On August 12, the small, serene city of Charlottesville, Virginia will mark the anniversary of a deadly white nationalist rally that shocked the nation.
Here, in their own words, some of those closest to the events of that weekend tell the story of what happened, why it happened, and what it meant to a city and a nation.You may find some language offensive.
PROLOGUE: 'WE KNEW WE WERE IN FOR A BAD DAY'
Ryan Kelly, photographer, Charlottesville Daily Progress It's important to understand that this didn't happen in a vacuum, it didn't just pop up and surprise everybody. It felt over the course of the summer that things were building up in Charlottesville.
Brennan Gilmore, Charlottesville resident People hadn't quite understood the level of violence or hatred or the numbers of people coming to town, but the town was very much aware. It was like a hurricane was coming.
Jalane Schmidt, University of Virginia professor, Black Lives Matter activist The propaganda that the alt-right had put out was martial in its imagery. It was a march on Charlottesville. It was very militaristic. We felt like we were going to be under siege.
Dr Michael Williams, surgeon, UVA hospital We got a plan in place in anticipation, but I got a fair amount of push-back from my colleagues in surgery. They said "This is going to be a big nothing."
Seth Wispelwey, local reverend It felt to me like a profound test. But there was no question about where I belonged and what I wanted to do.
Brenda Brown-Grooms, local reverend We'd been monitoring the social media posts of the alt-right and they were detailing their hopes for the weekend, hopes for inciting a race war in the country, so we knew it was going to be dire.
Jalane Schmidt The crazy thing is we tried to warn the city. We had infiltrated chat rooms, taken screenshots. We made six dossiers, presented them to police, the city council, anyone who would listen. We said, "This is not a First Amendment rally. They are literally coming to kill us."
Emily Gorcenski, student activist There were explicit calls for violence there. We presented them to the city in the hope they would shut the rally down before it began.
Rev Brenda Brown-Grooms The information we gave them fell on deaf ears.
Emily Gorcenski When that failed, we knew we were in for a bad day.
'NAZIS STARTED COMING OUT OF THE WOODWORK'
How it began - Other cities in America contended with their Confederate monuments and the legacy of slavery, but it would be Charlottesville, near the former capital of the Confederacy, that would bear the brunt of the controversy.
Jalane Schmidt In 2016 a young teenage activist here in Charlottesville started a petition to remove the Confederate monuments. At the same time, we had the Republican primary campaign heating up with Trump winning more and more states. Local white supremacists got upset about the efforts to remove the statues and they were fuelled by the feedback nationally, saying "This is OK, it's open season to be racist."
Zyahna Bryant, teenage activist I had to write a school paper about something I could change and I had been thinking about public spaces in Charlottesville. I thought it was important to draw attention to how Confederate imagery is violent and what it represents for people of colour. Eventually I turned my paper into a petition.
Wes Bellamy, Charlottesville councillor and former deputy mayor When I first started talking about moving the statues, people were livid, they hated hearing about it. I started getting racist abuse - "We're going to get you nigger," that kind of thing.
Zyahna Bryant For me, it's hard because there are no statues in Charlottesville that depict African-American heroes. And so for that reason alone, black people have nothing to look up to in our public spaces. We are not represented.
Jalane Schmidt Those statues were put up in the 1920s in order to edify the white public and they are still there for the edification of white people. And now people are shifting the reason. Now it's because they don't want to forget history?
Charles Weber, Charlottesville lawyer fightingthe removal of thestatuesOur view was that the city didn't have the authority to do what they proposed to do. Aside from being magnificent works of art and places of beauty for the city, the statues are a memorial to war veterans. It's not in America's DNA to deny its own history.
Jalane Schmidt On 29 January 2017, the mayor called a press conference in front of the city hall. And he announced that Charlottesville was now the capital of the resistance. People cheered. That resonated with a lot of people, but it put a target on our backs.
Wes Bellamy The Nazis and Confederates started coming out of the woodwork. Then Jason Kessler came to light.
Jason Kessler, organiser, Unite the Right rally I wasn't really involved in local politics, I didn't find Charlottesville politics or any other politics very interesting. Then I was doing yard work one day for a friend and he happened to bring up the Robert E Lee statue and how the city was trying to tear it down. I thought it was symbolic of a lot of things happening in society.
Claire Gastañaga, executive director, ACLU Virginia Jason Kessler applied for a permit for a rally at Emancipation Park, some time last spring. The way the Charlottesville process works, a permit is granted automatically if there's no negative decision in 10 days.
Jason Kessler Shoot, the moment I put in the application didn't feel that eventful. After 10 days it was approved and I set about calling different people in the alternative media, on the internet. Some describe them as alt-right, some as alt-light.
Charles Weber Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer, both University of Virginia graduates, saw the argument over the statues as a way to promote their own cause. We were horrified by that.
Nikuyah Walker, counter-protester, now Charlottesville mayor People like Kessler and Spencer started to get a little leery of whether white supremacy would be maintained. That's what this was about: "How dare you, a primarily white council, vote to take down our statues?"
Jason Kessler Richard Spencer is a white nationalist. Personally I don't call myself a white nationalist. I consider myself a civil and human rights advocate, focused on the caucasian demographic.
Isaac Smith, former ally of Jason Kessler Kessler's idea was to try to unite the alt-right with the mainstream right, and get regular Republicans to show up.
Jason Kessler The moderate speakers did not want to be on the same stage as Richard Spencer, so it ended up being much more far right than I intended it to be.
Claire Gastañaga, executive director, ACLU Virginia People had been calling all that week for Kessler's permit to be revoked. After a series of closed meetings, Charlottesville council sent him a letter saying it was revoked but they would consider reissuing it if he moved the rally to a different location. He tweeted us at about 2am on the Tuesday before the weekend, asking if we would be interested in giving him legal assistance. There was nothing about his political positions that we agreed with, but there are rules and governments have to follow those rules. We filed a complaint on Thursday and the judge held a hearing on the Friday night, about 9pm, and ruled that the decision to revoke Kessler's permit was an unconstitutional decision based on the content of his speech. So the permit was reissued.
Walt Heinecke, University of Virginia professorWe decided to apply for permits for counter-protests. I teach a class in citizenship so I thought it was time for me to put my money where my mouth was. We are in a battle for the soul of America at this point, and I thought it was time for people to step up.
Update, July7, 2018: One day after being exposed as a member of a violent white supremacist group, Michael Miselis has lost his job as an aerospace engineer. In an email, company spokesman Tim Paynter told ProPublica and Frontline that Miselis “is no longer an employee of Northrop Grumman.” Paynter did not say whether Miselis was fired or resigned from his position.
There likely isn’t such a thing as a “typical” violent white extremist in America in 2018. Still, Michael Miselis — a University of California, Los Angeles doctoral student with a U.S. government security clearance to work on sensitive research for a prominent defense contractor — makes for a pretty unusual case.
For months, ProPublica and Frontline have been working to identify the white supremacists at the center of violent demonstrations across the country, including the infamous Unite the Right rally last August in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Rise Above Movement, a Southern California group that expresses contempt for Muslims, Jews, and immigrants, became a focus of that effort. ProPublica and Frontline were able to quickly identify a number of the group’s leaders, and find evidence that put them in the middle of violence in Charlottesville and Berkeley, California, among other places.
But one seeming member of RAM was harder to nail down. In video shot in Charlottesville, a bearded, husky man is seen in a red Make America Great Again hat with his hands wrapped in tape that came in handy for the brawling that occurred that day. During one encounter, the unidentified man in the red hat pushed an African-American protester to the ground and began pounding on him, video of the episode shows; moments later, a known RAM member choked and bloodied a pair of female counterprotesters. The possible RAM member also had turned up in video shot during hours of combat at a Trump rally in Berkeley, as well. Wearing protective goggles to ward off pepper spray, the man fought alongside RAM members, wrestling one protester to the ground and punching others.
Ultimately, ProPublica and Frontline determined the man in the violent footage was Miselis, a 29-year-old pursuing a Ph.D. in UCLA’s aerospace engineering program. Miselis was identified using video footage and social media posts, and reporters confirmed his identity in an encounter with him outside his home. In interviews, a number of California law enforcement officials said Miselis was a member of RAM.
In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Miselis works as a systems engineer for Northrop Grumman, the giant defense contractor with a plant in Redondo Beach, California.
When approached by ProPublica and Frontline in front of his home in Lawndale, a small city south of Los Angeles, Miselis said he “didn’t know anything” about what happened in Charlottesville.
“I think you got the wrong guy,” he said before driving off in his car.
Miselis did not respond to questions about his involvement with RAM. He did not answer additional questions sent by email.
Several current and former employees at Northrop Grumman told ProPublica and Frontline that Miselis has received a security clearance to work in a computer modeling and simulation group within Northrop’s aerospace division. Such security clearances are typically issued in a two-step process. The federal Office of Personnel Management conducts an investigation into the individual. The agency’s findings are then forwarded to a special unit within the Department of Defense, which makes the final determination on whether the person should receive a clearance, a status that often allows the person access to classified or otherwise sensitive information concerning national security.
Public affairs officers at the Defense Department declined to comment about Miselis and his security clearance. The federal personnel management office referred questions regarding Miselis to Northrop Grumman.
Northrop Grumman did not respond to several requests for comment. However, interviews with current and former Northrop employees, as well as an internal email, make clear the company knows of Miselis’ actions in Charlottesville and involvement with RAM. Miselis informed his superiors about his contact with reporters from ProPublica and Frontline, as is required by any individual who holds a higher-level security clearance, the people said.
So far, it seems, the company has taken no action against Miselis, who remains employed.
Keegan Hankes, an analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center who follows RAM closely, said he was surprised that nothing has been done about Miselis’ employment and security clearance.
“It’s ridiculous,” Hankes said.
“They’re openly motivated by racism,” he added of RAM.
As ProPublica has previously reported, RAM first surfaced publicly last spring and has quickly established itself as one of the violent groups in the resurgent white supremacist scene; members, who regularly train in boxing and martial arts, have been documented engaging in a string of melees. Founded in early 2017 by Robert Rundo, a Queens, New York, native who served an 18-month prison sentence for stabbing a rival gang member six times during a 2009 street fight, the group’s core membership is small — 15 to 20 young men — but capable of real menace, ProPublica’s reporting has shown.
Rundo has recruited followers from the Orange County and San Diego chapters of the Hammerskin Nation, the country’s largest Nazi skinhead gang, and one the authorities say has been behind at least nine murders. One of the Hammerskins who joined up with RAM, Matthew Branstetter, went to prison in California in 2011 on hate crime charges for robbing and assaulting a Jewish man in an Orange County park. The attack left the victim with “a concussion, broken jaw, eye socket fracture, broken nose, cracked ribs, severe facial bruising, and cuts and bruises to his body and face,” according to a news release issued by county prosecutors at the time. Other RAM members have spent time in prison and Los Angeles County Jail on charges for robbery, firearms possession and other offenses.
The FBI has taken notice. Several law enforcement officials familiar with the bureau’s work said agents have opened a formal investigation into RAM. In a statement, the FBI said, “While the FBI neither confirms nor denies the existence of an investigation, our agents investigate activity which may constitute a federal crime or pose a threat to national security. Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on criminal activity. The FBI cannot initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or the exercise of their First Amendment rights, and we remain committed to protecting those rights for all Americans.”
Since last August, local prosecutors have brought charges against a handful of participants in the Charlottesville rally, successfully convicting several men so far, including activists on both sides of the clashes. Now federal authorities are targeting neo-Nazi James Alex Fields, the man accused of killing counterprotester Heather Heyer and injuring more than two dozen others. Federal prosecutors recently filed 30 charges against Fields, including 28 hate crime charges.
A native of Stockton, California, Miselis earned a bachelor’s of science degree in mechanical engineering from UCLA in 2011. UCLA’s website today lists Miselis as a Ph.D. candidate in the engineering department’s hypersonics and computational aero-dynamics group. After Frontline and ProPublica began making inquiries about Miselis, the school issued a brief statement saying only that he is technically on leave from the doctoral program.
Miselis was clearly prepared for the unrest in Berkeley in the spring of 2017. At the Trump rally he wore protective goggles to ward off pepper spray or tear gas, taped his hands up like a boxer, and wore a gray active-wear uniform, as did several other RAM members that day. In video footage reviewed by ProPublica and Frontline, Miselis can be seen fighting alongside other RAM members.
The event turned into a multi-hour street battle pitting Trump supporters, including fascists and extreme-right activists, against counterprotesters, some of them militant anti-fascists. Police made 20 arrests, confiscating knives, pepper spray, a stun gun, an axe-handle, and many wooden dowel rods, which were used as clubs by participants. At least seven people were transported to the hospital for their injuries. Rundo, RAM’s founder, was arrested and detained for assault on a police officer, but Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley declined to file charges. “We determined we didn’t have enough evidence to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Teresa Drenick, an Alameda County deputy district attorney.
After the Berkeley rally, Miselis traveled across the country to take part in the massive white supremacist convergence in Charlottesville, where his activities were photographed and recorded on video, both by professional journalists and other people equipped with smart phones. At the rally on Aug. 12, pictures taken by photojournalist Jason Andrew show Miselis walking alongside two other RAM members previously identified by ProPublica, Tom Gillen and Ben Daley.
At roughly 10 a.m., Miselis and the other RAM members confronted counterprotesters a few steps away from Emancipation Park, where white supremacists had gathered beneath a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Daley attacked two female counterprotesters, kicking and punching them, a scene captured in video obtained by ProPublica and Frontline. He wrapped both hands around the throat of one woman, throttling her until she fell to the ground, blood seeping from a gash on her temple. The other woman emerged from the incident with a laceration across her forehead. On video, she screams as blood drips across her face.
Miselis jumped into the fracas. In addition to Frontline and ProPublica, National Geographic produced video documenting the brawl.
A sequence of pictures shot by photojournalist Edu Bayer, who was on assignment for the New York Times, show Miselis hurling what appears to be a can of soda at a counterprotesters. In one photo he flexes his biceps muscles in celebration.
It’s this sort of street combat that worries the SPLC’s Hankes. In his view, such brazen criminal activity should be a red flag for both Northrop Grumman and the Pentagon.
“I can’t believe that participation in an organized white supremacist group focused on street-level violence wouldn’t jeopardize your security clearance,” Hankes said.
Guardian US and WNYC’s On the Media collaborated on a radio episode looking the coverage of neo-Nazis and white nationalists In August, hundreds of white men with torches marched across the University of Virginia campus. They chanted “Jews will not replace us!” and “Blood and soil!” and fought with counter-protesters in the streets.
The footage and photographs from the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, left people around the world shaken. These were white nationalists and neo-Nazis marching proudly in public, faces bare, in support of an openly fascist ideology.
For months before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, news outlets had been profiling the emboldened racist extremists who had celebrated the election of Donald Trump. The coverage had often sparked backlash, with readers across the political spectrum arguing that fringe racists were being given too much of a platform, and that media coverage was blowing their influence out of proportion.
Tina Fey made a surprise appearance on SNL's Weekend Update to talk about her alma matter, the KKK, Nazis, and "Donny John Trump," a name she pronounced really stupid-sounding.
“He condemns violence on many sides and I’m feeling sick ’cause I’ve seen Raiders of the Last Ark and wasn’t confused by it. Nazis are always bad. I don’t care what you say.”
Noting that white supremacists have other protests scheduled, Fey admitted, “Part of me hopes these neo-Nazis do it in New York City. I hope they do try it and get the ham salad kicked out of them by a bunch of drag queens.” She added, however, “At the same time, I don’t want any more good people to get hurt.” And with everyone “anxious” and asking “what can I do?” she encouraged people to “find a local business you support, maybe a Jewish-run bakery or an African-American-run bakery. Order a cake with an American flag on it, and just eat it.”
When Colin Jost questioned how that would help, she shot back, “Love is love, Colin.” Fey went on to stress-eat a cake then and there as she continued to rant about recent events. In regards to white supremacists wanting to “take” back the country,” she pointed out, “We stole it from the Native Americans, and when they have a peaceful protest in Standing Rock, we shoot at them with rubber bullets.” She again emphasized that “the other size is Nazis and Klansman,” and bluntly stated, “And also, who drove the car into the crowd? Hillary’s emails?”
“As women who have suffered at the hands of Daesh [ISIS] we know well the dangers that fascist, racist, patriarchal and nationalist groups and organizations pose,” read a statement from female fighters from the Yazidi religious minority. “Once again men of this mind-set, this time in America, have martyred a woman, Heather Heyer, who was resisting against the division and destruction of communities.”
“We believe that Heather Heyer’s struggle is our struggle and that the fight against fascism is a global battle,” the Yazidi women’s statement continued. “For this reason, we are calling on women around the world to unite against fascism and put an end to terrorist groups like Daesh and those made from the same cloth that kill women like Heather.”
