A reckoning in Charlottesville

A reckoning in Charlottesville

In the middle of Emancipation Park in Charlottesville on Saturday, two young women, one white and one black, took each other's hands and held them tightly, and with their other hands they gripped the steel barrier in front of them.

A few feet away, a young white man with a buzzed haircut and sunglasses leaned towards them over a facing barrier. "You'll be on the first f*****g boat home," he screamed at the black woman, before turning to the white woman. "And as for you, you're going straight to hell," he said. Then he gave a Nazi salute.

For the third time in a few months, white nationalists had descended on the small, liberal city of Charlottesville in Virginia, to protest against the planned removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee.

This time they came under the banner of the so-called "alt-right", for a rally they called "Unite the Right". They were a motley crew of militia, racists, and neo-Nazis, and some who said they simply wanted to defend their Southern history.
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