CHARLOTTESVILLE RESIDENTS SUE WHITE SUPREMACISTS FOR 2017 ATTACK

 

         …A defining picture of just how big the riot was in Charlottesville in 2017

 

A crazed white supremist, used a car to run-down the counter-protester, Heather Heyer.

 

As hundreds of white supremacists prepared to descend on Charlottesville in 2017, they hashed out logistics in private, on-line chat groups.  During the chats, they suggested a dress code of polo shirts during the day and shirts with swastikas at night. They even worried about the mayo on sandwiches spoiling in the August heat.  In addition, they swapped tips on how to turn ordinary objects into lethal weapons. This is according to many of the messages cited in court papers.

Such detailed planning is central to a lawsuit filed by nine Charlottesville residents who claim physical harm and emotional distress during: Unite the Right.  This was the deadly two-day rally where a large, torch-carrying mob chanting “Jews will not replace us!” awakened the country to a resurgence of far-right extremism.  After four years of legal wrangling, a civil trial begins in a federal courtroom in Charlottesville, where a jury, now being chosen, will decide whether the organizing of the rally amounted to a conspiracy to engage in racially motivated violence.

 “Defendants brought with them to Charlottesville the imagery of the Holocaust, of slavery, of Jim Crow, and of fascism,” the plaintiffs say in the complaint. “They also brought with them semi-automatic weapons, pistols, mace, rods, armor, shields, and torches.”

 The planners’ messages, part of a leaked number of messages from the group-chat statements, are laced with slurs against Black and Jewish people, along with violent fantasies of cracking skulls and driving into crowds. One memo showed the: “John Deere New Multi-Lane Protester Digestor.” This is a fictious vehicle that was thought up for steamrolling the counter-protesters opponents at the rally.  This became a forecast of what became the car-ramming attack that would kill 32-year-old Heather Heyer, and to injure at least 19 others.

Because only a handful of participants face criminal charges.  The plaintiffs’ lawyers say, the civil suit is one way to correct what they call a lack of accountability that paved the way for other extremist violence, which includes the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The racist, bigoted imagery on display in Charlottesville in August 2017 was a shock to much of the nation at the time.  It is is now regularly spotted at right-wing gatherings throughout the country.  

It’s a real sign of how the nation is so divided amongst its citizens.

 “One message of this case is that these events, like Charlottesville and like Jan. 6, they’re not these spontaneous events that just happen,” said Karen Dunn, a prominent trial lawyer serving as co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “There is an enormous undercurrent of planning, of intent and of purposefulness that we all need to wake up to.” 

The suing of two dozen white supremacists and hate groups means that virtually everything about the trial is unusual in the United States.

The current judge has ordered the litigants not to discuss the extraordinary security backdrop to the trial.  The personal security is the top expense for the plaintiffs.  Potential jurors will be asked their opinions on, for example, Black Lives Matter and anti-semitism. Court exhibits will include vile messages that come from more than 5 terabytes of evidence. To make their case, the plaintiffs’ attorneys are dusting off a Reconstruction-era statute that was designed to protect emancipated Black people from the Ku Klux Klan.

Then there are the defendants, some of the most notorious racists in the country, including: Richard Spencer, a neo-Nazi figure who was a featured speaker at Unite the Right rally;  Andrew Anglin, who publishes the hate on-line site, the Daily Stormer.  In addition, Matthew Heimbach, a white nationalist leader with ties to far-right factions in Eastern Europe.  And the Defendant, Christopher Cantwell, who has referred to the: “supposed Holocaust” and who quoted Adolf Hitler in court documents.  Of which is a law suite that was dropped by his own attorneys.  This was in part because Cantwell allegedly threatened a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

Some of the defendants are expected to testify, but court documents show that many have been uncooperative,  and they failed to comply with court orders. One defendant, Jeff Schoep, former commander of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, has claimed that his cellphone “accidentally” fell into the toilet, making it impossible to recover potential evidence.  The plaintiffs have complained about this in court filings.

A main argument of the defendants is that the violent rhetoric used ahead of that August weekend was protected free-speech related to a permitted rally to protest city plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.  The mayhem that unfolded, defendants argue, stemmed from planning failures on the part of the police and from counter-demonstrators who wanted direct confrontation with the marchers.

“Their entire case is based around this concept that, like, we are bad people because of the things we think, that are legally protected speech,” Heimbach said in an interview.

Most other defendants and their attorneys did not respond or declined requests for any comment.

For Charlottesville residents, the trial will offer the most in-depth look yet at the violent incursion that stigmatized their city.

Brenda Brown-Grooms, a 66-year-old African American pastor, recalled the fear she felt when she saw the torch-bearing mob that Friday evening, Aug. 11, 2017.  The next day, she said, she was at another church near the Lee statue and had to close the doors because chemical irritants from the rally were wafting into the building, stinging her eyes and throat.

The trial will force many residents to relive those visceral moments. Brown-Grooms calls it difficult, but necessary.

“It’s a trauma we can’t avoid,” she said about the trial. “There’s a possibility of great good coming out of it.”

This event from back in 2017 is expected to be the basis for much of the future attitudes of many in the Fox News crowd and the far-right and the GOP.

Copyright G. Ater 2021