Torches, a Nazi chant, a murdered woman... and a President who needed three attempts to decide how he felt about it, each attempt more honest than the last.
On Friday night, several hundred white nationalists marched through the University of Virginia's campus carrying tiki torches and chanting "Jews will not replace us" and "blood and soil," which is a Nazi slogan, translated for convenience. This was the warm-up act for Saturday's Unite the Right rally, the largest open gathering of white supremacists in America in decades: Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and the freshly rebranded "alt-right," together at last, in matching polos.
On Saturday, one of the rally-goers, James Alex Fields Jr., drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters on Fourth Street. He injured dozens and killed Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal from Charlottesville. Two Virginia state troopers monitoring the day, Lieutenant H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke Bates, died when their helicopter crashed. That is the event. There is no version of it in dispute.
PHOTO: ANTHONY CRIDER, LICENSED CC BY 2.0
I. THREE DRAFTS OF ONE OPINION
What is in dispute, apparently, is how a President should feel about it. It took him three tries, and the drafts are worth laying side by side, because presidents do not usually show their work.
Saturday, from his golf club: he condemned "this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides." He repeated it, so nobody would think the phrase was an accident. A woman was dead, killed by a rally organized by white supremacists, and the presidential position was that blame is a buffet.
Monday, from a teleprompter: after two days of bipartisan revolt, he read the sentence his staff wrote: "Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists." For about twenty-four hours, the system appeared to work.
Tuesday, from the lobby of Trump Tower, unscripted and visibly relieved to be so: the real answer, the one this page exists to record.
"You also had some very fine people on both sides."
-- PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, TRUMP TOWER, AUGUST 15, 2017
SOURCE: THIS PAGE, NOTE 2.
In the same press conference he asked, of the statue defenders, "was George Washington a slave owner?", wondered whether Thomas Jefferson comes down next, and said the counter-protesters, the group Heather Heyer died in, included "troublemakers" who "came charging in without a permit." The Monday teleprompter statement, he complained later, had made him look weak. Tuesday was the correction.
PHOTO: ANTHONY CRIDER, LICENSED CC BY 2.0
II. ABOUT THOSE FINE PEOPLE
The defense of the Tuesday remarks, already circulating, is that he meant only the gentle statue enthusiasts who happened to attend, not the Nazis, whom he separately condemned. Fine. Let us take the defense completely seriously, because it is worse than the accusation.
The Friday march was announced by its organizers, promoted on white nationalist channels, and led by the people whose names are on the permit. The chant was "Jews will not replace us." There was no separate, unaffiliated torchlight procession of architecture buffs that got mixed in by accident. A person who marched Friday night marched in that. A person who attended Saturday attended a rally organized by Jason Kessler and headlined by Richard Spencer, facts available to anyone with a flyer. The "very fine people" of the President's imagination would have to be people who saw the torches, heard the chant, read the bill, and stayed. There is a word for those people, and it is not "fine."
David Duke, the former Klan leader, understood the Tuesday press conference immediately, and thanked the President by name for his "honesty and courage." When your remarks about a Nazi rally draw a thank-you note from the Klan, the review has written itself.
III. WHY THIS PAGE EXISTS
This site keeps records, and here is the record this week produced: the President of the United States was shown the largest white supremacist gathering in modern American memory, complete with a murder, and his considered, unscripted, thrice-drafted position was that the crowd was mixed. Not the crowd that died. The crowd that chanted.
The men with the torches heard him. They said so, in writing, the same day. Whatever else the next years bring, this week established the exchange rate: a torchlit Nazi chant, a dead woman, and the White House's final answer was "both sides." File it. We will be referring back.
SOURCES -- THIS PAGE
- The August 11 torch march, its chants ("Jews will not replace us," "blood and soil") and the August 12 rally: contemporaneous reporting throughout; the rally's organizers and billed speakers are named on its own promotional material.
- Full transcript of the August 15 Trump Tower press conference, NPR, including "You also had some very fine people on both sides," the Washington and Jefferson remarks, and "came charging in without a permit."
- The August 12 "on many sides. On many sides" statement and the August 14 scripted condemnation: White House transcripts and contemporaneous coverage.
- The death of Heather Heyer and the injuries on Fourth Street; the charging of James Alex Fields Jr.; the deaths of Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke Bates: Commonwealth of Virginia records and contemporaneous reporting.
- David Duke's public thanks to the President following the August 15 remarks: his own postings, August 15, 2017, quoted in contemporaneous coverage.
- Photographs: Anthony Crider, Charlottesville, August 12, 2017, licensed CC BY 2.0.
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