From Bob D.

 

“You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group … There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people — neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest.”

— President Trump, Aug. 15, 2017

I was talking to one of my conservative coffee buddies the other morning and he made me laugh. 

He had been reading the blog and said "You know, there were good people at Charlottesville marching too. They weren't necessarily all evil Nazis. Some of them just loved the confederacy and their Southern history."

I admit that I am having a hard time warming up to the notion of good Nazis, 

I asked him if the good ones were the altos singing "The jews will not replace us" or the baritones?

I decided to research the event and see if my memory was failing me and found this good article at the Atlantic.

The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville was ostensibly about protecting a statue of Robert E. Lee. It was about asserting the legitimacy of “white culture” and white supremacy, and defending the legacy of the Confederacy.

So why did the demonstrators chant anti-Semitic lines like “Jews will not replace us”?

The demonstration was suffused with anti-black racism, but also with anti-Semitism. Marchers displayed swastikas on banners and shouted slogans like “blood and soil,” a phrase drawn from Nazi ideology. “This city is run by Jewish communists and criminal niggers,” one demonstrator told Vice News’ Elspeth Reeve during their march. 

I don't know man. Hard to find a lot of love or sympathy for these people. I have yet to hear a coherent statement from one of the "fine" people that marched that day. Or one that was not filled with hatred. Looks like a Nazi, smells like a Nazi, I'm going with Nazi. The bad kind.

...there were only neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the Friday night rally. Virtually anyone watching cable news coverage or looking at the pictures of the event would know that.

It’s possible Trump became confused and was really referring to the Saturday rallies. But he asserted there were people who were not alt-right who were “very quietly” protesting the removal of Lee’s statue.

But that’s wrong. There were white supremacists. There were counterprotesters. And there were heavily armed anti-government militias who showed up on Saturday. “Although Virginia is an open-carry state, the presence of the militia was unnerving to law enforcement officials on the scene,” The Post reported.