If the election of Donald Trump signaled the mainstreaming of the “alt-right” in American public life, then the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, was the point made undeniable. Hundreds of avowed neo-Nazis, white supremacists, far-right militants and Klansmen walked the streets of Charlottesville and the University of Virginia, bearing torches, assaulting counter-protesters, and shouting a cacophony of racist and antisemitic epithets (“Jews will not replace us!”). On the afternoon of 12 August, an avowed white supremacist drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than 30 others.
That man was later convicted of first-degree murder and several hate crimes, and sentenced to more than life in prison. But for the rest of the participants, particularly the leaders of the “alt-right” – a loose constellation of antisemites, white supremacists and others – there seemed to be little recourse for justice. There were no criminal charges for organizing an event that, as outlined in the new HBO documentary No Accident, was deliberately intended to foment the violence that cost Heyer’s life and left dozens of others with countless physical and psychological scars.
