Latest news with #UniteTheRight
The Guardian
03-08-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
#Charlottesville review – urgent voices against the alt-right's extremist ideology
'If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention,' says one of the voices in this urgent verbatim show about the rise of the 'alt-right'. Eight years ago this month, a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulted in three deaths and at least 19 serious injuries. If it did not attract the same level of global attention as the mob attack on the US Capitol three-and-a-half years later, it raised a similar red flag about the rise of extremist ideology in the US and beyond. Priyanka Shetty was an acting student at the University of Virginia at the time of the clash between protesters and counter-protesters and set about recording the community's responses. She spoke to fellow citizens, trawled far right websites, found contemporary news reports and, more recently, got hold of court transcripts from the prosecution of the white-supremacist conspirators. In a polished and confident performance, directed by Yury Urnov for Richard Jordan and Yellow Raincoat productions, she snaps quickly from voice to voice to create a social collage: those who saw trouble coming, those blind-sided by it and those defiant in their racist tribalism. Lawyers talk about first amendment rights, officials talk about the joy of life in a friendly college town and witnesses comment on the indifference of police officers as violence erupted. The tapestry of perspectives makes #Charlottesville not just an obvious condemnation of loathsome beliefs, but a richer vision of how such disruption tears at the social fabric. Going a step further, the Indian-born Shetty weaves in her own experience of discrimination: a joke in class about her appearance; failing to get a part in either of the college productions; her complaints brushed aside by a dismissive teacher. Isolated incidents or part of a racist continuum that stretches from small acts of exclusion to the murderous ideology of fascism? At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews
The Guardian
02-08-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Charlottesville review – urgent voices against the alt-right's extremist ideology
'If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention,' says one of the voices in this urgent verbatim show about the rise of the 'alt-right'. Eight years ago this month, a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulted in three deaths and at least 19 serious injuries. If it did not attract the same level of global attention as the mob attack on the US Capitol three-and-a-half years later, it raised a similar red flag about the rise of extremist ideology in the US and beyond. Priyanka Shetty was an acting student at the University of Virginia at the time of the clash between protesters and counter-protesters and set about recording the community's responses. She spoke to fellow citizens, trawled far right websites, found contemporary news reports and, more recently, got hold of court transcripts from the prosecution of the white-supremacist conspirators. In a polished and confident performance, directed by Yury Urnov for Richard Jordan and Yellow Raincoat productions, she snaps quickly from voice to voice to create a social collage: those who saw trouble coming, those blind-sided by it and those defiant in their racist tribalism. Lawyers talk about first amendment rights, officials talk about the joy of life in a friendly college town and witnesses comment on the indifference of police officers as violence erupted. The tapestry of perspectives makes Charlottesville not just an obvious condemnation of loathsome beliefs, but a richer vision of how such disruption tears at the social fabric. Going a step further, the Indian-born Shetty weaves in her own experience of discrimination: a joke in class about her appearance; failing to get a part in either of the college productions; her complaints brushed aside by a dismissive teacher. Isolated incidents or part of a racist continuum that stretches from small acts of exclusion to the murderous ideology of fascism? At the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews
New York Times
08-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
How a Hate Crime in a Southern City Foretold the Rise of the Far Right
CHARLOTTESVILLE: An American Story, by Deborah Baker Charlottesville always seemed like an odd place for Charlottesville to happen. Tucked away in Virginia's Blue Ridge foothills, the city long projected an image of gentility, civility and rationality. In 2017, before everything changed, Charlottesville was home not only to Thomas Jefferson's complicated legacy but also to a Jewish mayor, a substantial Black population and one of the country's elite public universities. Now, however, the site of Jefferson's Monticello and 'Academical Village' is so synonymous with the frightful and portentous Unite the Right rally of August 2017 that no explanatory subtitle was needed for Deborah Baker's searching and personal exploration of her hometown's violent invasion, 'Charlottesville: An American Story.' Baker's vividly detailed reconstruction is a worthwhile addition to a growing canon of narrative nonfiction aimed at documenting and interpreting the outburst of race- and hate-driven violence in America between 2015 (the massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C.) and 2020 (the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis). Charlottesville, with its indelible video of torch-wielding Nazis and a careening Dodge death mobile, fell squarely in the middle of this stretch, an inevitable allegory for the rightward swerve of American politics under Donald Trump. Baker left Charlottesville for New York after graduating from the University of Virginia in 1981 but was drawn back to examine how such a shockingly regressive act could take place in her seemingly progressive hometown. She is transparent from the get-go about her bewilderment that the storm troopers who gathered in Charlottesville might represent something enduring in American politics. 'Were they, like the election of Donald Trump, a harbinger of some future I was too old or ill-equipped to grasp?' she asks in her introduction. Many Americans — perhaps just under half — can likely relate. Baker is clearheaded, however, about the 'direct path' between Charlottesville and the insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and, implicitly, the revival of Trumpism in 2024. She is equally clear that there were not 'very fine people on both sides,' as President Trump asserted three days after one of those people accelerated his car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring at least three dozen others. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
02-06-2025
- General
- Washington Post
Book Review: 'Charlottesville' a dramatic account of deadly 2017 rally and history behind it
Decades before the violent Unite the Right rally in 2017 in Charlottesville that drew white nationalists protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, the city was targeted by a white supremacist who hoped to ignite a race war. To understand the 2017 Unite the Right rally, Deborah Baker writes in 'Charlottesville: An American Story,' readers have to go back to 1956 and John Kasper's trip to Charlottesville to protest school integration.
Associated Press
02-06-2025
- General
- Associated Press
Book Review: 'Charlottesville' a dramatic account of deadly 2017 rally and history behind it
Decades before the violent Unite the Right rally in 2017 in Charlottesville that drew white nationalists protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, the city was targeted by a white supremacist who hoped to ignite a race war. To understand the 2017 Unite the Right rally, Deborah Baker writes in 'Charlottesville: An American Story,' readers have to go back to 1956 and John Kasper's trip to Charlottesville to protest school integration. That historical context combines with a vivid narrative of the 2017 demonstrations to give readers a better understanding of the combustible atmosphere that converged on Charlottesville. The narrative is the heart of Baker's comprehensive history, including details of Heather Heyer's killing by James Alex Fields Jr. — who kept a framed photograph of Adolf Hitler by his bedside and drove his car into a crowd of counter protesters. Baker's writing style delivers an on-the-ground feel of what it was like in Charlottesville, including a harrowing account of the night torch-wielding white nationalists marched through the University of Virginia's campus. But Baker also dives into the history of key players in the events that day, including white nationalist leader Richard Spencer and Zyahna Bryant, who initiated the petition to remove the statues of Lee and Stonewall Jackson from the city's parks. She also explores the shortcomings by authorities, including officials who credulously took white nationalist organizers at their word. Baker's research and eye for detail give 'Charlottesville' the historical authority necessary for understanding the tragic events that occurred over those two days. ___ AP book reviews:
