Slate: In Charlottesville, the Nazis Were Finally Held to Account

By Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Read the full article here.

After four weeks of arguments, 36 witnesses, and three long days of deliberations, a federal jury in Charlottesville, Virginia awarded more than $26 million in damages against two dozen white supremacists and violent right wing organizations who had organized the 2017 Unite the Right rally that ended in the death of a counter-protester and injuries to many others. The jurors deadlocked on two federal conspiracies charges rooted in the 150-year-old Ku Klux Klan Act, an 1871 statute that allows parties to sue for damages in response to race-based violent actions, but they did find the defendants had violated Virginia state civil rights laws against racially motivated harassment and intimidation.

The plaintiffs were nine individuals who had mostly been injured either when the car driven by James Alex Fields killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer on a Charlottesville street, or during a torchlit march on the University of Virginia grounds the night before. The defendants—including white supremacists Richard Spencer and Chris Cantwell—had spent the weeks before the rally amassing foot soldiers to march, making plans to arm themselves with makeshift weapons, and chatting online about the legality of running over protesters with cars. They claimed at trial, two of them ostentatiously representing themselves, that this was all just big performative hilarity and protected First Amendment speech. But as the plaintiffs showed, the far-right groups were always planning for racial violence, and claiming that everyone in a bandana was part of an Antifa plot to entrap them. As one of the organizers, Jason Kessler, put in a text to Spencer: “We are raising an army, my liege, for free speech but the cracking of skulls, if it comes to it...”

...This lawsuit was a template for how to hold violent white racism to account without giving it a platform, and a guide for how to do so with dignity and decorum and compassion for the hurting and traumatized and the dead. At a time when violent white supremacists seem to be ever bolder, ever more violent, and ever more likely to be centered and forgiven, it’s certainly worrisome that a jury couldn’t make use of a federal civil rights statute deliberately crafted to stop precisely the misconduct of violent white supremacists who believe themselves to be above the law. But in addition to the substantial money damages, the unambiguous jury response here was that racist white men who come to a town that isn’t their home, lay claim to the streets and the media’s gaze, and try to profit from it, will eventually find themselves to be bankrupt not only in the all-important attention economy, but also in real life.

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