The violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Saturday is a national calamity. It is a product of white supremacists and home grown terrorists.
Donald Trump responded by condemning hatred “on many sides.” His refusal to call it what it is, and condemn the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and KKK members who perpetrated this violence, is a dangerous lie that fuels more hatred and violence.
Kudos to the Republican senators who are now calling on Trump to denounce the white supremacists that incited this tragedy. More must join the call. The country needs all our leaders—Republican and Democrat—to stand united against hatred and bigotry.
But all of us—you and I and every decent person in America—must also stand up against it: Not with violence, but with a firm and visible commitment to decency, tolerance, and the rule of law.
Don’t wait for Donald Trump to condemn it. He unleashed it. It is now up to us. We must not allow this in America.
This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Robert B. Reich is the chancellor’s professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and former secretary of labor under the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective Cabinet secretaries of the 20th century. He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. His film, Inequality for All, was released in 2013. Follow him on Twitter: @RBReich.
The DNC shill Robert Reich asserts that Trump “unleashed the violence”. I for one am surprised that there hasn’t been much more violence as a wave of political correctness sweeps the southeast of what many there consider their history, a Stalinesque erasing of the past. When will working folks realized that these periodic surges in the culture wars (such as the racialist focus of BLM, funded by the Ford Foundation) are intended to, and are succeeding, in keeping us fighting one another and never looking toward those who have made our nation a warfare state with the worst quality of life of the western world? By the way, who is calling for the removal of Gen. Sherman’s statue in Greenwich Village, who was a central figure in the Native American holocaust after the Civil War, not to mention the gross war crime of the march through Georgia?