If there was any doubt about what kind of person went to protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, Vice News’s documentary should put those questions to rest: One side was white supremacists, some of whom openly endorsed violence.
The documentary, posted online on Monday, follows a group of white supremacists, led by white nationalist Chris Cantwell, as they march and protest through Charlottesville — purportedly to stand against the city’s plans to take down Confederate monuments, but really to spread a message of white supremacy.
Here are a few quotes from the white supremacist protests and participants, made up of members of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists:
- “Jews will not replace us! Jews will not replace us! Jews will not replace us!”
- “When the Trayvon Martin case happened, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and all these different things happened, every single case it’s some little black asshole behaving like a savage, and he gets himself in trouble, shockingly enough. Whatever problems I might have with my fellow white people, they generally are not inclined to such behavior — and, you know, you gotta kinda take that into consideration when you’re thinking about how to organize your society.”
- “This city is run by Jewish communists and criminal n*****s! That’s exactly what it is.” “And that’s true, by the way.”
- “We didn’t aggress. We did not initiate force against anybody. We’re not nonviolent. We’ll fucking kill these people if we have to.”
- “Right now we have people on the ground at the statue with equipment, and they’re being told they’re not allowed to have a vehicle come through and pick them up or anybody come and pick them up. I’m about to send at least 200 people with guns to go get them out if you guys do not get our people out.”
- The car attack by a Nazi sympathizer on counter-protesters, which killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer, “was more than justified. The amount of restraint that our people showed out there, I think, was outstanding.”
- “I think a lot more people are going to die before we’re done here, frankly. … People die violent deaths all the time. This is part of the reason we want an ethno-state. The blacks are killing each other in staggering numbers from coast to coast. We don’t really want to have a part of that anymore.”
This is who showed up to protest plans to take down a Confederate statue in Charlottesville. This is who President Donald Trump argued is equivalent to the counter-protesters who showed up to stand against racism and fascism.
