After Charlottesville: how a slew of lawsuits pin down the far right
On a searingly hot day beneath a Confederate statue surrounded by six “no trespassing” signs, Susan Bro talks to a Swedish TV crew. Then she makes a short walk to a street named after her daughter.
“I think she was killed right around where those people are talking,” she says, pointing to a spot beside a redbrick wall on which fresh tributes are regularly chalked.
Heather Heyer, who would have celebrated her 33rd birthday on Tuesday, was mowed down by a car last summer while protesting against neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. Last week, at a courthouse a short distance away, lawyers sought to persuade a federal judge that organisers of the far-right rally should be held accountable.
The case, which could leave prominent white nationalists such as Richard Spencer facing ruin, exemplifies a broader legal offensive aimed at throwing sand into the gears of the “alt-right” movement. Nine months after the show of strength in Charlottesville, there are signs that the effort is working as hate groups haemorrhage cash, are banished from social media platforms and turn on each other in vicious turf wars.
“The legal strategy is to send them into disarray, send them scrambling and hold each one of them to account,” said , the deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), noting a groundswell among lawyers, victims and advocacy groups. “The
