A powerful Vice News film published on Tuesday raised the curtain on the motivations of white supremacists at the center of violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend.
The film sees a Vice crew embed with Christopher Cantwell, a speaker at the “Unite the Right” rally which took place on Friday and Saturday. The demonstration culminated in the death of a 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, when a car drove into a group of protesters.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump blamed “both sides” – the far-right marchers and those there to protest them – for the violence, adding that there were “very fine people” in both camps.
There is little evidence of that in the Vice film, however, which shows hundreds of right-wing ralliers marching with torches and chanting: “You will not replace us.”
Those chants swiftly make way for shouts of “Jews will not replace us”, and many of the right-wing protagonists continue to use racists slurs for Jewish people and African Americans throughout the video.
Cantwell, a white nationalist who streams his own talk radio show and is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as “an unapologetic fascist”, was due to be a speaker at the rally.
“I’m trying to make myself more capable of violence. I’m here to spread ideas, talk in the hopes that somebody will come along and do that. Somebody like Donald Trump who does not give his daughter to a Jew,” Cantwell says in the Vice film.
He then agrees with the Vice News host that he is looking for a leader who is “a lot more racist than Donald Trump”.
The film shows clashes between right-wingers and protesters, and at one point shows Cantwell writhing around on the ground as he attempts to pour milk over his head.
“They maced me,” he tells the reporter. She asks who.
“I don’t know. Communists.”
As Cantwell rolls on the floor, some of his cohorts shout: “Heil Cantwell.”
Later, Cantwell shows the film crew that he had been carrying three handguns and a knife.
The video, which originally aired on Monday on Vice News Tonight on HBO, also features the prominent racists David Duke, a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and Matthew Heimbach, whom the SPLC says is “considered by many to be the face of a new generation of white nationalists”.