'Trump racist rhetoric rallying cry for alt-right, white supremacists'
The city of Charlottesville in the US State of Virginia experienced chaotic scenes on Saturday after white supremacists and counter-protested faced off in a violent encounter.
A woman lost her life and about 20 others sustained injuries when a car rammed into a crowd protesting against the white nationalists in the city.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe explicitly addressed the violent far-right demonstrators and neo-Nazis on Saturday, telling them to “go home.”
But President Donald Trump has come under a barrage of criticism for falling short of clearly denouncing the white supremacists. The president only made mention of "violence on many sides" without making a direct reference to the alt-right movement.
In a short statement from his private golf club in New Jersey, Trump only acknowledged that the problem “has been going on for long time in our country.”
‘Make America white again’
Talking to Press TV, political commentator Wilmer Leon described racism as a deep-rooted and historical problem in the United States that has even aggravated under President Trump.
“It is really not much of a surprise when you understand the hateful rhetoric that Donald Trump ran on and successfully exploited to become the president of the United States. It is not really surprising when you understand the history of the United States,” Leon noted.
He argued that the racist rhetoric that Trump has been using over the past year has turned into “a rallying cry” for the white supremacists who try to portray the people of color as a threat to their own existence.
“You can go and look at Donald Trump’s speech in Poland where he talks about nationalist values and he talks in a very coded language sending messages to white supremacists in this country about what he really means to make America great again. I have written a piece that states that Donald Trump was actually talking about how to make America white again,” the analyst said.
The Saturday rally was organized by a far-right group to protest a plan to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee, venerated as a heroic figure in the South, and call for the protection of Southern Confederate monuments.
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