NPR: Hate on trial in Virginia, four years after deadly extremist rally

Heard on Morning Edition with Odette Yousef

The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., turned violent, left one counter-demonstrator dead and revealed how well-organized the far right had become.

Four years afterward, jury selection is set for Monday in a case seen as the most sweeping attempt yet to hold to account those associated with the march. To do so, those behind the suit are taking a page from a decades-old playbook: they're turning to civil litigation in an attempt to put extremists out of business.

"We know that we can really bankrupt, disrupt and dismantle hate groups and their leaders through civil litigation," said Amy Spitalnick, executive director of Integrity First for America. IFA is a civil rights non-profit organization that is backing the lawsuit.

Kathleen Belew, a historian at the University of Chicago and author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, said civil litigation has historically been important because criminal prosecution of violent white power activity has often failed.

"We have had a number of issues with effective returns in criminal trials for reasons ranging from ingrained problems in our legal system that have to do with long histories of white supremacy, to all kinds of procedural problems that have derailed justice in one way or another," she said. "Civil trials are a really good tool in hitting the pocketbooks and the membership lists of white power groups."

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