August 12, 2017: The Charlottesville Pogrom

August 12, 2017: The "Unite the Right Rally" was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. It turns into a riot and a pogrom.

There had been a right-wing rally on May 13, led by Richard Spencer, Chairman of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank. They were protesting the removal of Charlottesville's statue of Robert E. Lee, the leading Confederate General of the American Civil War. There had been over 100 protestors, chanting, "Jews will not replace us!" and, "Russia is our friend!"

For 50 years, American conservatives had opposed Russia, as it was the centerpiece of the Soviet Union, a Communist, therefore left-wing, state. Under President Boris Yeltsin, the Russian Federation stepped away from authoritarianism, and moved toward a liberal democracy. But under President Vladimir Putin, a militant member of the Russian Orthodox Church, an offshoot of Roman Catholicism, Russia had become all the things that American right-wingers loved: They went back to authoritarianism, and embraced conservative religion, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, corporate greed and kleptocracy. The right-wing rally of May 13, 2017 supported this.

But on May 14, hundreds of anti-racists held a candlelight counterprotest. That ticked the white nationalists off. On July 8, a North Carolina branch of the Ku Klux Klan held a rally at Charlottesville's statue of another Confederate General, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. There were 50 of them. There were about 1,000 counterprotestors.

Charlottesville's history is, to put it mildly, complicated. It was the hometown of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote The Declaration of Independence, including the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal." And went on the become the 3rd President of the United States. But he was also a slaveholder, who never freed any slaves, not even in his will, and has been credibly -- if not conclusively -- accused of fathering anywhere from 5 to 8 children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings.

His home is 4 miles outside town, up a hill he called Monticello, or "little mountain" in Italian. He founded the University of Virginia, the 1st university in the world to be founded without the assistance and guidance of any religion, and which was desegregated sooner than most Southern universities, in 1950. 

Spencer set up a rally in Charlottesville for August 11 and 12. Among the groups he invited were the League of the South, neo-Confederates; and the Nationalist Front, a neo-Nazi group patterned after Britain's National Front. On the night of the 11th, they marched through the streets of Charlottesville, carrying tiki torches and Confederate and Nazi flags, and chanting neo-Confederate and neo-Nazi slogans, including the aforementioned, "Jews will not replace us!"

According to the 2020 Census, conducted 3 years later, there were 7.6 million Jewish people in America, about 2.4 percent of the population. They're not trying to replace anyone, and wouldn't be in a position to do so if they wanted it.

On the morning of the 12th, Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia declared a state of emergency, stating that public safety could not be safeguarded without additional powers. At 11:22 AM, the Virginia State Police declared the renewed rally to be an unlawful assembly.

James Alex Fields Jr., who identified as a white supremacist, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, had driven his 2010 Dodge Challenger from Monclova, Ohio, outside Toledo, over 500 miles to Charlottesville. At about 1:45 PM, about half a mile from the rally site, on 4th Street Southeast at Water Street, he drove his car into a crowd of counterprotestors, injuring 36 people.

One of them died: Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal, and a native of the city. Her last Facebook post contained a familiar, if unsourceable, quote: "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." Two blocks of 4th Street, from Market Street to Water Street, have been renamed Heather Heyer Way by the City of Charlottesville.

Fields drove off, but was soon arrested. He made a plea agreement to avoid the death penalty. He will never leave the Virginia prison system alive.

Donald Trump's National Security Adviser, H.R. McMaster, and his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, both previously noted for their arch-conservatism and their racism, called the car attack "an act of domestic terrorism."

And since the targets of the rally included Jews as well as black people, it could also have been called a "pogrom." A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The best-known one in history is Kristallnacht, "The Night of Broken Glass," conducted throughout Germany under the order of the Nazi government, on November 9, 1938.

McMaster, a retired 3-star Army General from Philadelphia, and Sessions -- full name Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, who grew up in Selma, Alabama before it became a civil rights flashpoint, and had been a U.S. Attorney, and federal Judge, and a U.S. Senator -- didn't use the word "pogrom," but they did use the words "domestic terrorism." If they could say that, surely, Trump himself could.

He didn't. Here's what he said: "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides."

On many sides? There were only two sides: The bigoted side, and the anti-bigoted side. And as for violence, only one side caused any injuries: The bigoted side.

Trump also said, "You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."

No, Donald. There are not very fine people on the neo-Nazi side. There are not very fine people on the neo-Confederate side. Only bigots, thugs and losers. Yes, losers: They were carrying flags of two countries -- the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany -- that had gotten their bigoted asses kicked by the United States of America. So, yes, bigots, thugs and losers... and traitors.

Shortly thereafter, I saw someone post this online: "Wish Trump could find the same anger for murderous Nazis as he did for Nordstrom after it stopped selling his daughter's handbags."

And no less a Republican than Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Governor of California, who's been accused of personal behaviors similar to Trump's, said this:

I have a message to the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists, and the neo-Confederates. Let me be as blunt as possible: Your heroes are losers. You are supporting a lost cause.

Believe me, I knew the original Nazis. I was born in Austria in 1947, shortly after the Second World War. Growing up, I was surrounded by broken men, men who came home from the war filled with shrapnel and guilt, men who were misled into a losing ideology. And I can tell you: These ghosts that you idolize spent the rest of their lives living in shame. And right now, they're resting in Hell.

I know you weren't born with these hateful views. No one is. But the truth is, it's never too late to make the choices to learn, and to evolve and to understand that all human beings have equal value.

If you say, "Arnold, I was just at the march. Don't call me a Nazi. I have nothing to do with Nazis at all." Let me help you: Don't hang around with people who carry Nazi flags, give Nazi salutes, or shout Nazi slogans. Go home. Or, better yet, tell them they are wrong to celebrate an ideology that murdered millions of people. And then go home.

You are so lucky to live in a country that gives you every right to say horrible things. But think about how you could actually use that power for something good.

And to those of you who have been silent, you must also evolve. I've learned a long time ago that the only way we can really eliminate hatred is to face it head-on. It is not always comfortable, of course, but stereotypes against race, religion, gender or anything else, they're like cancer. If you had a tumor, you wouldn't quietly hope that it slowly disappears. You would zap the shit out of it with chemotherapy, cut it out, and try every experimental treatment until it was gone. This is no different.

He was right. The Confederates were wrong in 1861, when they began. The Nazis were wrong in 1933, when they took power. The people copying them were wrong in 2017. They will always be wrong.

Donald Trump will always be wrong.

On February 17, 2018, McMaster said that it was "incontrovertible" that Russia interfered in the 2016 Presidential election. Trump fired him on March 22. Sessions resigned on November 7.

McMaster later accused Trump of "strategic narcissism," and, on January 7, 2021, the day after the Capitol Insurrection made what happened in Charlottesville look minor in comparison, said, "President Trump and other officials have repeatedly compromised our principles in pursuit of partisan advantage and personal gain." Ten days after that, he described Trump with the term "anti-leadership."

On May 23, 2020, 3 months after Trump was acquitted in an Impeachment trial based on his favoring of Russia against Ukraine and then-Presidential candidate Joe Biden, Sessions tweeted to Trump, about his role in the investigation, "Look, I know your anger, but recusal was required by law. I did my duty & you're damn fortunate I did. It protected the rule of law & resulted in your exoneration."

Once out of office, even the most conservative of Republicans decide they've had enough of Trump and his pro-Confederate, pro-neo-Nazi, pro-Russia policies.

Biden cited the Charlottesville pogrom as the reason he ran for President again in 2020 -- and he beat Trump.

*

August 12, 2017 was a Saturday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox, 10-5 at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees got home runs from Gary Sánchez, Chase Headley and Jacoby Ellsbury, but it wasn't enough, as Luis Severino got knocked out of the box in the 5th inning. So, while I was at neither Yankee Stadium nor downtown Charlottesville, and only saw both events unfold on television, it was a bad day for me.

* The New York Mets lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 3-1 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

* The Washington Nationals beat the San Francisco Giants, 3-1 at Nationals Park in Washington. This was the closest game to the site of the attack, which was 116 miles to the southwest.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 3-0 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mike Clevinger pitched 4-hit shutout ball for 7 innings, and 2 relievers kept it at 4 hits.

* The Miami Marlins beat the Colorado Rockies, 4-3 at Marlins Park (now LoanDepot Park) in Miami.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-2 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Minnesota Twins, 12-11 at Comerica Park in Detroit. The Tigers trailed 11-6 going to the bottom of the 7th, but won it on Justin Upton's home run in the bottom of the 9th.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-4 at Guaranteed Rate Field (now Rate Field) in Chicago.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-5 at Miller Park (now American Family Field) in Milwaukee. The winning run was scored in the bottom of the 10th inning: With Ryan Braun up, Tim Adleman threw a wild pitch, allowing Eric Sogard to score.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Atlanta Braves, 6-5 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

* The Texas Rangers beat their cross-State rivals, the Houston Astros, 8-3 at Globe Life Park (now Choctaw Stadium) in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas.

* The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-2 at Chase Field in Phoenix.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the San Diego Padres, 6-3 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Oakland Athletics, 12-5 at the Oakland Coliseum.

* And the Los Angeles Angels beat the Seattle Mariners, 6-3 at Safeco Field (now T-Mobile Park) in Seattle.