UVA President Teresa Sullivan says students should have alerted the university that white supremacists were going to march on Grounds.
UVA Students United
In a Facebook Live video posted to the UVA Students United Facebook page Sunday evening, a student who was present at the Rotunda on Friday, August 11, approaches President Sullivan to ask a few questions about administrative inaction the night of the white supremacists’ torchlight march.
“Where were you Friday night? And why were you not standing with your students?” the student asks.
Sullivan says that she was “across the street, trying to get police help here” (her residence, Carr’s Hill, is across the street from the Rotunda).
When the student asks where the administration was during the torchlight rally, Sullivan points out that Dean of Students Allen Groves was present and that most administration isn’t around on a Friday night when classes aren’t in session. “We didn’t know they were coming,” says Sullivan.
“I guess I’m just curious how a group of anonymous students knew they were coming,” the student says.
“Did you tell us? Did you tell us they were coming?” Sullivan replies. “No, you didn’t. Nobody elevated it to us. Don’t expect us to be reading the alt-right websites. We don’t do that. You know, you’ve got some responsibility here too. Tell us what you know.”
“So we should have brought this information to you?” the student asks.
“Anybody who knew could have told us,” Sullivan replies, ending the conversation.
On the evening of Friday, August 11, a group of about 20 students from colleges and universities across the commonwealth, all still on summer break, got together for dinner. After dinner, they’d planned to go to St. Paul’s Memorial Church on University Avenue, where hundreds of people, including clergy, had gathered to pray and collect their thoughts in advance of Saturday’s Unite the Right rally.
All that changed, though, when they heard from a friend, who found out via social media, that Unite the Right rally organizer, Charlottesville resident and former University of Virginia student Jason Kessler intended to lead a torchlight march from Nameless Field through Grounds to the Rotunda.
Once these students learned about the march, they knew they had to be there. “We’ve admired and looked up to people who have stood up to hate in history, and it was just not a question—we had to do the same,” says M., a UVA student and Charlottesville native who agreed to speak with C-VILLE on the condition of anonymity.
“We didn’t exactly put out a call to arms,” M. says, “but I don’t think it crossed our minds to rally more people. I think we expected more people just to show up on their own,” especially because the torchlight march was public knowledge at that point.
At around 9:30pm, the students arrived at the Rotunda steps facing University Avenue. “It was eerily quiet,” M. says. She and her fellow students, plus a few antifa folks who had heard about the march as well, were the only people she saw on the plaza. Soon, they heard a roar from down the street that “sounded like hundreds of men,” M. recalls. A signal the march had begun. “I knew it was coming, but it was still terrifying,” she says.
“The image of flames on the Lawn is very triggering to all of us. …And to re-walk the routes felt, just, very off. Very off,” says M. Plenty of students and community members felt a sense of community at the vigil, and M. is glad for that, “but it did sting to hear that they were celebrating UVA and this community when we felt so abandoned Friday.”
The 20 or so students linked arms around the base of the statue—they only just made it around—and called for some onlookers to join them. A few students clutched a bed-sheet banner that read, “VA Students Act Against White Supremacy.” Antifa on the scene handed out baseball caps to the students, to help protect their identities and avoid future harassment from the alt-right.
“It stings to see people criticizing [the antifa] for violence, because they were really the only people who protected us” that night, says M., who was one of the banner holders.
M. didn’t look over the banner in front of her as the tiki-torch carrying white supremacists marched down the Rotunda steps, screaming “white lives matter!” as they flooded the plaza and surrounded the students. “The moment my heart dropped was when I could no longer hear the people next to me, or myself,” says M. “They were so loud.”
At one point, Curry School professor Walt Heinecke and Dean of Students Allen Groves ran into the crowd and offered to help the students, but they chose to stand their ground for a bit longer. After a few minutes, a fight broke out on one side of the statue. “I thought it was going to be a stampede because there were so many people,” says M., but someone in the circle yelled, “Don’t run!”
The students stood at the base of the statue, arms linked, for a few more minutes until dispersing for safety reasons—pepper spray and some other sort of chemical had been dispersed; there was fire; tiki torches were used as weapons. The students found their designated buddies and pushed their way out of the crowd around the statue, M. says. Some students flushed their pepper spray-swollen eyes with water; others needed help rinsing chemicals from their backs. M. estimates the entire thing happened over the course of 20 minutes.
All the while, the people in St. Paul’s across the street were kept in the church on lockdown, and other students, unaware of what was happening just steps away, were at bars on the Corner like it was any other Friday night in Charlottesville.
By about 10:30pm, police had shown up, declared an unlawful assembly and disbanded the crowd; folks were allowed out of St. Paul’s by about 11pm. It was a lot to process, but “none of us let it sink in,” M. says. “We just had to keep the momentum going” for the next day.
Saturday morning, this same group of students was back at it, first walking with the clergy from the Jefferson School to Emancipation Park, then participating in a musical protest that set out at about 10:45am from The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative to Emancipation Park, where the Unite the Right rally was set to take place at noon. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency at 11:28am; police declared an unlawful assembly by 11:37am.
For M., this felt very personal. “I’ve walked these streets since I could walk, and to see my hometown transform into this war was…I couldn’t process it at the time,” she says, her eyes welling up. She focused on staying with her friends during the Unite the Right rally and avoiding weapons and water bottles full of urine being tossed in and out of the park. Later in the day, she and other students were marching on Fourth Street SE when the car attack by a white nationalist that killed Heather Heyer happened. Some students were injured when the car plowed into the group of peaceful protesters.
On Sunday, M. went to her part-time service industry job.
The following Wednesday, August 16, many UVA students, faculty, staff, alumni and Charlottesville residents gathered for a student-organized candlelight vigil to retrace the route of Friday’s torchlight rally. M. and other students who were present at the Rotunda Friday night stayed home.
“The image of flames on the Lawn is very triggering to all of us. …And to re-walk the routes felt, just, very off. Very off,” says M. Plenty of students and community members felt a sense of community at the vigil, and M. is glad for that, “but it did sting to hear that they were celebrating UVA and this community when we felt so abandoned Friday,” she says.
M. doesn’t feel as deserted by her peers as she does UVA’s administration. “I don’t see a responsibility of my peers, a duty for them, necessarily. I hope that what they see would enrage them enough to speak out. …I’m not saying I’ve given up on them. But I see the administration as having an actual responsibility to protect us.
“One administrator and one professor showed up [on Friday],” M. says, noting that University of Virginia library employee Tyler Magill, who later suffered a stroke from injuries sustained at the Rotunda that night, was there as well. “That’s it. It shouldn’t have been that way,” she says.
Curry School professor and community activist Walt Heinecke, who helped protect his students in front of the Jefferson statue Friday, August 11, is a former member of the Dialogue on Race Steering Committee.
John
Robinson
Walt Heinecke had planned to hold nonviolent direct action training the night before the August 12 Unite the Right rally. Instead, he ended up doing nonviolent intervention and defending UVA students from torch-carrying white nationalists in front of the Rotunda Friday night, running two counterprotests at McGuffey and Justice parks on Saturday, and contradicting in the Washington Post President Donald Trump’s assertions that those opposed to Nazis didn’t have a permit, which they did, but in any case, didn’t need.
The Curry School professor and community activist was scheduled to do the training at 9:30pm August 11 at St. Paul’s Memorial Church. He’d parked at the architecture school a couple of blocks away, and on his way to St. Paul’s, ran into some legal observers who had seen Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler and headlining alt-righter Richard Spencer go by—with unlit tiki torches.
The church was on lockdown because of reports of white supremacists in the area, says Heinecke. “Someone screamed, ‘Your students are surrounded by Nazis in front of the Rotunda!’” Heinecke recounts by phone from Northern California, where he was regrouping under the redwoods.
“I was shocked by the number of neo-Nazis,” he says. “And I couldn’t believe the police presence—I couldn’t see any.”
Heinecke says he asked Dean of Students Allen Groves where the University Police were, and Groves said he didn’t know, that maybe they were patrolling with Charlottesville police.
“The violence and the temperature kept going up,” says Heinecke. “Some of my students were there.”
They had taken the nonviolent training and stood with their backs to the Thomas Jefferson statue and their arms locked together, which meant they couldn’t throw punches and couldn’t reach for pepper spray, he explains.
He started going around the circle of what he estimates were 15 to 20 students, asking them if they wanted to leave. “They were following the rules [of nonviolent direct action].” He adds, “They were scared.”
The scene was “horrendous,” he says. “I saw a neo-Nazi throw a torch at Allen and then they started macing. I got hit with that.”
He was aware Tyler Magill, who served the next day as one of Heinecke’s marshals to keep order at Justice Park, was there. “I didn’t see him, but understand he got hit in the throat.” Magill, who also chased Kessler August 13 when he tried to have a press conference in front of City Hall, had a stroke August 15.
Heinecke says he and Groves dragged students out of the fray and over to the side. “At 10:17, I called 911.”
After his call and many of the “fascists” had dispersed, says Heinecke, “police came and threatened to arrest us all—Dean Groves and the students and me.”
University Police arrested Ian Hoffmann, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, at the Rotunda, and he was charged with assault.
Heinecke says he’s disappointed by the lack of police presence for something that was “common knowledge,” and he doesn’t understand why the UVA community wasn’t alerted.
“Last week we got a text there was a bear cub wandering around,” he says. “Why not text that there are neo-Nazis wandering around? What about the people of color on staff who were working? What about the faculty of color working in their offices getting ready for students?” [See UVA President Teresa Sullivan’s response to a student here.]
Heinecke is on the UVA Faculty Senate, and he says he’s called for an investigation into why there was no police response sooner and why there wasn’t an alert to what he calls a “credible threat.”
That was the first day of the Unite the Right infestation.
As hellish as August 12 was for much of Charlottesville, Heinecke says the counterdemonstrations in McGuffey and Justice parks “were very successful. There was no violence in either of our parks.” His team provided food and water to counterprotesters, as well as first aid for tear gassing and contusions, including to one white nationalist “who was pretty beat up,” says Heinecke.
“We provided a respite for counterdemonstrators before they went out to defend their community,” says Heinecke.
Which brings him to his feud with President Trump, who blamed anti-fascists for the violence against the peaceful, permitted white supremacists.
“Those were people from our community who went out,” says Heinecke. “Without those people the damages would have been so much worse.”
And Heinecke does credit a heavily armed out-of-town militia: the John Brown Brigade, which stood on a corner outside Justice Park all day. “As the level of violence by Nazis and white supremacists grew, I was comforted by their presence,” he says.
Heinecke says his mission was accomplished, but as the permit holder in the parks, “It was stressful having all those people under my care.” And he says he was disappointed by police “allowing beatings to go on around town without intervention.”
But he was also heartened throughout the day when the clergy, students from around the commonwealth and the Democratic Socialists of America marched in.
Says Heinecke, “There were really a lot of positive community endeavors in the midst of all that violence.”
Bill Burke with his wife, Annie, and daughter, Chelsea.
Submitted photo
When Ohio resident Bill Burke came to protest Charlottesville’s white nationalist Unite the Right rally, he was expecting a peaceful assembly. Instead, he got plowed into by a 20-year-old driving a Dodge Challenger.
“I can remember the feeling of people hitting up against me,” he says in an email. “I’m not sure if the car hit me too or not, it’s hard to say. Then I remember a woman saying I had to hold my head together.”
Burke says the person assisting him grabbed his arm and pushed his hand against his head. He could feel blood pouring from his open wounds.
“People kept telling me to stay awake and look at them, and I just wanted to close my eyes and rest,” he says. He could feel a person lying next to him. He realized, at some point, that medics were doing CPR on her.
“I could feel every time they did a chest compression because we were so close,” Burke says. “I used to be an EMT and I’ve seen some bad stuff, but not being able to do anything for her was the most helpless feeling I’ve ever had.”
He didn’t realize until later that the woman lying next to him was Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman who was killed during the attack.
Burke is one of the 19 victims injured in what many have called an act of domestic terrorism. He suffered two deep head lacerations that required about a dozen staples and many stitches. He has many abrasions and limited mobility because he’s still experiencing a lot pain on his left side. He also has concussion symptoms and uses a cane when walking more than a few feet.
Regardless, Burke says, “I am doing really well.”
Earlier this summer, Burke, who works for the Athens County Foster Parent Association, attended an International Socialist Organization conference in Chicago, where he says a Charlottesville woman was pleading for solidarity and support, “and was scared for the lives of her family and friends and herself.” This is when he felt called to protest the rally. He came alone from Hockingport, Ohio.
He could see the Western heritage defenders who descended on Charlottesville riding around the city in trucks, holding guns, throwing bottles and yelling, he says.
“We were chanting loudly, but I didn’t see any fighting or throwing stuff,” he says about his own group. “We were just feeling the excitement of being together and supporting each other. Then I remember hearing some screaming, and I heard a car engine revving up, like someone was punching the accelerator.”
That person also came from Ohio. Maumee resident James Alex Fields Jr., faces charges of second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and failing to stop.
Burke, now home in Hockingport, turned 40 August 13 while in the hospital.
When asked if he regrets his trip to Charlottesville, Burke says, “No, not in the least bit. I think it’s important to speak out against hate.” And he has a message for Fields, the driver of the Challenger who injured him. “I feel sad that you have so much hate at such a young age. Our society has failed you.”
Anarchy ruled at the first City Council meeting after the August 12 alt-right rally.
Eze Amos
Barely 30 minutes into its August 21 meeting, City Council was in chaos. Three demonstrators were reportedly arrested, city officials left the chamber and the meeting’s video and audio feeds were cut off as protesters stood on the dais holding a banner that read, “Blood on your hands.”
The rage, frustration and trauma from the August 11-12 events that brought white supremacists and neo-Nazis to town were palpable among the more than 50 people who spoke when councilors came back into council chamber, and they blamed City Council for allowing it to happen.
Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy took control of the meeting, jettisoned the agenda and turned it into a public comment with speakers allowed to talk for a minute—or as long as they wished—for nearly four hours.
Mayor Mike Signer took the brunt of citizens’ rage. “Mr. Signer, it seems to me we should change your name to Dr. Frankenstein, because you’ve created a monster and the villagers are storming,” said council regular John Heyden.
Mayor Mike Signer struggled—in vain—to bring the meeting to order. Photo Eze Amos
At about that point, Signer said the meeting was canceled and left the chamber, but he was not followed by his fellow councilors. “Signer has shown his true colors,” said Don Gathers, who was chair of the city’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces.
Upon his return about 10minutes later, Signer was derided, particularly by independent council candidate Nikuyah Walker, who demanded that he leave. “You just showed us you’re not a leader.”
“Why did you think you could walk in here with business as usual?”—independent City Council candidate grills officials. Photo Eze Amos
Again and again, speakers said the city had been warned those coming to Unite the Right rally intended violence.
“I told you so,” said one, a woman who described herself as a child of the ’60s. “I’ve seen this movie before,” she said.
“You want to call yourself the capital of the resistance,” said Emily Gorcenski, who videoed white nationalists marching through UVA Grounds August 11. She said the real resistance was from the medics who were there, and added, “Charlottesville is the capital of the antifa.”
Don Gathers said he was “filled with righteous indignation” and “morally outraged.” Phote Eze Amos
And when citizens blamed council for allowing the alt-right rally, Signer pointed out that a federal judge ruled against the city. “We really tried hard to get it out of downtown,” he said.
For hours, there was no placating citizens, who were ready for council to ignore state and federal law and remove the statues that night.
More than 50 citizens lined up to tell City Council how they felt, including former vice-mayor Kevin Lynch (in plaid shorts). Photo Eze Amos
“Will you charge us if we take them down tonight?” asked Jonny Nuckols.
It was around 11:30pm before City Manager Maurice Jones could begin to respond to questions about the event that left Heather Heyer dead and at least 30 injured when a neo-Nazi-driven Dodge Challenger plowed into a crowd on Fourth Street.
The number of those hurt was challenged by a woman whose daughter was injured in the deliberate crash and had two broken legs. The daughter was taken to Sentara Martha Jefferson, which had at least another dozen victims beyond the 19 reported taken to UVA, said the woman.
Jones explained that in Virginia, state law prohibits the removal of war memorials, unlike places such as Maryland and Texas that have removed Confederate monuments in the past week.
He also pointed to a federal judge who did not allow the city to move the rally to McIntire Park and issued his ruling about the same time polo-shirted neo-Nazis were swarming the Lawn. When asked why the city didn’t shut down the event after the tiki-torch march Friday night and the attacks on protesters at the Thomas Jefferson statue, Jones said, “We’d already lost in court.”
Councilors listed actions they wanted to take to prevent such an invasion of hate happening again.
Earlier that day, Councilor Kathy Galvin said at a press conference that she would introduce a resolution to remove the statue of Stonewall Jackson at Justice Park, as well as the statue of Robert E. Lee that she and Signer voted against removing in February. Galvin said the events of August 12 had shown her that keeping the statues in place was “untenable in the long run,” but it would be around 12:30am before she could introduce her resolution.
On August 18, Signer said he was changing his vote and he called upon the General Assembly to hold a special session and allow localities to determine the fates of their Confederate monuments.
At the council meeting, Signer said it was time for the Constitution to change to address “intentional mayhem” that is not covered in the First Amendment, much as courts have ruled it’s not okay to shout “fire” in crowded venues.
Among other questions from citizens, Jones denied that police had been told to not intervene. “There was no stand-down order from anyone in city government. None,” he said.
It was after 11:30pm before City Manager Maurice Jones could start responding to questions raised about the alt-right weekend. Photo Eze Amos
To concerns about the weapons-carrying militias, Jones reminded everyone that Virginia is an open-carry state, but admitted, “It caused great confusion having those gunmen in our parks.” Councilors want legislators to give them leeway to regulate that, as well.
The protection of Congregation Beth Israel on Jefferson Street was another concern, and Jones explained that there were almost 50 officers in the block and a half around the synagogue, including snipers on the roof of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society. “I completely understand people feeling unsafe,” he said. “We had people keeping an eye on it.”
Perhaps one of the biggest questions is why Fourth Street was open in the first place. One woman said it was barricaded when she went by it around 6am August 12, and Jones said that is being investigated.
The other was why UVA police were not visible as torch-carriers terrorized Grounds. A question for the university, responded Jones.
Close to 1am, Councilor Kristin Szakos made a resolution that passed 5-0: to drape the statues of Lee and Jackson in black cloth for a city in mourning.
The meeting is officially out of control—and it had barely gotten started. Photo Eze Amos
At the August 12 Unite the Right rally, they faced the opposite complaint: That they stood and watched assaults take place.
Civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel was on Market Street after the rally was declared an unlawful assembly, and hesays there were no police in sight.
“When fistfights broke out, state police did nothing,” he says. “I was a little surprised they made a decision to let all hell break loose.”
Throughout the weekend, people noted a number of occasions when the police were absent: the altercation in front of the Rotunda following the tiki-torch procession through UVA on Friday night. The assaults that took place on Market Street Saturday morning before Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency. And the brutal attack of Dre Harris by white nationalists in the Market Street Parking Garage beside the Charlottesville police station.
At an August 14 press conference, Police Chief Al Thomas disputed assertions that officers were ordered to not intervene. “Throughout the entire weekend, the Virginia State Police and Charlottesville police intervened to break up fights and altercations between those at the rally site, and that began Friday night,” said Thomas.
In many of the conflicts, someone was attacked and the attacker disappeared into the crowd, says Thomas. On Saturday alone, police received 250 calls for service at the rally, and state police treated 36 injured people.
And he says the department is still getting calls about assaults and civil rights violations that occurred over the weekend. The city has established a tipline and people can report incidents by emailing cvillerally@charlottesville.org or calling 970-3280.
City police and City Manager Maurice Jones said August 7 that they could not ensure the safety of Emancipation Park and used that as the basis for issuing rally organizer Jason Kessler a permit for McIntire Park, a change that was blocked in federal court the evening before the rally.
“We had a very large footprint to cover,” said Thomas, especially after the rally was canceled and opposing factions dispersed throughout the city.
At press briefings before August 12, Thomas said he’d learned a number of lessons from the KKK rally, and that the Unite the Right protest was an entirely different beast.
He also said there would be close to 1,000 law enforcement and emergency responders on hand.
Perhaps that’s why many wonder why this event was so much more violent than the KKK rally, with so many fewer arrests—six—compared with the 23 people charged July 8.
“Police obviously didn’t do their job,” says John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, which joined the ACLU of Virginia in representing Kessler in his suit against the city for its change of venue. “They didn’t separate the sides.”
Thomas says there was a plan to keep the factions separate by having the alt-rights enter through the back of Emancipation Park. “They did not follow that,” he says.
Alt-right attendees like Richard Spencer complained of having to run a “gauntlet” of counterprotesters, and Kessler said police did not do their job in protecting the people at his rally—at least before he was drowned out and chased by angry citizens at a press conference Sunday, when he had to run to the police for protection.
Virginia State Police spokesperson Corinne Geller told the New York Times, “It may have looked like a lot of our folks were standing around” because of the sheer number of officers on the scene, but “there were other troopers and law enforcement officers who were responding to incidents as they arose.”
Activist Emily Gorcenski livestreamed the tiki-torch procession through UVA Grounds Friday night, and was perplexed by the paucity of police at the event that ended with a brawl when white nationalists, vastly outnumbering a small number of protesters, surrounded them at the Thomas Jefferson statue in front to the Rotunda on University Avenue.
“The media showed up,” says Gorcenski. “If journalists knew and the event was publicized on Twitter, the police should have shown up.”
She says she did see police after she washed the pepper spray out of her eyes, and UVA says one officer was among those injured. University Police Chief Michael Gibson did not return a call from C-VILLE.
Gorcenski was not in the immediate rally area August 12, but says she saw from a distance “police using tactics for crowd dispersal with slow marches down the street that were very deliberate” efforts to calmly control the crowd.
“I thought police had significantly improved their tactics since July 8, when they did their job poorly,” says Gorcenski, referring to the “unnecessary deployment of chemical agents.”
While tear gas was in the air August 12, Charlottesville police say it did not come from them.
Former New York cop and prosecutor Eugene O’Donnell, now a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice,says, “I think it’s unfair to do a wholesale condemnation of police. It’s a fallacy that by police acting emphatically, that automatically makes things better.”
There’s no “magic book” that tells police what to do, and “police wrestle with this all the time,” he says. Bigger cities are better equipped to handle situations such as the one Charlottesville faced because they do it all the time and “the more you do it, the better you get,” says O’Donnell.
And while the vast majority of protests are peaceful, he says Charlottesville was hit with a “double whammy” because it’s a department that doesn’t handle a lot of violent demonstrations and “the people who came were intent on causing trouble.”
Says O’Donnell, “Police really do feel any action you take, you’re subjected to much less criticism for not acting than acting.”
Arrested August 12
Troy Dunigan, 21, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, for disorderly conduct for throwing something into the crowd.
Jacob Smith Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail
Jacob L. Smith, 21, of Louisa, Virginia, for misdemeanor assault and battery for allegedly punching a female reporter from The Hill in the face.
James M. O’Brien, 44, of Gainesville, Florida, for carrying a concealed handgun.
David Parrott, 35, of Paoli, Indiana, for failure to disperse in a riot.
Steven Balcaitis Charlottesville Police Department
Steven Balcaitis, 36, of York, South Carolina, for assault and battery for allegedly choking a woman in McIntire Park.
James Alex Fields, CPD
James Alex Fields, 20, of Maumee, Ohio, for second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and hit and run.
First the Loyal White Knights of the KKK July 8 and now the Unite the Right rally August 12. Charlottesville has become quite the magnet for white nationalists since City Council voted in April to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee and rename two Confederate general-monikered parks. Oh, and the mayor declared the city the capital of the resistance.
But how does the alt-right differ from the KKK?
We went to the Daily Stormer, the neo-Nazi website where Andrew Anglin published a handy guide to the alt-right and the new white nationalists.
The core concept is that “whites are undergoing an extermination, via mass immigration into white countries which was enabled by a corrosive liberal ideology of white self-hatred, and that the Jews are at the center of this agenda,” writes Anglin.
So, like the Klan, the alt-white nationalists are still racist, dreaming of deporting all people of color, still anti-Semitic and anti-nonwhite immigrant, still homophobic and still loathe feminists and liberals. But this new breed is young and spends a lot of time hanging out online.
Trolling is a popular activity, as are making memes and doing things for the lulz, because there’s “a spirit of fun,” according to Anglin.
“The mob is the movement,” he writes. This hive mentality is buzzing in dark corners of the internet like Reddit and 4chan, where “the rehabilitation of Adolf Hitler and the [National Socialist German Workers’ Party] largely took place,” according to Anglin.
Here’s who’s on the bill to speak at homegrown whites-righter Jason Kessler’s August 12 march on Charlottesville (which the city announced Monday it’s moving to McIntire Park), where he gives himself third billing in the all-star, alt-right lineup. By Lisa Provence and Samantha Baars
Wikimedia Commons
Richard Spencer
Claim to fame: President of the National Policy Institute and Washington Summit Publishers, who coined the term “alt-right” and calls for a “peaceful ethnic cleansing”
Hates most: Any color except white
Major press moments: Spencer was punched in the face in the middle of an on-camera interview during the Women’s March and also had his Alexandria, Virginia, gym membership terminated for being the cause of a scene in which a woman called him a Nazi.
Local ties: The 2001 UVA grad inspired fellow alums to form Hoos Against Richard Spencer to raise money for refugee resettlement org International Rescue Committee.
Claim to fame: Founder of the alt-right media hub The Right Stuff and podcast “The Daily Shoah,” and one of the first to use the term “cuckservative”
Major press moments: He was doxxed by leftists who revealed his marriage to a Jewish woman in January. Richard Spencer and former KKK leader David Duke stood by him as he suffered major backlash from his party and “Daily Shoah” co-host “Bulbasaur,” who allegedly tweeted that Peinovich belonged in a gas chamber before deleting his account. It appears from online reports that Peinovich and his wife have cut ties.
Biggest threat to white America: Immigration
Banned from: Australia, where politicians have argued that he should not be allowed in their country.
Reason for attending Unite the Right: “Why not?”
Photo by Eze Amos
Jason Kessler
Claim to fame: Exposed African-American Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy’s years-old racist and misogynistic tweets and attempted to remove him from office, which launched Kessler into alt-white firmament.
Organization: Unity and Security in America
Rap sheet: Convicted of assault for slugging Jay Taylor in January on the Downtown Mall while collecting remove-Bellamy-from-office-petition signatures and is on probation; filed a counterclaim against Taylor that the prosecutor said video evidence did not support; and is currently facing disorderly conduct charges from the counterprotest to the May 13 tiki-torch rally with Spencer.
Best video moment: Kessler does a cereal beat-in, part of the initiation for the alt-lite Proud Boys (who insist they’re not white supremacists) in which he affirms he’s a “proud western chauvinist” and is then pummeled until he can list five breakfast cereals.
Best press moment: Kessler calls himself a journalist and covers the Spencer-led rally for the Daily Caller without informing the website he was also a speaker at the pre-torch festivities.
Quote: “Lincoln was a traitor. The entire country would be better off if the South had won the Civil War,” says Kessler at the June 25 alt-right rally in Washington, D.C.
Worst fear: White genocide
UVA grad: Oh yeah
Courtesy Paul Gordon / Zumawire
Baked Alaska
Real name: Tim “Treadstone” Gionet
Claim to fame: Former BuzzFeed personality and Black Lives Matter champion turned alt-right internet troll
Hates most: Political correctness
Banned from: GoFundMe for fundraising his trip to Charlottesville for Unite the Right
Major press moments: An alleged disinvitation to the alt-right’s DeploraBall to celebrate the president’s inauguration, for—believe it or not—bringing too much bad PR to the movement’s alt-lite sector, which disapproved of Gionet’s Nazi salutes and anti-Semitic blasts on Twitter, according to Mashable. Though he missed the ball, he eventually got back in the party’s good graces by deleting his offensive tweets and saying he misspoke.
Courtesy Southern Poverty Law Center.
Augustus Invictus
Birth name: Austin Gillespie (legally changed to Augustus Invictus)
Claim to fame: Publisher of The Revolutionary Conservative, Republican politician and former candidate for the Libertarian nomination for the Florida Senate in 2016, member of the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights, a “military wing” of the Proud Boys and the sergeant at arms for white supremacist group the Florida American Guard
Major press moment: Adrian Wyllie, former chair of the Libertarian Party of Florida, resigned from his position in response to Invictus’ campaign, calling him a “violent fascist and neo-Nazi,” and a champion of eugenics who “sadistically dismember[ed] a goat in a ritualistic sacrifice,” according to Politico. Invictus said he did sacrifice the animal and drink its blood during a pagan ritual in 2013, but he denies supporting eugenics.
Quoted: From a letter he wrote in 2013 cited on multiple alt-right websites: “I have prophesied for years that I was born for a Great War; that if I did not witness the coming of the Second American Civil War I would begin it myself. Mark well: That day is fast coming upon you. On the New Moon of May, I shall disappear into the Wilderness. I will return bearing Revolution, or I will not return at all.”
Rally tips for alt-righters (from the alt-right)
While Charlottesvillians are fretting about the upcoming Unite the Right rally, those coming are also taking precautions in anticipation of the “huge number of antifa that want to cause trouble, and the general cuckery of the local government,” Weev, the pseudonym for Andrew Auernheimer, writes on the Daily Stormer. He offers some steps to help the alt-whites stay safe.
• Don’t bring your usual phone because it might be stolen by antifa, or law enforcement might find incriminating data on it.
• Bring burner phones for “you and your boys.”
• Use perfect forward secrecy cryptography for person-to-person communications that can be set to erase, handy if you get subpoenaed.
• [D]on’t make racially charged statements on your event accounts. Save the small talk and hate speech for the bar.
• Disable fingerprint unlock because your finger could be held against your phone against your will or fake fingerprints could be made from booking ink.
• Avoid looking paramilitary and go for a clean-cut, polo-shirt Chad look.
• Don’t pack heat because serious charges could ensue.
• Don’t walk alone, especially as the event ends.
• Don’t talk to police.
• Have an exit strategy if everything goes to hell.
Courtesy Southern Poverty Law Center.
Christopher Cantwell
Claim to fame: Host of Radical Agenda, a right-wing radio show with episodes carrying titles such as “Defending Whiteness,” “School Sucks,” “Hating Cops Is Immature” and “Shut Up, Cancer Boy,” the latter a reference to Senator John McCain
History of: Promoting anti-police and anarchist rhetoric, according to the Anti-Defamation League, but recently moved toward the extreme right. He traded in libertarianism for the alt-right because the latter “has better memes.”
Fans say: He refuses to go anywhere he can’t carry a gun.
He says: He will be armed at Unite the Right, as will many of the event’s attendees, because,“communists have a really nasty habit of trying to make things violent and we should try really hard to avoid that because that would result in dead people,” he tells C-VILLE.
Hates most: The left “with every ounce of my being.” And members of the free press, whom he calls “lying pieces of filth” in his episode titled “Promoting Violence.”
Banned from: Streaming on YouTube
Claims rally misconceptions: “The point of it is not hate and the fact that everybody just runs to that understandably makes us angry and so we end up giving them the ammunition to call it that. …If we are going to save our goddamn country, we are going to have to work together to defeat the left and if you will not do that, then we are going to have a really serious problem.”
Courtesy Southern Poverty Law Center.
Matthew Heimbach
Claim to fame: A co-founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party, Holocaust denier and often considered to be the face of a new generation of white nationalists
Also known for: Co-chairing the Nationalist Front—an umbrella organization of about 20 white supremacist groups, including skinhead, KKK and neo-Nazi groups—alongside National Socialist Movement leader Jeff Schoep, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Hates most: Jews
Rap sheet: Sentenced to 90 days in jail in July for a disorderly conduct charge he got for allegedly screaming and yelling at Kashiya Nwanguma and repeatedly pushing her at a Trump rally in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2016. His sentence was suspended.
Quote: “We are not separate peoples fighting alone. We are all comrades in the struggle against International Jewry and the Zionist State,” from a Traditionalist Youth Network gathering in August 2014, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Signature move: The Heimbach maneuver. We’re not exactly sure what that is, but Backsass! blogger Connie Chastain Ward was pretty fired up about it.
Courtesy Southern Poverty Law Center.
Johnny Monoxide
Real name: Johnny Ramondetta
Claim to fame: Heads podcasts “Paranormies Present” and “The Current Year Tonight,” which are promoted on The Right Stuff, the media hub of fellow alt-righter and Unite the Right speaker Mike Enoch
Day job: Electrician
Hails from: Berkeley, California
Courtesy Southern Poverty Law Center.
Pax Dickinson
Claim to fame: Fired from his job as chief technology officer at Business Insider for offensive tweets in 2013. Earlier this year, he split with his WeSearchr partner and internet troll Chuck C. Johnson
Day job: Runs Counter.Fund, a crowdfunding site for the alt-right and a parallel economy
Don’t tell Matt Heimbach: Counter.Fund employs a Jew, according to Inc. magazine.
Soul mate org: Hezbollah, which he extols in Inc.
Symbol: Red hand
Precautions: While Dickinson is prepared to speak before the thousands anticipated at the Unite the Right rally, he won’t speak to a reporter on the phone because “it’s just not safe,” he writes in an email.
Banned from: Twitter
Courtesy Southern Poverty Law Center.
Dr. Michael Hill
Claim to fame: Heads the League of the South (a neo-Confederate group), which critics have dubbed LOSers.
Irony: Taught history for 18 years at historically black Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Bigger than the “black problem in the South,” according to Hill: The “Jewry” problem
Protégé: Matt Heimbach, whom he expelled from LOS for performing a Nazi salute at neo-Nazi and KKK events but welcomed back into the fold less than a year later, according to Southern Poverty Law Center. Then Heimbach left to start the Traditionalist Worker Party.
Signature meme: The triple-parenthesis echo to denote (((they))) are Jews.
Unite the Right accessory: White shields with the League of the South flag
Other attendees
National Socialist Movement Commander: Jeff Schoep
Claim to fame: Self-proclaimed premier white civil rights organization
Founded in: 1974
Seeking: Non-Semitic heterosexuals of European descent
Another word for National Socialism: Nazism
Inspiration: Adolf Hitler
Symbol: Swastika
Holocaust denier? Definitely
Kyle Chapman (Aka Based Stickman, the Alt-Knight)
Claim to fame: Busting heads at the Berkeley riot in March
Rap sheet: Suspicion of felony assault with a deadly weapon, carrying a concealed dirk or dagger, assault with a taser, assault with pepper spray March 4; 1993 felony robbery conviction in Texas; 2001 grand theft conviction for ripping off Macy’s in San Diego; 2009 conviction for felon in possession of a firearm.
Will he show? Kessler said yes a couple of months ago, but he refused to confirm attendees last week.
Merch: The Official Battle for Berkeley hoodie for $39.99
Vanguard America
Motto: “Blood and soil”
Easily confused with: American Vanguard and the National Vanguard, the latter of which was once based in Charlottesville before child porn possession charges shut down its founder. According to Heimbach, Vanguard America will be joining its white buds at the rally.
Membership requirements: Must be at least 80 percent white or of European heritage, and if you’re gay, transsexual or an adulterer, forget about getting an invitation to join.
Identity Evropa: “American-based identitarianorganization dedicated to promoting the interests of people of European heritage,” according to its Facebook page
Motto: “Only we can be us”
Symbol: The dragon eye, apparently a hot commodity, because stickers depicting it are sold out on the group’s website.
Who won’t be coming
You won’t find Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys who claims to be inclusive to all—“as long as you accept the Western world as the best”—kicking around Charlottesville on August 12, and neither will you find other members of the alt-lite, a group that distances itself from its hardcore counterpart. Members of the Warlocks Motorcycle Club, the historically violent biker gang that stood behind Jason Kessler in leather vests and doo rags at his most recent press conference, won’t be showing their faces, either, after backlash from the club’s leader. And South Carolina members of the Patriot movement, who originally scheduled a companion rally in Darden Towe Park for the same day, pulled their support and canceled the event once organizer Chevy Love realized the alt-right supports racism.
