Biden challenges Trump by calling a summit against hate and ultras

Five years ago, on a Saturday in August like today, a Nazi ran over a group of counter-demonstrators opposed to a march of ultras and supremacists in the Virginian city of Charlottesville.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
19 August 2022 Friday 16:31
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Biden challenges Trump by calling a summit against hate and ultras

Five years ago, on a Saturday in August like today, a Nazi ran over a group of counter-demonstrators opposed to a march of ultras and supremacists in the Virginian city of Charlottesville. The attack caused the death of the 32-year-old activist Heather Heyer and left twenty others injured. Then-President Donald Trump condemned it as "an appalling display of hate and violence on many sides," saying there were "very good people" on both sides. Not a few members of the Republican Party criticized him for such tolerance towards the violent. They were different times.

Two years later, on April 25, 2019, Joe Biden announced his decision to run for president. His first words when doing so were: "Charlottesville, Virginia." And the reason he gave for running, the tragedy that occurred there, and Trump's reaction.

The White House yesterday recalled this motivation of the now president. He did so by announcing the convening of a summit on September 15 dedicated to "counteracting the corrosive effects of hate-fueled violence on our democracy."

The appointment, called “United We Stand (United we are still standing)”, will mark the start of the political course and the campaign of the mid-term elections that in November will renew the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. As indicated in the announcement with the allusion to Charlottesville, the political significance of the meeting is obvious as it challenges the extremist attitude of Trump and his followers.

Without giving names of participants yet, a specification that Biden's team prefers to leave for moments closer to the meeting, the White House advanced the presence of "heroes from all over the country who are leading a historic job to build bridges and address hate and the division, including the survivors of the violence fueled by that hatred.” The summit will also bring together "a bipartisan group of federal, state and local officials, rights organizations, religious and community leaders, law enforcement officials, former members of violent hate groups who are now working to prevent violence" and representatives of the media and cultural figures who support the cause.

The meeting will open with a speech by the president and will be completed with "inclusive and bipartisan groups and colloquia on the fight against violence, the prevention of radicalization and the promotion of unity".

The call mentions "the disturbing series of hate-fueled attacks" that the country has experienced in recent times, "from Oak Creek to Pittsburgh, from El Paso to Poway, from Atlanta to Buffalo." In this last city of the state of New York, a supremacist killed 10 people and injured three others – with 11 African-Americans among the 14 victims – in a suburban supermarket. Various civil rights organizations then increased their pressure on the government to act more decisively against extremism.

The September 15 summit is partly the result of that pressure. But it will also serve as a political reinforcement for the judicial, police and congressional investigations into the assault on Capitol Hill that Trump instigated and tried to lead on January 6, 2021. Congress will also be a response to the threats and attacks that the former president and his followers have been directing against the FBI and the Prosecutor's Office as a result of the search in which federal agents occupied Trump's residence in Florida and seized the top secret documents that he took from the White House.

This will be a summit for unity... the greatest possible unity against Donald Trump.