Tracing the Roots of the Far Right: The Impact of Charlottesville’s 2017 Hate Rally

Charlottesville seemed an unlikely backdrop for the violent events that unfolded there. Nestled in Virginia’s Blue Ridge foothills, the city traditionally embodied an image of refinement, civility, and thoughtful discourse. Before 2017, it was known not only as the home of Thomas Jefferson’s complex legacy but also for its Jewish mayor, a significant Black community, and a prestigious public university.

However, the city’s identity became overshadowed by the horrific Unite the Right rally in August 2017, a moment so defining that Deborah Baker’s investigative and personal account, 'Charlottesville: An American Story,' requires no further explanation in its subtitle.

Baker’s richly detailed narrative contributes meaningfully to the expanding body of nonfiction that chronicles and analyzes the surge of racially motivated violence in the United States between 2015 — marked by the Emanuel A.M.E. Church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina — and 2020, the year George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. The imagery of Charlottesville’s torch-bearing extremists and the deadly car attack remains a stark symbol of the nation’s political shift toward the far right during the Trump era.

After graduating from the University of Virginia in 1981, Baker left Charlottesville for New York but felt compelled to return and investigate how such a regressive and violent episode could erupt in what had been regarded as a progressive hometown. She openly expresses her confusion about whether the extremists who assembled in Charlottesville signaled a lasting shift in American politics. She questions if they, much like Donald Trump’s election, were ominous indicators of a future many were unprepared to understand.

Baker draws a clear line from the events in Charlottesville to the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, highlighting the continuing resurgence of far-right ideology. She emphatically rejects the notion that there were "very fine people on both sides," a claim made days after the fatal car attack that killed Heather Heyer and wounded numerous others.