On August 11th and 12th,
a rally was organized in Charlottesville, Virginia to protest the removal of a Confederate war memorial. Called "Unite the Right," the movement was met with counter-protests on both days. Many rally-goers were recorded displaying extremely racially vicious slogans and slurs. Some were identifiable members of either the KKK or neo-Nazi groups. Almost immediately after a state of emergency was declared by the city and the county, a car sped into the crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring at least nineteen others. The driver attempted to flee the scene, but was quickly caught and the owner arrested. James Fields Jr, a citizen of Ohio, was charged with second degree murder. The events served well to highlight intense racial tensions that continue to flare in the United States as opposing factions continue to fight in a seemingly never-ending struggle to reconcile America's promise of freedom and liberty with a long history of denying that liberty to many of its own people.
Since these rallies and the failure of the President to respond and defuse the situation, tensions have worsened.
A rally in the city of Boston held August 19 (one chaotic week after Charlottesville) was met with fierce counter-protest from the locals. Many such rallies took place nationwide with similar results.
What all of this serves to highlight is that there is growing tension between the cause of freedom of speech and the cause of racial justice. One such tension can be seen in that the neo-Nazi groups rallying in Charlottesville had a permit to meet whereas the counter-protesters did not. However, I would argue that this point is secondary. It is far less significant that the counter-protesters did not have a permit than the fact that they were actively countering a force that is so fundamentally anti-American it cannot possibly be misconstrued as a democratic ideology.
