The rise of white nationalism
It’s been a year since the ‘alt right’ gathered to shout racist things on a Virginia street. What lessons have we learned since then?
On Aug. 12, 2017, the nation was gripped by the shocking scene of hundreds of white supremacists taking to the streets of Charlottesville, Va., bellowing racist and anti-Semitic chants.
While some wore polo shirts and others waved Nazi flags, their message was clear: non-whites and minorities have no place in today’s America.
During Charlottesville, the so-called “alt right” showed the country that they were no longer just an internet nuisance, but a real-world movement that could bring together more than 600 extremists for an event where raw hatred was on full display.
The streets rang out with the hateful, racist shouts of the neo-Nazis, Klan members and altright agitators who put aside their differences to gather in an unprecedented show of unity.
For many unfamiliar with America’s dark underbelly, the rally was a moment of awakening to the hatred that many of us assumed was a relic of our past.
In Arizona, it would be easy to view the events of Charlottesville as an outlier, led by people who don’t exist in cities and towns like ours.
But we know that this conclusion is not only naive, but dangerous. We now know that “Unite the Right” attracted participants from at least 36 states. So while Charlottesville was the geographic locus for protesters, the ideas behind the rally generated interest among people from across the country.
Unfortunately, in today’s political climate, white supremacist groups are more emboldened than ever, spreading their vitriol online, on college campuses and in our communities.
The data reflects this new reality: a recent ADL report shows incidents of white supremacist propaganda on college campuses more than tripled in the 2017-18 school year from the previous academic year. There were seven incidents in Arizona where fliers were distributed.
We have also documented a nationwide increase in incidents of anti-Semitism, including vandalism, harassment and assaults, which are up by nearly 60 percent in 2017 over the previous year.
While white supremacists were not responsible for many of those incidents, we are concerned that the climate created by Charlottesville had an impact on those numbers last year.
And the most recent FBI statistics show that hate crimes are up across the nation in virtually every category.
In recent weeks, much has been said and written about the fact that Charlottesville was not the kind of victory hoped for by the white supremacist groups who organized the event. Rather than serving as a unifying force, one year later it seems the white supremacist movement is in a state of perpetual disarray and still suffering from self-inflicted wounds.
Let’s not forget that anti-racist counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed after the protest quickly descended into violence and a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd – an unconscionable tragedy that should never have happened. There was other violence surrounding the event as well.
These events, rather than galvanizing America around their racist ideas, only shocked Americans and further alienated the alt right.
A number of white supremacists have suffered more personal consequences of their actions at Charlottesville. Some lost their jobs or were ostracized at school after they were identified in photographs of angry tiki torch marchers or other images from the event. Some were arrested for assaults at Charlottesville after being similarly identified.
Others faced repercussions online. White supremacists were doxxed, their identifying information shared with the world. Various white supremacists were dropped from social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
And the event had repercussions for the movement as a whole. While it helped initially to galvanize and unify members of various hate groups, the divisions immediately reemerged and, in some cases, worsened.
One year later, the lingering effects of the post-Charlottesville backlash and the division and disunity it caused within the movement are evident in white supremacist Jason Kessler’s efforts to organize an anniversary event in Washington, D.C. The announcement of the event has led to infighting among key white supremacist figures, and many groups and individuals – including Richard Spencer, Matthew Heimbach and the anti-Semitic and racist group Identity Evropa – have definitively announced they will not attend.
But the movement that organized Charlottesville is hardly on its last legs. In fact, while the backlash against the alt right that hurt many of its leading spokespeople it has not resulted, as some have claimed, in a decline of the movement as a whole. Other white supremacists have picked up the banner and continued their activities.
Hate incidents remain as a problem within our community.
Here are a few examples:
❚ Last week a small business owner in north Phoenix found a swastika drawn on her property.
❚ In June, a state legislator made deeply disturbing comments regarding immigrants and minorities, and that same month Nazi flyers showed up in a Phoenix neighborhood.
❚ In May, two members of the LGBTQ community were assaulted.
❚ In April an electronic road sign in Pinal County was hacked to display a message praising Hitler.
There is good news:
In the wake of “Unite the Right,” decent people in our community have shown a willingness to stand up and publicly reject hate groups and their messages. We were especially inspired by the words of Sen. John McCain, who after Charlottesville made clear that hate has no place in our nation: “White supremacists aren't patriots, they're traitors — Americans must unite against hatred and bigotry.”
There’s still much more work to be done to combat hate in this country.
❚ There are still five states without hate crime laws on the books.
❚ The federal government needs to make tracking hate groups and extremists a higher priority, devoting the same energy given to the threat of domestic Islamic extremists.
❚ Internet and social media platforms can do more to prevent extremists and hatemongers from using their networks to recruit and spread hatred.
Charlottesville should be remembered as a warning to America: this is what happens when bigots unify under one banner.
It will take an ongoing and coordinated effort by public officials, private industries, the corporate sector and civic institutions to ensure that our society’s hateful elements are pushed back into the margins where they belong.