally while holding a shield with neo-Nazi symbols.
In Washington, dozens of local groups as well as Black Lives Matter and civil rights groups from New York, Philadelphia and Charlottesville also plan to rally Sunday near the White House.
After the violence last year, dozens of cities rushed to take down Confederate statues similar to the ones right-wing groups said they were protecting in Virginia. In Charlottesville, the city placed tarps over park statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson while it grappled with a Virginia law that protects war monuments from removal.
“That movement has also slowed down,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
Beirich said that whether or not groups rely on demonstrations, it’s important to note sentiment over race, immigration and religion — areas in which polls and electoral races are showing divisions.
“The biggest issue ultimately after Charlottesville is that whatever happens to these alt-right groups, these anti-immigrant ideas, antiMuslim ideas, they have totally penetrated the mainstream,” she said.