Concept
The Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11–12, 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 generated by the removal of Confederate monuments by local governments following the Charleston church shooting in 2015, where a white supremacist shot and killed nine black members, including the minister (a state senator), and wounded others. 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 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.
