Violent protests a year ago in Charlottesville, Va., remain an unheeded warning

A year ago, white nationalist groups descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, for a rally against the city’s decision to remove Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s statue from a city park. They clashed violently with activists seeking peace.

Now, the potential for violent confrontations is brewing again as white nationalist groups and activists who oppose them are planning rallies and demonstrations across the country. When asked what has changed in this country over the course of the year, USC Dornsife experts responded that America has a huge task before it — to address hate.

“Charlottesville was a wake-up call for this country and woe unto us if we fail to heed the warning that hatred continues to thrive among us,” said Stephen Smith, Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Educationat USC Dornsife.

The USC Shoah Foundation has a very large window into a global history of hate, having recorded more than 55,000 testimonies from Holocaust survivors and archiving the stories of other survivors from the Armenian Genocide, the Nanjing Massacre and the Guatemalan Genocide.

Claudia Ramirez Wiedeman, Director of Education at USC Shoah Foundation said that hatred can be prevented through education. 

“With the right training and tools, we know educators can be enormously influential in leading students to recognize and counter hate, and to develop empathy, understanding and respect,” Ramirez Wiedeman said.

It’s not just educators who are the beacons amid the tempestuous waves of hatred. Leaders, including President Donald Trump, should still the waters by condemning violence by hate groups, said Steve Ross, professor of history at USC Dornsife.

A failure to condemn hatred effectively gives permission for people to hate, and it can pave a path to violence, he said.

“When hate groups move from the margins to the mainstream of American society, and when government authorities seem supportive or complicit, it is now the obligation of Americans to stand up for every American regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity. That has been my call to arms,” said Ross, whose recent book, Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and Los Angeles, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

While the archives of history offer a clear view of the consequences of hate, they also provide porous reflection of America and its flaws.

“Hate has been a part of the American fabric even before its founding, since the settlement of the country,” Ross said. “Hate has had periods where it has come to the forefront of American life and when it has faded into the background.”

He noted that in the 1930s, American fascists and white supremacists openly called for death to blacks and to Jews. During the Red Scare in the 1940s and ’50s, U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and others manipulated national concerns about communism to attack Jews.

For some groups, the hate has never faded into the background. It remains always at the fore. 

“For blacks in America, the question is: When hasn’t it been at the forefront?” Ross said.

Time heals all wounds, the adage goes. But when it comes to hate, historians and scholars are skeptical. 

“I don’t think we’ll ever see the end of this dark side of our humanity,” Smith said.

“However, we can create the kind of community and values that will be stronger than the hatred we know we will face.”