Last weekend, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and assorted white supremacist groups descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, for what they billed as a "Unite the Right" rally.
Their ostensible purpose was to protest Charlottesville's decision to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park. The real purpose, according to the former Grand Wizard of the KKK, David Duke, was to "take [the] country back [and] fulfill the promises of Donald Trump." As explained in the signs and slogans on offer at their initial march through the University of Virginia campus on Friday night and again at the start of their Emancipation Park rally on Saturday morning, those promises -- to the ears of white supremacists -- included vows that "white lives matter," "you will not replace us," "Jews will not replace us," "the Jewish media is going down" and "Jews are Satan's children." To underscore their commitments, they waved Nazi swastika flags and repeatedly shouted "Blood and Soil," the Nazi slogan demanding Aryan racial supremacy and control during the Third Reich.
They were also violent.
On Friday night, white nationalists encircled a smaller group of counter-protesters, at which point fights ensued with the racists throwing their lit tiki-torches at the counter-protesters. On Saturday, James Fields, a 20-year old who worshipped Adolph Hitler and once described Dachau as a place "where the magic happened," accelerated and then reversed his car into groups of counter-protesters, injuring nineteen and killing Heather D. Heyer. Ms. Heyer was a 32-year old paralegal. Because of the violence, both the City and the Governor issued decrees declaring a state of emergency stopping the rally, both of which the Nazis, or at least some of them (including Fields, who murdered Ms. Heyer shortly after the Governor issued his), proceeded to ignore.
On Saturday, all eyes were fixed firmly on the ostensible leader of the free world, Donald Trump, waiting for his comments on the biggest neo-Nazi event in the US since Skokie in the '70s.
Trump, of course, has a history which can only charitably be characterized as "race baiting." The day he announced his candidacy, he called Mexicans rapists. During his campaign, he said an American judge could not fairly adjudicate his case because of that Judge's Mexican heritage. His principal adviser, Steve Bannon, is widely viewed to be a white supremacist. And in his campaign rallies, Trump openly advised supporters to take out opponents, promising that he, Trump, would pay any legal bills occasioned by the assault.
So, Trump took to the podium on Saturday and proceeded to denounce the violence on . . .
"Many sides."
He didn't name the neo-Nazis, or the KKK, or the host of other white supremacist groups that showed up in Charlottesville armed to the the teeth and spewing racist anti-Semitic rants. Instead, he "condemn[ed] in the strongest possible terms the egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides." He called for "a swift restoration of law and order," and said that neither he nor his predecessor was responsible for what "has been going on for a long, long time."
Say what?
In addition to not naming any racist, neo-Nazi or white supremacist groups, the statement was false on multiple levels. The display of "hatred, bigotry and violence" was one sided, not many sided. The clergy who organized the counter-protests aren't bigots and preached love, not violence; the same goes for Ms. Heyer, whose only apparent fault in life was an unerring sympathy for those who are marginalized in this world.
Nor was "law and order" remotely a solution. Nazis and the KKK don't preach law and order. They demand white supremacy and will take up arms to insure it.
And finally, Trump is responsible for what went on in Charlottesville. His racist dog-whistles over the past two years and love affair with the alt-right's Bannon are widely perceived by white supremacists as permission slips. In fact, on Saturday, Andrew Anglin, the creator of The Daily Stormer Nazi web site, praised Trump's statement. Said Anglin: "[Trump] didn't attack us. [H]e implied that there was hate on both sides. So he implied the [anti-fascists] are haters. There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all." Another post on the Daily Stormer site said, "Trump comments were good . . . Nothing specific against us."
No kidding.
Over the next forty-eight hours, Trump was met with a firestorm of criticism. Republican eminence grise Orrin Hatch said, "We should call evil by its name. My bother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home." Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardener said much the same. Ted Cruz called Fields's rampage "domestic terrorism," as did South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. The Democrats seemed almost amazed. Said former Vice President Biden: "There is only one side."
Two days later, Trump issued a new statement. This time he named the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists, saying their acts were "repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans." And following it, the GOP came to his defense. Said conservative Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole: "Because of the nature of the attack, he should have been more specific. Within 48 hours, he was. Probably he missed an opportunity, but we are all singing from the same song book now, and that's a good thing."
No.
It isn't.
There aren't a medley of available tunes for a President to sing on Nazism or white supremacy or the KKK.
There's only one.
It's called condemnation.
And it shouldn't take two days to sing that song.
This isn't a subject that is pregnant with ambiguity or otherwise difficult to get right. It's not open to debate or one on which reasonable positions exist on both sides. David Duke and white nationalist Richard Spencer are not spokesmen for any defensible argument or point of view. They are racists. As a consequence of the very freedoms they would deprive anyone without a white skin, Spencer and Duke (and Fields and all the other tiki-torch carriers on parade last week in Charlottesville) can speak all the want.
But that is all they can do.
And when they do that, any President from any party should condemn them.
Immediately.
Trump didn't just miss an opportunity this week and last.
He failed a test.
* * *
Postscript -- As this essay was being written and published, Trump held another press conference in the lobby of his Trump Tower in New York City. In that conference, he defended his Saturday comments, repeated the disingenuous claim that there had been violence on "both sides," and even uttered the preposterous claim that there were "fine people" in the group that included the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
There was no singing from the same songbook, just an angry regurgitation of the false moral equivalence offered up on Saturday.
Not surprisingly, Duke and Spencer praised him for his latest equivocation.
So, we now have a President -- with a Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren -- praised by a Klansman and a neo-Nazi as he air brushes their evil and tars and feathers their opponents.
I don't know if all of this is a "high crime and misdemeanor."
But it should be.
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