White rage: Charlottesville and beyond

White supremacist march in 2017 casts a shadow ahead of November’s election

- Bhagyashree Garekar

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia Charming Charlottesville can seem like an afterthought, a town that grew up around the University of Virginia.

It rises up from the main street, not far from the campus that was founded and designed in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, one of America's founding fathers. The campus, a Unesco World Heritage Site, features iconic red brick buildings with white columns arranged across a verdant lawn.

In this part of the world, skyscrapers are unknown. In quiet neighbourhoods, along tree-lined streets stand well-maintained colonial-style bungalows with vine-covered walls and landscaped yards. The town wears its age well.

Affable, scholastic and busy without being obtrusive, this town was the stage for America's largest white supremacist march a few years ago. The coming-out party of the far-right, as analysts dubbed it.

Hundreds of neo-nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and white supremacist groups of other stripes showed up from across the country to prevent what the local civic authorities deemed necessary tearing down a bronze statue of Confederate General Robert E.

Lee, who fought in the 1861 Civil War to preserve slavery.

Scores of white men dressed in polo shirts marched through the University of Virginia to take part in a "Unite the Right" rally, carrying lit tiki torches, shouting "white lives matter" and "Jews will not replace us".

It culminated at the statue of Jefferson at the university.

Town residents gathered in a counter-rally, chanting: "Nazi scum off our streets." A 22-year-old neo-nazi drove a car into the crowd of anti-protesters, killing a 32-year-old white woman and injuring 35 other people.

It was 2017 and president Donald Trump was in power. Pressed for a response, he ignited a controversy when he said there were "very fine people on both sides".