HATE GROUPS UNDETERRED
WASHINGTON — The hate rallies will continue across America this fall, white supremacists vowed yesterday, shrugging off President Trump’s belated denunciation of neo-Nazis nearly 48 hours after the deadly violence Saturday at a Charlottesville, Va., rally.
“His statement today was more kumbaya nonsense,” said alt-right leader Richard Spencer, who is planning a white nationalist event next month at the University of Florida. “Only a dumb person would take those lines seriously.”
Other white supremacist events are planned for the fall, including a rally in Richmond, Va., at the Robert E. Lee monument and a “white lives matter” rally at Texas A&M University, which the university was seeking to stop last night.
Trump had received withering criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for not publicly denouncing the neo-Nazis who organized Saturday’s deadly rally in Charlottesville.
After nearly 48 hours of silence, Trump yesterday gave a brief televised appearance to condemn racism.
But Trump’s new remarks did nothing to thwart the plans for more rallies by hate groups, who declared victory after the violence in Charlottesville. To the contrary, those groups dismissed Trump’s latest comments as insincere and coerced, and they ramped up their plans for more events.
Spencer said his group would “100 percent” return to Charlottesville on Sept. 11 to again protest the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue.
“We’re going to be more active than ever before,” Matthew Heimbach, a white nationalist leader, said.
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke also reminded Trump