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- “Alleged driver of car that plowed into Charlottesville crowd was a Nazi sympathizer, former teacher says,” by T. Rees Shapiro, Alice Crites, Laura Vozzella and John Woodrow Cox: “The alleged driver, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old who traveled to Virginia from Ohio, had espoused extremist ideals at least since high school, according to Derek Weimer, a history teacher.
“Weimer said he taught Fields during his junior and senior years at Randall K. Cooper High School in Kentucky. For a class called ‘America’s Modern Wars,’ Fields wrote a deeply researched paper about the Nazi military during World War II, Weimer recalled. ‘It was obvious that he had this fascination with Nazism and a big idolatry of Adolf Hitler,’ the teacher said. ‘He had white supremacist views. He really believed in that stuff.’ Fields’s research project into the Nazi military was well written, Weimer said, but it appeared to be a ‘big lovefest for the German military and the Waffen-SS.’ As a teacher, he said, he highlighted historical facts and used academic reasoning in an attempt to steer Fields away from his infatuation with the Nazis. ‘This was something that was growing in him,’ Weimer said. ‘I admit I failed. I tried my best. But this is definitely a teachable moment and something we need to be vigilant about, because this stuff is tearing up our country.’
“By the weekend’s finish, Fields had become the face of one of the ugliest days in recent U.S. history. After marching through the University of Virginia’s campus carrying torches and spewing hate Friday night, hundreds of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members gathered Saturday in downtown Charlottesville to protest the planned removal of a statue memorializing Robert E. Lee. … A sedan and a minivan rolled to a stop in a road packed with activists. Suddenly, a 2010 Dodge Challenger smashed into the back of the sedan, shoving tons of metal into the crowd and launching bodies through the air. The Dodge then rapidly went into reverse, hitting more people. Fields, now the subject of a federal civil rights investigation, was arrested shortly after and charged with one count of second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and another count related to the hit-and-run, police said. He is being held without bail and is scheduled for an arraignment Monday.”
“Fields joined the Army in late in the summer of 2015 but was on active duty for less than four months … It was unclear why he served so briefly. …
“His father was killed by a drunk driver five months before the boy’s birth, according to an uncle … [Fields was] raised by a single mother, Samantha Bloom, who is a paraplegic. … Saturday’s horror was just the latest for her family. Aside from losing Fields’s father in a crash, Bloom’s parents died in a murder-suicide — 33 years ago this month — according to a pair of 1984 newspaper articles. After an argument, Marvin Bloom, a self-employed contractor, killed his ex-wife, Judy, with a 12-gauge shotgun, then put the gun to his head. He was 42, and she was 37. Their daughter, Samantha, was 16.”
-- Bloom, Fields’s mother, told the Toledo Blade that her son had texted her Friday to say he had dropped his cat off at her apartment so he could attend the Virginia rally, which he described as an “alt-right” gathering: “’I told him to be careful,’ Ms. Bloom said. ‘[And] if they’re going to rally to make sure he’s doing it peacefully.’ Itdidn’t appear that happened, she said tearfully.” Bloom said in an other interview that her son had told her about the rally last week, but said she was not aware of its extremist nature: “I thought it had something to do with Trump,” she told the Associated Press. “Trump's not a white supremacist,” she added. “He had an African-American friend so,” she added, before her voice trailed off.
An undated photo from the Facebook account of Heather Heyer. (Reuters)
THE VICTIMS:
-- Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old killed in Saturday’s attack, was known by friends and family for her passionate beliefs and advocacy for others. “Over the years, Heyer would ask people why they came to their beliefs,” Ellie Silverman and Michael Laris report. “Heyer’s friends told her mother, [Susan Bro], that she was at it again during the demonstrations Saturday, going up to people with opposing views and asking them ‘Why do you believe this?’ or ‘Why do you think this way?’
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“For Bro, Saturday’s terror came home in a phone call. Justin Marks, a longtime friend of Heyer, was sobbing and screaming on the line. Bro didn’t understand what was happening. Then, finally, Marks said he understood that the hospital was trying to reach next of kin and needed a number. Bro said she remembered telling her son, ‘Your sister is either dead or she’s unconscious because …’ She paused to cry while recounting her ride to the hospital Saturday. … 'she would know my number.’ ... Bro was in such shock that she couldn’t remember Heather’s middle name when a hospital staffer first asked her. It’s Danielle.”
“Marks said he and Heyer had previously agreed not to attend the protests, because they thought it would be too dangerous. Everyone was on edge about it, he said. But the night before, Heyer texted Marks, 30, saying that she felt compelled to go, and who was Marks to say she shouldn’t? 'She talked about these things constantly. It weighed on her,' he said.
“Even as a quiet young girl, Heyer stood up for people who were picked on while riding the schools bus, (childhood friend) Felicia Correa said. ... Correa said she recently was swamped with medical bills after complications related to her multiple sclerosis, so she went to a Charlottesville law firm. When Heyer, who was working as a paralegal there, walked out to meet her, she was ecstatic to see the friend she had known growing up in Greene County, Va. Heyer jumped in and guided Correa, who was uninsured and is a mother of six, through the daunting financial process. She was a 'young white woman who died standing up not just for people of color in general, but also the people of color that I love, that I worry about,' said Correa, who is biracial, black and Hispanic.”
Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates, left, of Quinton, Va., and Lt. H. Jay Cullen, of Midlothian, Va. (Virginia State Police/AP)
-- Two Virginia state troopers also died Saturday when their surveillance helicopter crashed on the outskirts of Charlottesville. Rachel Weiner reports: “H. Jay Cullen, 48, was a veteran pilot who spent several years shepherding the governor around Virginia. Berke Bates, who would have turned 41 on Sunday, was just beginning to realize a lifelong dream of becoming a helicopter pilot. ‘I was close to both of those state troopers,’ [Virginia Gov. Terry] McAuliffe (D) said at a memorial service in Charlottesville on Sunday morning. ‘Jay Cullen had been flying me around for three-and-a-half years. Berke was part of my executive protection unit. He was part of my family. The man lived with me 24-7.’ … The Bell 407 helicopter that Cullen piloted crashed about 5 p.m. Saturday in a wooded area on Old Farm Road in Albemarle County. … The National Transportation Safety Board also is investigating the helicopter incident.”
-- Others are still being treated: “On Saturday evening, five people were in critical condition and 14 others were being treated for lesser injuries received when the car struck the crowd,” per our lead story. “By Sunday, 10 were in good condition and nine had been discharged from the University of Virginia Medical Center. At least a dozen other people were treated after they were injured in street brawls.”
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| Charlottesville residents reach for hope, push away hate |
CHARLOTTESVILLE COPES:
-- “Charlottesville woke up early Sunday morning groggy and wondering, praying even, that the pitched battles in the streets, the full decibel race-based hate, the people crushed under cars and the helicopter that fell from the sky were all just mad scenes from an end-times nightmare,” Joe Heim reports. “But the truth was darker. The city had a body count. The rally that almost no one in Charlottesville wanted and many here protested ended in death and sorrow and, for the time being at least, a fruitless search to make sense of it all for those who call it home. ... Overnight, Charlottesville had become known for something for which it never wanted to be known. America struggles with race everywhere, but here the full fury of its most committed racial antagonists had been displayed. It no longer hid in the shadows or barked from anonymous Twitter handles. It marched with torches at night and with shields, clubs and guns in broad daylight. It shouted out [the n-word] and ‘Faggots!’ and ‘Kikes!’ and it raised its arms straight out in Nazi salutes … How, they wondered, did their quiet and beautiful little city on the lap of the Blue Ridge Mountains become the focal point of so much anger and misery?”
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| Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer, right, speaks during a news conference as Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, center, and Virginia Secretary of Public safety Brian Moran listen in Charlottesville on Saturday. (Steve Helber/AP) |
-- “‘Look at the campaign he ran’: Charlottesville mayor is becoming one of Trump’s strongest critics,” by Kristine Phillips: “A white nationalist site calls him ‘anti-white.’ An article it published in May outlines some highlights of Michael Signer’s term as the mayor of Charlottesville: his endorsement of a $10,000 donation to pay for legal costs to help immigrants and refugees, and his decision to declare his city a ‘capital of the resistance’ just days after President Trump was sworn into office. For those reasons and others — including Signer’s Jewish heritage — the writer declared: ‘This is what the enemy looks like.’ … For Signer, Trump’s repeated failure to ‘condone, denounce, silence, put to bed’ the white supremacist voices that invoked his name during the campaign and after he won the White House is why Charlottesville was besieged with violence.”
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| Marches across U.S. oppose white nationalist rally |
THE VIOLENCE WILL CHANGE THE DEBATE ABOUT CONFEDERATE STATUES:
-- The statue that set off the white nationalist protest remains standing — for now. The New York Times’s Jacey Fortin reports: “At the center of the chaos is a statue memorializing Robert E. Lee. It depicts the Confederacy’s top general, larger than life, astride a horse, both green with oxidation. The white nationalists were in Charlottesville to protest the city’s plan to remove that statue, and counterdemonstrators were there to oppose them. … [I]n February, the City Council voted to remove the statue from the park. Opponents of the move sued in March, arguing that the city did not have the authority to do so under state law. That court case is continuing, and the statue has remained in place. It was the focal point for a gathering held in May by the white nationalist Richard Spencer, who was among the demonstrators in Charlottesville this weekend. In June, the City Council gave Lee Park a new name — Emancipation Park.”
-- Lexington, Ky., Mayor Jim Gray announced Saturday that two statues of Confederate veterans in front of a local courthouse would be relocated to a park commemorating veterans. “As a mayor, you always must be prepared,” Gray told The Post. “So we’ll be prepared for the pushback and for the challenge. But this is the right thing to do.” (Cleve R. Wootson Jr.)
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| Vigil organized at White House after violence in Charlottesville |
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-- The White House on Sunday sought to stem the fallout from Trump's response to the violence — issuing a second statement after the president failed to condemn white supremacists for inciting the “hate-fueled melee.” John Wagner, Jenna Johnson, Robert Costa and Sari Horwitz report: “The President said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry, and hatred,” the White House said Sunday. “Of course that includes white supremacists, KKK Neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.” Vice President Pence was far more forceful in his condemnation of the violence last yesterday in Colombia: “We have no tolerance for hate and violence from white supremacists, neo Nazis or the KKK. These dangerous fringe groups have no place in American public life and in the American debate, and we condemn them in the strongest possible terms.” The Justice Department, meanwhile, faced continuing questions Sunday about why it took Attorney General Jeff Sessions as long as it did Saturday to announce a hate-crime investigation and why the FBI has not labeled a deadly car-ramming incident Saturday as an act of “domestic terrorism.” Sessions is scheduled to appear on three network morning shows today to talk about his department’s response. Notably, the White House's statement yesterday was not signed by Trump.
-- Criticism of the president's response dominated the Sunday shows, with Republicans and Democrats alike imploring him to explicitly distance himself from white nationalist groups that have embraced his presidency:
- On “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said white supremacist groups “seem to think they have a friend in [Trump] in the White House” and called for the president to correct the record. “I don’t know why they believe that, but they don’t see me as a friend in the Senate, and I would urge the president to dissuade these groups that he’s their friend,” he said.
- On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) implored Trump to “call evil by its name”: “I think the president needs to step up today and [call it] … for what it is,” said the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “It’s evil, it’s white nationalism, it’s bigotry and it’s unacceptable. And if he doesn’t do that, we can continue to answer the question of why. But I believe he has a chance to do that today.”
-- Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum said it is “Time for Republicans to Leap From the Boat” in a piece for The Atlantic: “Trump now stands not between the parties, or above the parties, but beyond the parties — in some strange political twilight zone where neo-Nazis are seen as a constituency not to be insulted. … The conventional wisdom is that dissension is a party killer; safer to stay united around even a low-polling president than to act against him. But what if it is the president who is fomenting the dissension, because his ego requires that every failure be blamed on somebody else? … What if he is branding his entirely flag-waving party with the flags not of the United States but of Russia, the Southern Confederacy, and now amazingly even Nazi Germany?”
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| -- Bad optics: Against the backdrop of Charlottesville, Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign committee unveiled a new commercial on Sunday that accuses “the president’s enemies” of trying to undermine his success in office. John Wagner reports: “The 30-second spot, produced six months into Trump’s term, targets Democrats and the news media, and touts what the campaign says are successes that the president has managed to achieve, including a low unemployment rate and record stock-market closes. ‘Democrats obstructing. The media attacking our president. Career politicians standing in the way of success. But [Trump’s] plan is working,’ the narrator says. [The ad] includes a montage of [Democratic politicians] and television hosts, including Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow and Brian Williams of MSNBC, and Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon of CNN, among others. ‘The president’s enemies don’t want him to succeed,’ the ad says, ‘but Americans are saying, ‘Let president Trump do his job.’” |
White nationalists and white supremacists chant “You will not replace us,” “Jews will not replace us,” and “white lives matter” as they march through U-Va. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)
THE VIEW FROM THE FEVER SWAMPS:
-- As establishment Republicans criticized Trump’s equivocal remarks, white nationalists cheered them. Amy B Wang reports: “On the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, updates about Saturday’s events unfolded quickly[.] … ‘WE HAVE AN ARMY!’ the website posted to a live blog shortly after 11 a.m., along with photos of people carrying Confederate flags and neo-Nazi paraphernalia. ‘THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A WAR!’ … Less than a half-hour after Trump’s live remarks, the Daily Stormer had declared the president’s words as a signal of tacit support for their side: ‘Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us.’ … The neo-Nazi live blog also noted that Trump had refused to respond when a reporter asked about white nationalists who supported him. ‘No condemnation at all,’ the Daily Stormer wrote. ‘When asked to condemn, [Trump] just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.’”
-- The Web hosting company GoDaddy announced that it would not longer allow the Daily Stormer to use its services. The neo-Nazi site was given 24 hours to move its website domain. (Katie Mettler)
-- The violence in Charlottesville was condemned by all major Virginia politicians of both parties — with one notable exception. “Corey A. Stewart, who is running for U.S. Senate (against Tim Kaine) and nearly won the Republican nomination for governor of Virginia on a pledge to preserve the state’s Confederate monuments, said white nationalists had been unfairly singled out for their role in the weekend chaos in Charlottesville that left three dead and dozens injured,” Laura Vozzella and
-- Fear of the “antifa,” or the “violent left,” preceded the violent events in Charlottesville, Dave Weigel explains: “On Saturday afternoon, shortly before her camera captured a car plowing through left-wing activists in Charlottesville … Faith Goldy warned that the left was spinning out of control. ‘Hundreds and hundreds of antifa, weird BLM, idiots dressed like clowns,’ said Goldy, a reporter for the Canadian alt-right news site The Rebel. ‘This is okay, as long as you’re not the alt-right. The alt-right wasn’t allowed to demonstrate any show of force.’ Goldy’s report … was representative of a theme that had risen from far-right media to the mainstream since [Trump’s] inauguration. The growth of ‘antifa,’ a loose and often ad hoc network of left-wing ‘antifascist’ groups, has been covered as a rising danger to law and order, a justification for alt-right organizations to organize armed rallies — and for ordinary Americans to arm themselves, too.”