Published: 30 November 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
DAN COLEMAN: A jury has found the organisers of the Unite the Right rally in 2017 guilty of fomenting violence, dealing a major setback to the US neo-Nazi movement
“MANY WHITE JEWS were raised to believe that America was a kind of promised land, where mass public demonstrations of hatred towards Jews was a thing of the past. Then came August 12, 2017, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.”
These are the words of Rabbi Tom Gutherz, spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel which stands in Charlottesville, mid-way between the statues of Confederate generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee that were removed by the city earlier this year.
August 12, 2017 was the day white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, tiki torches blazing, and chanting “Jews will not replace us”, the day a rally turned into a riot during which a car was driven into counter-protesters killing a young woman named Heather Heyer.
It was the day about which then-President Donald Trump infamously commented “there were fine people on both sides”.
This was the day described by Margaret Huang, CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), as “both the culmination of a hate-filled movement that had been building in our country and the violent beginning of a new chapter of extremism in this nation’s history. The organisers sought to normalise white nationalist ideals, [and] race-based conspiracies.”
It was a day that heralded a frightening increase of right-wing violence, including the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in 2018, and culminating in the US Capitol insurrection earlier this year.
Thus, Jews and people of good will around the world breathed a sigh of relief last week when a Virginia jury brought a $US25 million judgment against the organisers of Unite the Right, a verdict hailed as a major setback for America’s neo-Nazi white supremacist movement.
