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counter-protesters who they can blame as antagonists once violence erupts at their gatherings, rallies and events.

And, as if on cue, some white nationalists, emboldened and proclaiming victory after the “Unite the Right” rally in Virginia, said Monday that they are planning more demonstrations to promote their agenda.

The University of Florida said white provocateur Richard Spencer is seeking permission to speak there next month. And white nationalist Preston Wiginton had said he was planning a “White Lives Matter” rally at Texas A&M University in September, but the university later said it had been canceled.

Also, a neo-Confederate group has asked the state of Virginia for permission to rally at a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond on Sept. 16.

“We’re going to be more active than ever before,” Matthew Heimbach, a white-nationalist leader, said Monday.

Overlooking the violence, Heimbach, who said he was pepper-sprayed during the melee in Charlottesville, called the event Saturday

“an absolute stunning victory” for the far right because of the large number of supporters who descended on the city to decry plans to remove a statue of Lee. It has been called the largest gathering of white nationalists, white supremacists and neo-Nazi supporters in decades.

NBC News reported that Heimbach was at the initial court appearance Monday of the Ohio man, 20-yearold James Alex Fields Jr., of Maumee, who is charged with second-degree murder in the death on Saturday of Heather Heyer, 32, who was with a group of counterprotesters when Fields plowed his car into the crowd.

Heimbach insisted that Fields was “scared for his life.”

“The nationalist community defended ourselves against thugs,” Heimbach told NBC. “These radical leftists ... they are the one (sic) who came to kill us.”

Becker acknowledged that the weekend violence could escalate the whitesupremacy movement. But it also, he said, could empower those who counter hate.

“When these rallies happen in the future, more and more people might come out. There’s a martyr now,” he said of Heyer. “Someone did not stay silent and she paid a price. There is potential here

for more activity on both sides — it is just a matter of waiting to see what that is going to be.”

For it’s part, Ohio has plenty of organizations labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama-based center that tracks such activity. In its most recent count, the law center listed 35 such groups in Ohio, including several factions of the KKK and multiple neo-Nazi and skinhead organizations.

One of those is the Daily Stormer, the world’s mostvisited white-supremacist website. The law center lists it as headquartered in Worthington, because that’s where its founder, Andrew Anglin, is from. The website directs financial contributions to a Worthington post office address.

But Anglin took a blow — albeit a temporary one — after Saturday’s violence. The site had disparaged Heyer in a post and said, among other things, that “most people are glad she is dead ...”

GoDaddy, which had been the internet domain host for the Daily Stormer, said the website’s posts could have incited additional violence and, because of that, the posts violated its company’s service agreement. On Sunday, GoDaddy gave

Anglin 24 hours to move to another domain.

Monday morning, Anglin’s website had a posting that said it had been hacked by the international hacking group, Anonymous. That couldn’t be verified. Online commenters elsewhere speculated it was another tactic of Anglin’s, a theory that plays into Becker’s concept of blaming others to appear the victim. Daily Stormer was running on another domain host through Google by Monday evening, but Google had ordered the website to get off.

Becker said the proliferation and popularity of that website is an example of how the internet and its echo chamber can appear to normalize for some people what once were thought to be radical and hate-mongering views. And it has helped change the landscape into what was witnessed over the weekend in Virginia.

“You can have a tribe without having an individual organization. You can identify with an ideology, not a group,” Becker said. That, he said, probably makes the white-supremacy movement stronger.

Online activity is a way for proponents to find solidarity, and that translates to encouragement to not stay hidden but instead attend rallies like the one last weekend, he said.

Becker again emphasized, though, that time will tell whether that brazenness will last.

“People are identifying the people there (at the rally), asking that they be fired,” Becker said. “And there seems to be backlash from traditional allies — militia groups that have spoken out against the violence. Time will tell if that’s just playing to the media or if they mean it.”

At the University of Florida, where Spencer has asked to speak, President W. Kent Fuchs called the events in Virginia “deplorable” but indicated school officials might be unable to block his appearance.

“While this speaker’s views do not align with our values as an institution, we must follow the law, upholding the First Amendment not to discriminate based on content and provide access to a public space,” Fuchs said on the university’s Facebook page.

Auburn University spent almost $30,000 in legal fees in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Spencer from speaking on its campus in Alabama in April.