Episode 67: Five years after Unite the Right, what does right-wing extremism look like in Virginia?

This week, we revisit the terrible anniversary of August 11th and 12th, 2017. Five years after the Unite the Right Rally, "Charlottesville" is still a shorthand for Nazis and fascists invading a community. As we look at Virginia politics and American politics today, where are we now?

To answer that question, we talk to Larycia Hawkins, a professor in both the department of Politics and department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Later in the show, we hear from data scientist Emily Gorcenski, UVA professor Jalane Schmidt, and Virginia Delegate Sally Hudson.

Machine-generated transcript. Blame the AI for any errors.

Nathan Moore 0:00

This is Bold Dominon, a state politics explainer for changing Virginia. I'm Nathan Moore.

Go to Google and search for Charlottesville. Go ahead. Now click on "images."

Five years later, it's still full of images of Confederate and Nazi flags and downtown Charlottesville. Five years later, it's still images of tiki torches, tear gas and car attacks. Five years later, Charlottesville is still a tagline, a shorthand for Nazis and fascists invading a community -- a thing that no city wants to be.

In 2017, the unite the right rally starkly revealed the underbelly of hate and extremism in American politics. As we look at Virginia politics and American politics today, where are we now?

On one hand, the leaders of the rally have been prosecuted, Confederate monuments have come down across the Commonwealth. On the other hand, far right wing ideology has not gone away. If anything, it's been repackaged and integrated into mainstream political culture. You can see it today in school board meetings descend into chaos over critical race theory, or when Virginia's new state appointees defend Confederate monuments and even the Confederacy itself.

This week, we revisit the terrible anniversary of the Unite the Right rally. How has it changed Virginia's politics?

In the second half of the show? We hear from data scientist Emily Gorcenski, UVA Professor Jalane Schmidt, and state delegate Sally Hudson. But first we turn to Larycia Hawkins. She's a professor in both the Department of politics and Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. WTJU producer Alana Bittner talked with her about the state of right wing authoritarianism in Virginia, and what to do about it.

Alana Bittner 1:56

I feel like the term right wing authoritarianism is often thrown around a lot to describe a variety of different groups or ideologies. So to start off, could you give us a definition to work with,

Larycia Hawkins 2:13

People define it differently, but what seems to coalesce in terms of the ways that scholars talk about these organizations and these people, authoritarian strains tend to center around kind of traditional, patriarchal paternalist ways of, of acting and being in the world. The man is the head of the household, right?

Some of these have a religious strand or thread, there's often a white supremacist strain, whether that is intentional or not, whether that's I should say whether that's a guiding principle or not, are just a byproduct, right. But again, this authoritarianism often follows these kind of traditional lines around society.

And so the picture of the this kind of individual is epitomized through various kinds of groups. And it's just become more and more organized -- Proud Boys, Oathkeepers militia are in every state. There are literal towns devoted to folks who are preparing for the coming race war. It's not just about access to guns, it's about a mindset about what it means to protect America and what it means to be an American. What's become quite clear, is that, you know, these currents have been underway for a bit they've just been, they've just been underground, these forces, these individuals in these very organized groups have been fomenting getting ready for these kinds of fights and battles, culturally and politically.

Alana Bittner 4:07

In what ways have the like alt right ideas that were displayed during the unite the right rally influenced Virginia politics in the past five years.

Larycia Hawkins 4:15

So one of the ways this has changed the lay of the land, is that it stirred up the opposition, to be more vocal, to show up more right in bodily ways as opposed to ideas floating around the internet on the dark web or dark corners of you know, preppers and militia websites, etc, etc. So, there's been that, but then it's, it's the enemy you know, is lurking. You can see the face of it. Now.

Another example of how intensely ensconced in Virginia that is These sentiments are I just read yesterday that according to the anti Defamation League, Virginia has the second highest number of incidents coming out of hateful rhetoric in the United States.

Alana Bittner 5:17

Quick side note, the anti Defamation League specifically reports that Virginia has the nation's second highest number of incidents involving white supremacist propaganda in 2021.

Larycia Hawkins 5:28

This data, I'm not sure why I was surprised. But I was, I was surprised because we know from data that there are higher concentrations of militias and other places. So this is this is individuals, and even a smaller kind of concentration of folks but who are very vocal and very active. And I can only imagine that a lot of this opposition was dredged up around the statues. And people often think about, especially around Charlottesville, Virginia as encompassing kind of the Northern Virginia mentality, and not to divide rural and urban, which I think is we should be careful about doing. But to say that, especially in areas like Charlottesville, we need to remember how many various kind of ideologies are out there and active, and not to have our eyes closed or, or be pacified? Right. These are things to fear. Because many people who represent these, I would call them anti values are present at the highest echelons of government. Glenn Youngkin was elected in part predicated on support of people like this. I'm running as on the face as a kind of conservative, a moderate conservative, but in the end, turning towards the far right, the extremist, right. And at least, not not being as public as Trump and sending messages, but certainly not deflecting their support.

And so this goes beyond those who wear the stripes of the Oathkeepers, or the proud boys or any of these other organizations, it's trickled down to the rank and file. And it's not new for me, and folks who study the right, this is not a surprising development. It's about 40 years of regular folk organizing in these local ways that Democrats, and now progressive have not have not paid attention to. So the there's a national level movement, but there's also still that local level movement that conservatives have really perfected. So

Alana Bittner 8:11

yeah, I'm curious, like, what are the tactics that have helped conservatives? Perfect, that local level grassroots thing and what are like Democrats not doing? Like, how do you how do you contrast those?

Larycia Hawkins 8:25

One thing that differs between Republicans and Democrats, is Republicans rally around candidates. And But Republicans, candidates at the state and local level hue to the party message, the messaging is strong. It's clear, one of the ways that the Republican National Convention does that is there's there's more tight party control, because they're so so organized at the state and local level, there's no surprise about who is running for office.

The Democratic Party is less disciplined about having a single message. And so differing messages right now between, you know, Nancy Pelosi and President Biden and Democrats who don't think Biden has been strong enough on climate change, etc. Right. And so of course, you've got the Ocasio-Cortezes of Congress. And you've got folks on the other end like Nancy Pelosi, who all but criticize her and the green New Deal. It's not just a generational difference, it really is a clash between viewpoints. Nevertheless, again, you see folks coming in to line around Republican ideals and again, the Democratic Party shoots itself in the foot by not coming together and having a Have a kind of unified voice on issues where it's particularly important.

And again, there are Republicans right now who, you know, they're the Trump errs and the anti Trumpers. And that's a divide. But it's not significant enough because of the the evangelical fundamentalist base that votes in lockstep with the Republican candidate doesn't matter who it is. Many say evangelicals have kind of made a deal with the devil in order to get their political gains, they've given up on the kind of cultural mores that they've always supported.

Alana Bittner 10:42

Another question I have is What does combating extremism look like? And how successful has Virginia been at that?

Larycia Hawkins 10:54

Well, I think combating extremism, extremism looks like a lot of things. One of the things that happened as a consequence of the unite the right rally here in Charlottesville, has been in increasing participation and local politics, as well as state politics. One of the things that precipitated that, of course, was the fact that the Neo Nazis showed up in this town, because a high school student had the audacity to appeal to City Council to take down monuments to racist individuals. And the monument movement continued apace after those events, can you talk more about the activist coalition that you're a part of, I am involved with a number of local community members, including professors, local residents, people who work in the community clergy, specifically, are a huge part rating from Quaker pacifist to Christian Antifa members, to secular anarchists. And I think it's an amazing Coalition, a community, you know, really hell bent on pursuing justice, and pushing for greater freedom, not just for individual autonomy, but for collective and building a more inclusive, rather than an exclusive mentality in Charlottesville. There's a group called Swords Into Plowshares that has evolved out of this. The idea is like, how do we take these huge chunks of metal? Which, by the way, were quite mass produced, they were not, you know, amazing masterpieces? How do we take that and convert it into something that is artistic, that represents this process? And how do we do that in a way that again, like takes the the local locus of the decision making, and places it in the community.

Other initiatives have been to continue to populate a city council and to pepper the city council and all of the committees with accountability. So an example would be the police civilian review board. A number of local activists hat, including me, have applied to be on the police civilian review board and have either never heard back, or I think maybe some people have received an official No. But it's clear that we're on their radar screen.

What's clear, and what's telling us even before the statutes were coming down, my colleague, Jalane Schmidt said when people asked me what they can do, she said, I tell them, Go to the housing committee meetings. Go to the committees you know, land planning commission. But what's really, as a professor of politics, I'm always telling my students -- All, politics is local. And it's true.

Nathan Moore 14:25

Larycia Hawkins is a professor in both the Department of politics and Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Stay with us. We've got more to come.

You're listening to Bold Dominon, a state politics explainer for changing Virginia, visit us online at BoldDominon.org. And hey, I want to tell you, we are always looking for good ideas to cover in future episodes. If you've ever had a question about state politics, something that just didn't make sense and you want somebody to explain it to you. Let us know. Maybe we can help. Shoot us an email at BoldDominon@virginia.edu

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Well, in the second half of today's show, we revisit some voices that we talked with around this time last year: data scientist Emily Gorcenski, UVA Professor Jalane Schmidt, and Virginia delegate Sally Hudson share their perspectives on the impact the unite the right rally has had on Virginia politics since then. Emily Gorcenski is a data scientist who tracks far right groups, those who are involved with unite the right and others.

Emily Gorcenski 15:56

When we look back at what has happened in American politics over the past, say 10 years, I think we will eventually recognize Charlottesville and unite the right as one of the more important events in American politics because it represented a turning point. It represented a turning point in our relationship with this idea that democracy is something that is participated in by people who are acting in good faith and by people who are have the best interests of American ideals and the American people in their heart. And I think what what happened in Charlottesville, four years ago, really took the shine off of that for a lot of people, I think a lot of people woke up and they said, Wait a second, political violence is happening here at home. And it's happening in ways that I can't ignore it.

Nathan Moore 16:57

you track the far right, as a data scientist, one of the things you're best known for the dark forces that we saw unleashed here in Charlottesville in August 2017. Where are they today?

Emily Gorcenski 17:07

Most of them have become totally marginalized in every way. Many of the groups that came in organized and marched no longer exist in any meaningful form. At the same time, other forces have have grown in their wake. And there's a good argument to be had that the movement that came into Charlottesville was always a disposable movement that was really there just to achieve one kind of political goal. And what does that end? Well, that goal was to sort of move the Overton window the sort of the new re norming American society to be more rightwards. Right. And I think that they succeeded in that the movement that came to Charlottesville, they were useful tools, they were there to sort of set the set the boundaries of the new extreme. And then everything that we look at in the week, we look at kind of compared to what's what was happening in Charlottesville, we say, Okay, well, it wasn't as bad as Charlottesville. So I guess it's okay. What we see is a lot of Republicans latching on to Trumpism, even if they were not aligned politically, with what Trump was doing, you know, politicians are going to ride the wave to power. And a lot of them are taking a gamble, that Trumpism is not dead, just because Donald Trump is no longer president. In fact, some of them are even betting that Donald Trump's loss actually works in their favor, because now they can paint themselves as a victim of a grand conspiracy, and use that to try to mobilize people to become to further polarize our society to create these rifts, and to use that to ride a wave into the power.

Nathan Moore 18:55

And we turn now to Jalane Schmidt. Jalane is a professor at the University of Virginia, and for several years, she's advocated for the removal of Charlottesville is Confederate statues. So the monuments around the state, like are many of them are down, and there's still some smaller towns in Southside that have left their Confederate statues up, but but a lot of these Confederate memorials have been taken down. They're gone. What's it mean?

Jalane Schmidt 19:18

It means that, at least with our visible emblems in our public spaces, that we do not recognize these symbols, as we are representative of our community and the sorts of values that we want to celebrate. We didn't remove history, we changed who we commemorate it. It's not a small thing. You know, it's it's Virginia, saying, you know, we're not just the capital of the Confederacy that was, you know, something that, you know, is, you know, happened in the past. It's definitely, you know, part of our history, but this is, you know, we're more than that.

Nathan Moore 19:55

You know, you and I have talked a number of times before though and and about how aisle. Yeah, it was very partially about the statues, the unite the right rally and all the issues around it. But I remember you using this phrase at the time back in 2017, that this moment in Charlottesville, kind of Lance, the boil of a lot of things had been papered over before. What are those things? Where are we with some of those?

Jalane Schmidt 20:19

Yeah, well, it was never just about the statues, the statues symbolized a lot of things that, you know, the statues were a visible manifestation of a lot of systemic things that weren't as obvious, or at least one is obvious to folks in power, let's put it that way. Kind of looking at how white supremacy is institutionalized, how it's built into the systems, you know, that operate in our lives. I think it brought a magnifying glass on that, and I had an opportunity, but there's a lot of systemic stuff that's still going on that we did not get victories on such as trying to end qualified immunity for the place. We did not not to win on that activist did not, you know, and

Nathan Moore 20:58

explain what qualified immunity means for anybody who might not be familiar the term? Well,

Jalane Schmidt 21:02

well, the police aren't held accountable for crimes, actual crimes that they're committing in, in the, in the course of their employment in the course of the you know, carrying out their job. So, here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, there was a push by activists to and qualified immunity for the police. And, and this this bill got quashed, you know, at the General Assembly, you know, so so, you know, we've notched a win, you know, for kind of the most obvious kind of visible symbols, you know, statues and getting them taken away, but there's, there's some, you know, pernicious systemic problems that have yet to be, you know, really fully addressed.

Nathan Moore 21:42

What are you doing next? I mean, you've got all this time now, you're not leave monuments towards anymore? Yeah.

Jalane Schmidt 21:47

Well, I mean, what I talked about this, you know, with the machine people's like, Oh, congratulations, you know, I know, you work so hard on this, you know, and, you know, now the monuments now, you're, you're done. Right? And, you know, with the with the since the monuments are gone? I said, No, that is the end of the beginning. I'm the director of the Memory Project at the University of Virginia's democracy initiative. And what I'm doing there is to look at the Blue Ribbon Commission's final report from 2016, that was submitted to, to the city council. And, you know, the statues recommendations in that report kind of got the most airtime, because, of course, you know, we had a lawsuit, and then we had, you know, people attacking us and, you know, in a court case, and went all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court. So that got all the attention. But there was actually a cluster of recommendations that were made in that blue ribbon commission final report, you know, and so what I'm trying to do is kind of chip away at that. Another part of the Blue Ribbon Commission that that recommendation that was made was to, we need more teaching in our public schools, about local African American history about, you know, infusing that and I'm happy to say that at the state level here, here's, you know, a victory, I would say, you know, at the state level is due, again, to the hard work of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, we now have statewide law that in order to get a high school degree, from a public high school in the Commonwealth of Virginia, you must take an African American history class, and you know, that that's a wonderful thing. So, you know, so here's something that the legislature is helping us, you know, is, is bolstering what we've said at the at the local level that we want to, you know, so that that's a great thing.

Nathan Moore 23:25

That's great. And, you know, reminded, it's like, it takes stories to develop new common sense, it takes stories to develop a new vision, you know, for how our society can be.

Jalane Schmidt 23:36

Absolutely, yeah, right. I mean, those statues were telling us one story, but they were lying to see, you know, they were lying to us saying these, these Confederate figures were heroes, when we know that half the population here was enslaved, you know, did not see them as heroes. It was a it was an attempt to suppress, you know, as a certain history. And so those statues were telling us a certain narrative, we've taken those statues away, you know, the question keeps getting raised well, what should go in their place? And, you know, I think we need to really pause on that, you know, it's like, you know, let the ground you know, literally and figuratively settle.

Nathan Moore 24:10

Jolene Schmidt is an activist and a professor at the University of Virginia. Sally Hudson represents Charlottesville in the Virginia House of Delegates. She was elected after the unite the right rally, but much of her work in her first term was related to the fallout of that incident. She spoke with me earlier this week via zoom. What have you seen in the General Assembly as far as how things have changed since unite the right

Sally Hudson 24:33

well, you know, very concretely, literally, concretely, Virginia has started to reckon with Confederate monuments and the many ways that lost cause mythology permeates how history is taught and remembered. And I think it has also thanks to the credit of a lot of really good organizers spurred us to understand how those surfaces Double symbolic changes are important. And also just the beginning of a much more gnarly reckoning with the way that structural racism permeates housing and employment and environmental justice and everything else that we do. It's important for us, all of us who are involved in public service and civic organizing, to make sure that the work doesn't stop there. You that every time that we have a conversation about a Robert E Lee statue, that we connect it to the redlining that still segregates our homes and our schools, or to the pipelines, plowing through historically black communities in Southside, Virginia.

Nathan Moore 25:40

The individuals like Richard Spencer, and some of the other leaders from that day in 2017. They're pretty marginalized. Now, you know, they've gone bankrupt and all the rest, but the values, the ideas, the things that they stood for, are pretty broadly supported within the entire Republican Party nowadays. You've got, you know, Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn young and out there pandering to the election conspiracy theory crowd. How Where does democracy go in Virginia, when that's happening?

Sally Hudson 26:08

I think more generally, the question that I think folks on the left have to wrestle with is, what role are we willing to play in fostering some kind of functional, conservative movement in the country, because as long as the only viable outlet for conservative thought, is the Republican Party, which, as you said, is completely hijacked and beholden to this extremist wing, then we're going to stay stuck in this tug of war. For me, that's why I am such an active proponent of pluralistic reforms, like rank choice voting, because I think we need an escape valve somewhere for that energy. Because there there are a lot of people in Virginia, who I think are never just culturally going to get over the hurdle of calling themselves, Republicans or Democrats, like the idea of flipping parties and filling a bubble with a D next to it runs. So contrary to what they've been telling themselves for decades, that the outlet for their political energy is going to have to take another name and form. And if we only give them the Democrats, they've always known and the Republicans that currently exist, then I think we're going to stay trapped in this two party tug of war. And so that's that's why I think that everyone has an interest in encouraging pluralism, because we need to create an outlet for people who may not be able to find themselves all the way to wherever you are, but still need to break hold of the brand of extremism, which, which governs our party. Does that make any sense?

Nathan Moore 28:07

It does. It does. Though. The framing was funny, though, because I'm hearing you say like, oh, yeah, the left needs to help. Help there be functional, right. Like, wait a minute. Don't we have enough to do

Sally Hudson 28:18

I get that that's uncomfortable for people on the left? Yeah. Like the I mean, it doesn't matter if the left can keep winning elections. 5545. If the most 10% extreme of the country is a violent threat, if the most 20 to 30% extreme of the country continues to foster a global pandemic. You know, winning elections is not enough. We all have to take a stake in combating extremism. We all have a stake in a more stable and functional politics in every corner of the political spectrum, because we've seen that a vocal and dangerous minority can hijack the whole country.

Nathan Moore 29:01

Sally Hudson is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. Thanks to her and also to data scientist Emily Gorcenski, UVA Professor Jalane Schmidt, and UVA Professor Larycia Hawkins. My name is Nathan Moore, and I'm the host of Bold Dominon. Our producer and editor this week was Alana Bittner. Find us online at BoldDominon.org. And don't forget to subscribe. It's just a click away.