More
than four years after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,
the victims of the white supremacist mob are seeking justice. And the
lawsuit they filed against the individuals and organizations who were
responsible for that deadly rally is important to the future of
American multiracial democracy.
While
this trial may bring monetary compensation to the plaintiffs, more
importantly, it is part of the process of deciding whether white
domestic terrorism and racial violence are acceptable forms of free
speech, and if white criminality will go unpunished. This nation must
now decide if it will allow organized white supremacist violence to
run the show.
Jury
selection and opening arguments have been made in the trial of Sines
v. Kessler,
a civil case filed on behalf of members of the Charlottesville
community against 14
men and 10 far-right groups
accused of waging the violence in Charlottesville on Aug. 11 and 12
in 2017. The Unite the Right protest, which focused on the removal of
the statue of Confederate General Robert
E. Lee,
culminated with James Fields, a Hitler admirer, plowing his car into
a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather
Heyer,
32, and injuring dozens more. Among the defendants
are high-profile white supremacists and neo-Nazis, such as Andrew
Anglin,
Christopher
Cantwell,
Nathan
Damigo,
Matthew
Heimbach,
Jason Kessler,
Elliot Kline,
Jeff
Schoep
and Richard
Spencer
among others.
Cantwell
was reportedly inspired by Fox News host Tucker
Carlson,
who promotes the Great
Replacement Theory,
a white supremacist theory that elite liberals, Democrats and
Progressives want to replace white Americans with nonwhite
immigrants. Once embraced by fringe elements, the Great Replacement
Theory is now a mainstream belief of the Republican Party. The tiki
torch-wielding Nazis who shouted “Jews
will not replace us”
and “You will not replace us” in Charlottesville were
referring to that theory.
Integrity
First for America,
a nonprofit organization, filed the lawsuit. The plaintiffs seek
compensatory and statutory damages for physical and emotional
injuries they sustained over the two-day period.
What
is particularly noteworthy about this civil suit is the federal law
it invokes. The plaintiffs have sued under the Ku
Klux Klan Act of 1871,
which was passed by Congress to enforce the 14th Amendment, protect
the rights of 4 million formerly enslaved Black people and eliminate
vigilante violence that terrorized Black folks and threatened the
Republican Party’s Reconstruction efforts in the South
following the Civil War. The law authorized the president to
intervene by declaring martial law, sending
in the Army
, and inflicting heavy penalties against terrorists when the former
Confederate states refused to protect Black people and their White
allies and attempted to deny “any person or any class of
persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges
or immunities under the laws.” At a time when Black people were
almost exclusively sided with the Republican Party, the legislation
found opposition among Democrats as well as moderate and conservative
Republicans because it targeted
private individuals
and not just government officials.
Today,
in a nation where the Republican Party now breaks bread with domestic
terrorists and relies on Jim Crow tactics, political violence, coups
and insurrection to maintain white power, the Ku Klux Klan Act is as
relevant as ever.
Earlier
this year, Rep. Bennie
Thompson (D-Miss.)
and the NAACP filed a lawsuit against former President Donald
Trump,
his lawyer Rudy
Giuliani
and white hate groups for conspiring to storm the U.S. Capitol on
January 6 in an attempt to stop the Electoral College vote of the
2020 presidential election in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act.
After being selected to chair the House committee investigating the
Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Thompson said in July that he
dismissed his claim in the lawsuit “to avoid the appearance of
a conflict.”
The
tragedy in Charlottesville foreshadowed the Capitol insurrection when
rightwing militias, neo-confederates, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Three
Percenters, Qanon cult members and others - with apparent support
from some GOP officials - stormed the Capitol and attempted to take
over the government for Trump after his election loss to
now-President Joe
Biden.
Other events such as the mass murder at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in
Charleston and the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh point to
white supremacist violence as the most pressing terrorist threat in
America today.
Meanwhile,
as the nation witnesses the bubbling of white rage and violent white
supremacist ideology, people wonder what is coming next. And some of
us wonder if America is going to make it. The nation formed through
slavery and genocide is about to be consumed by the white mob - the
forces of racial violence it refused to reckon with.
The
Confederacy lost the Civil War but is winning the long game. After
all, they never went away; they only changed names and were never
held accountable for their actions. The Charlottesville trial is
important because this could be the first step to shutting down these
white terror groups and putting them out of business. This is a test
to see if America will hold white supremacist violence accountable in
order to save itself.
This
commentary was originally published by The
Grio
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