Charlottesville Wasn't About Robert E. Lee

In response to Joe Biden's campaign launch video condemning him for describing those among the neo-Nazis who terrorized Charlottesville and the University of Virginia in August, 2017, as "very fine people," Der Trumpenführer is now saying he was referring to history buffs who honor Robert E. Lee.  As an op-ed at CNN notes, that excuse is bullshit. In a delicious coincidence, while citing other reasons rather Trump himself, the UVA national champion basketball team will NOT be visiting the White House.  Trump is clueless as to the very high level of anger (fury might be a better word) that still lingers in Charlottesville and among UVA alumni over the desecration of the university grounds  and the city itself by out-of-state white supremacists and neo-Nazi elements.  Here are excepts from the CNN piece:

After former Vice President Joe Biden used the violence in Charlottesville to frame his presidential campaign launch on Thursday, President Trump shot back, defending his controversial claim that there were "very fine people" on both sides of the white-supremacist rally that ended with the death of Heather Heyer and a helicopter crash that killed two police officers.

"I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee," Trump said in answer to a reporter's question on Friday. "People there were protesting the taking down of the monument to Robert E. Lee. Everybody knows that." Trump's decision to double-down on his "very fine people" comments, more than a year and a half after the deadly Unite the Right rally, was particularly shocking -- because of everything that has happened since. Investigations have made clear that the rallygoers engaged in coordinated acts of political violence, including the torchlight rally on August 11, 2017, in which they chanted "Jews will not replace us" before attacking anti-racist demonstrators on the grounds of the University of Virginia.

Trump's defense of his comments . . . also ignores the way the statue controversy in Charlottesville was chosen by alt-right leaders as a way to expand and gain legitimacy for their white supremacist movement. The violence in Charlottesville was not, at its heart, about Robert E. Lee or about history at all. The people who gathered in Charlottesville throughout the summer of 2017 did so in an explicit attempt to unite the alt-right with the broader American right around issues of "white rights" and racism.

These speeches, full-throated declarations of white supremacy, did not try to hide or temper their politics. "This is more than just confederate monuments," Enoch declared. "This is images of white people, images of white heroes, images of white warriors that are being torn down to attack and demoralize" the white race, to be replaced by a "mixed, muddy people" Spencer followed with a speech that argued the removal of the Lee statue was the first step toward white genocide.

If that daytime event was about white supremacy, the nighttime event was about white power. A hundred members of the alt-right returned to Lee Park with torches. They circled the statue of Lee and changed "Blood and soil" and "You will not replace us." Two weeks later, Kessler applied for a permit for the Unite the Right rally. The speakers for the planned rally included Spencer, Kessler, Enoch, Ku Klux Klan organizer David Duke and several other neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and white supremacists. That lineup, plus the May statue rally and torch-burning, put white-power rhetoric and violence at the heart of the planned rally in Charlottesville.

That message was underscored by the torchlight march the evening before the August 12 rally, which began as an act of political intimidation and ended as an act of political violence. Hundreds of white men (and a handful of white women) marched onto the University of Virginia's campus, shouting slogans such as "Jews will not replace us." When they arrived at their intended rallying point, the statue of Thomas Jefferson outside the university's famed Rotunda, they found a small group of anti-racist students and activists circling the statue, whom they began to beat as police looked on nearby (after several minutes, officers finally intervened).

That was the context of the conflagration in Charlottesville the next day that [Trump] the President chooses to ignore: The Unite the Right event was a neo-Nazi rally, and "very fine people" do not attend neo-Nazi rallies.

There has been more than enough time for reflection and apologies. [Trump] The President and his allies continue to provide cover for the racist violence in Charlottesville, and the violent ideology propagated there. There is no more need to debate whether support for racism is a feature of the Trump administration; the question is how much longer Americans will tolerate it.