Trump must learn to unite not divide

There is something astonishing, and profoundly disquieting, about the spectacle of a Nazi flag being paraded down the street in a modern democracy. The fact that the democracy in question is the most powerful in the world – rightly revered as a global beacon of liberty and opportunity – only deepens the horror many will have felt watching images from Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. The precise “justification” for the far-right protest – the possible removal of a statue of General Robert E Lee – is a distraction. The so-called airbrushing of history is worthy of dignified discussion and debate, not incitement and violence. What is important is the fact that a group of white supremacists felt emboldened to make plain their racist, bigoted, antediluvian views.

No doubt such people have always existed and, to a greater or lesser extent, always will. But the fact of the matter is that they have emerged, bold and unabashed, now. So it is welcome that the White House has clarified that President Trump, who appeared to equivocate in his initial condemnation of them, meant no ambiguity. Still, whether by accident or design, Mr Trump has won himself some deeply unpleasant friends, who take his rise to power as evidence they need no longer hide their grotesque views. Having disabused them of this idea, the president should now go further, and lead the healing of divisions in his nation. It would certainly be expediency unworthy of his office to exploit them.

Of course, his predecessor did not help much. Barack Obama may have been America’s first black president, but he spectacularly failed to soothe America’s racial tensions as many had hoped. One consequence of that is that the United States is still today a country where David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, can whip up eager crowds. The governor of Virginia, Terry Mcauliffe, showed what the right response to this should be. “Go home,” he told the far-right marchers. “You are not wanted in this great commonwealth. Shame on you. You pretend that you are patriots but you are anything but.” Bravo.

There is no doubt that Mr Trump’s route to the White House was paved with promises made to a constituency that felt betrayed and abandoned by the establishment. But reaching out to the disenfranchised must not mean giving comfort to racists.