17 August, 2017
Christopher Cantwell, the vocal white supremacist featured in VICE News Tonight's Charlottesville documentary, showed a different side of himself after he realized that law enforcement had issued a warrant for his arrest. Cantwell expresses fear at going outside because of the presence of the National Guard, and condemns the media for making it appear as though the white supremacists who were being violent at the rally.
The next day, armed with assault rifles, tear gas, shields and sticks, the neo-Nazis violently clashed with counter-protestors, until a state of emergency was declared after a 20-year-old white supremacist rammed his vehicle into a group of people, killing one and injuring 19 more.
Much of the documentary focused on Christopher Cantwell, a "white nationalist" member of Unite the Right, and a slew of his buddies, including David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the KKK, and Robert "Azzmador" Ray, a neo-Nazi and the editor of Daily Stormer.
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. "You had, you had a group on one side that was bad".
"So you're the true nonviolent protestors?" the reporter asks.
A more sombre and chaotic scene unfolds on Saturday afternoon.
Trump's equivalence between the actions of the white nationalists and those of the counterprotesters has drawn near-universal backlash by observers, including Republicans.
The 22-minute-long documentary follows a group of white supremacists as they organise the Charlottesville rally. Their rhetoric was explicit and harsh, including chants of "Jews will not replace us" and "blood and soil", a re-appropriation of a Nazi axiom about the importance of German heritage.
"I'm trying to make myself more capable of violence".
"We'll f--- kill these people if we have to", he says directly to the camera. "I had to jump out of the way, I nearly got hit by the vehicle my f-king self". We did not initiate force against anybody.
Ivanka Trump converted to Judaism for her husband, Jared Kushner.
With everything that's happening, I don't think it's very wise for me to go anywhere. He then calls the rally "tough to top", adding, "I think a lot more people are going to die before we're done here, frankly".
He continued: "This is part of the reason that we want an ethno-state".
