The dates of Aug. 11-12 marks the eighth anniversary of the neo-Nazi protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, billed as “Unite the Right.” After that occasion, the bigoted concepts and beliefs of that group of racists has now been built-in all through the federal authorities due to President Donald Trump.
The rally got here lower than a yr after Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. The occasion, the place some chanted “Jews will not replace us” was meant as an assertion of white supremacy, which had been handed a lifeline with Trump’s 2016 election win. The protest quickly descended into blood and demise after a neo-Nazi drove his automobile right into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others.
It was within the aftermath of that homicide that Trump infamously praised neo-Nazis as “very fine people” and spent the following 4 years on a rampage of racism and bigotry. Notably, former President Joe Biden has repeatedly cited the open show of racism and Trump’s blessing of the rally as a key issue that motivated him to run for president in 2020, finally defeating Trump.
For many of his time within the public eye, each as a actuality TV star after which as a politician, Trump has stoked the fires of racism and impressed acts of violence. Now again within the White Home after his 2024 election win, Trump has built-in the views of the hatemongers who marched eight years in the past all through his administration.
Elon Musk
World’s richest man Elon Musk launched the second Trump time period, celebrating his huge monetary funding within the Republican candidate and his get together, with a Nazi salute at an inauguration occasion. Musk, who has allowed social media platform X to grow to be a breeding floor for bigoted Nazi content material, led the Division of Authorities Effectivity at Trump’s behest.
DOGE additionally labored as a refuge for bigotry’s true believers, the place figures like staffer Marko Elez was employed regardless of his documented previous on-line of pushing racist concepts.
Stephen Miller, who works because the architect of Trump’s most venomous anti-immigrant coverage, has a documented historical past of selling white supremacist concepts and literature.
Paul Ingrassia
There are bigots and other people with shut affiliations to notable hate figures littered all through the Trump administration.
Paul Ingrassia, who the Anti-Defamation League slammed for praising Nazi extremists, is a White Home liaison. White Home Workplace of Administration and Finances communications director Rachel Cauley was on the board of the Patriot Freedom Mission, a nonprofit that advocated for the discharge of Jan. 6 rioter Timothy Hale-Cusanelli—who infamously posed as Hitler in a sequence of on-line photographs, to not point out spouted his rhetoric. Ed Martin, who works on the Division of Justice following an appointment by Trump, additionally voiced help for Hale-Cusanelli.
On coverage, Trump has created a bigot’s paradise. For the reason that first day his administration has been centered on attacking and erasing positive aspects made following the Civil Rights Motion and period. He has sought to reintroduce discrimination in federal contracting, pushed to purge civil rights and pro-diversity language, and has even overseen the removing of acknowledgements of civil rights advances.
On the similar time, Trump has pushed insurance policies like a ban on transgender army service, turning away Individuals who’ve volunteered to serve in positions the place they may very well be injured or killed in service of their nation.
Trump’s integration of the concepts the “Unite the Right” rallygoers are in favor of is so full that Nazis have gone to the media to make their appreciation recognized. Dalton Henry Stout of the group Aryan Freedom Community just lately informed Reuters Trump has “awakened a lot of people to the issues we’ve been raising for years.”
Stout additionally informed the outlet that Trump is “the best thing that’s happened to us.”
