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The Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11 to 12, 2017. Marchers included members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and far-right militias. Some groups chanted racist and antisemitic slogans and carried weapons, Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols, the Valknut, Confederate battle flags, Deus vult crosses, flags, and other symbols of various past and present antisemitic and anti-Islamic groups. The organizers' stated goals included the unification of the American white nationalist movement and opposing the proposed removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville's former Lee Park. The rally sparked a national debate over Confederate iconography, racial violence, and white supremacy. The rally occurred amid the controversy which was generated by the removal of Confederate monuments by local governments following the Charleston church shooting in 2015, in which Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, shot and killed nine members of a black church, including the minister (a state senator), and wounded another member of the church. The rally turned violent after protesters clashed with counter-protesters, resulting in more than 30 injured. On the morning of August 12, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency, stating that public safety could not be safeguarded without additional powers. Within an hour, at 11:22 a.m., the Virginia State Police declared the rally to be an unlawful assembly. At around 1:45 p.m., self-identified white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters about 1⁄2 mile (800 m) away from the rally site, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 people. Fields fled the scene in his car but was arrested soon afterward. He was tried and convicted in Virginia state court of first-degree murder, malicious wounding, and other crimes in 2018, with the jury recommending a sentence of life imprisonment plus 419 years. The following year, Fields pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes in a plea agreement to avoid the death penalty in this trial. US President Donald Trump's remarks about the rally generated negative responses. In his initial statement following the rally, Trump condemned the "display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides." This first statement and his subsequent defenses of it, in which he also referred to "very fine people on both sides", were criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the white supremacist protesters and the counter-protesters. Trump later stated (in the same statement) that "I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally–but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists". The rally and resulting death and injuries resulted in a backlash against white supremacist groups in the United States. A number of groups that participated in the rally had events canceled by universities, and their financial and social media accounts closed by major companies. Some Twitter users led a campaign to identify and publicly shame marchers at the rally from photographs; at least one rally attendee was dismissed from his job as a result of the campaign. While the organizers intended for the rally to unite far-right groups with the goal of playing a larger role in American politics, the backlash and resultant infighting between alt-right leaders has been credited with causing a decline in the movement. After Charlottesville refused to approve another march, Unite the Right held an anniversary rally on August 11–12, 2018, called "Unite the Right 2", in Washington, D.C. The rally drew only 20–30 protesters amidst thousands of counter-protesters, including religious organizations, civil rights groups, and anti-fascist organizers. Background In the wake of the Charleston church shooting in June 2015, efforts were made across the South to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces and rename streets honoring notable figures from the Confederacy. While often successful, these efforts faced a backlash from people concerned about protecting their Confederate heritage. The August 11–12 Unite the Right rally was organized by Charlottesville native and white supremacist Jason Kessler to protest the Charlottesville City Council's decision to remove the Robert E. Lee statue honoring the Confederate general, as well as the renaming of the statue's eponymous park (renamed to Emancipation Park in June 2017, and again to Market Street Park in 2018). Kessler took up the cause in March 2016 when then Charlottesville Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy held a press conference to call for removal of the statue. Kessler called Bellamy "anti-white" and the demand to remove the statue an effort to "attack white history". Lee Park became the site of numerous neo-Confederate events throughout the spring of 2017, including a campaign rally by Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart, which further politicized this public space. Summer rallies in Charlottesville On May 13, 2017, National Policy Institute Chairman and white supremacist Richard Spencer led a nighttime rally in Charlottesville to protest the city's plans to remove the statue of Lee. The event involved over 100 protesters, from various alt-right groups from around the country, chanting "Jews will not replace us!" and "Russia is our friend!" while holding lit torches near the statue, a spectacle which many Charlottesville residents found intimidating, and which the mayor denounced as a "harken[ing] back to the days of the KKK." The next night, hundreds of anti-racist Charlottesville residents held a candlelight counterprotest in response. Throughout early to mid-2017, tensions mounted as neo-Confederate and alt-right groups' sporadic gatherings in Charlottesville's downtown parks and pedestrian mall were confronted by anti-racist activists, resulting in occasional scuffles and some arrests. On July 8, 2017, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a group from Pelham, North Carolina, held a rally at the Stonewall Jackson statue in Charlottesville. In opposition to the rally, the Charlottesville Clergy Collective created a safe space two blocks from the Klan rally at First United Methodist Church, which was used by over 600 people. About 50 Klan members were drowned out by 1,000 counterprotesters (including 23 civil disobedience activists arrested for attempting to block the Klan group's entry into the park), who gathered at a loud but nonviolent rally dubbed by anti-racist organizers as the "#BlocKKKParty". After the Klan group's departure the Charlottesville Police Department declared the remaining counterprotesters to be an unlawful assembly, and ordered their dispersal – an order which, given the din of the crowd and the police helicopter hovering overhead, went unheard by many in .... Discover the Ryan J Mathias popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ryan J Mathias books.