Daily Beast: Four Years After Deadly Rally, Charlottesville Nazis Are Headed to Court

By Kelly Weill, The Daily Beast. Read the full article here.

In the four years since Charlottesville, Virginia residents filed a sprawling lawsuit against some of the nation’s most prominent white supremacists, two of those defendants have gone missing. Others have served jail time, paid hefty sanctions, or seen their far-right groups dissolved under pressure of the lawsuit.

On Monday, the case is finally going to trial.

The case, Sines v. Kessler, takes aim at the organizers of Unite the Right, the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The two-day rally began with a torchlit march, during which white supremacists assaulted counter-demonstrators, and concluded with neo-Nazi James Fields Jr. driving his car into a crowd of protesters, murdering one and injuring dozens more. Survivors of the attacks were left with lasting injuries and emotional distress. Sines v. Kessler, which represents nine survivors, argues that event organizers planned for violence. And after four years of dramatic pre-trial developments, the plaintiffs are finally going to make their case.

In summer 2017, Unite the Right was billed as a coming-out moment for the then-ascendant alt-right movement. Comprised of internet-savvy fascists, the alt-right movement was riding high off Donald Trump’s 2016 election and hoped to march publicly with other, older white supremacist movements like the neo-Confederate League of the South or the National Socialist Movement.

For months leading up to the rally, alt-right organizers planned the event in texts and on the messaging platform Discord. Some of those communications, which were obtained via the Sines v. Kessler discovery process, appear to show plans for violence, plaintiffs allege.

“We’re raising an army my liege,” Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler messaged white supremacist Richard Spencer before the event. “For free speech, but the cracking of skulls if it comes to it.”

Elsewhere in event-planning chats, Unite the Right marchers openly pined for violence and posted about hitting counter-demonstrators with cars. The release of those chat logs (some by activists and some via Sines v. Kessler) drove rifts through the alt-right movement, which was already scrambling after the disastrous rally. Some Sines v. Kessler discovery documents, for example, revealed contact information for Kessler’s collaborators. Others revealed Unite The Right organizers’ contempt for each other.

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