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Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has placed the National Guard on standby in preparation for a rally in Charlottesville on Saturday, where at least 1,000 nationalists are expected to attend.

The Unite the Right rally is scheduled to take place Saturday at McIntire Park in Charlottesville, the city said on its website. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in a statement that the event could be the "largest white supremacist gathering in a decade."

McAuliffe said in a statement that while he believes the majority of the rally's participants will express their views "safely and respectfully," he believes that some attendees may be violent.

Virginia is the birthplace of the rights to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly that make our country great," McAuliffe said. "...However, in advance of tomorrows rally, there have been communications from extremist groups, many of which are located outside of Virginia, who may seek to commit acts of violence against rally participants or law enforcement officials."

The "alt-right" movement is characterized by a mix of racism, white nationalism and populism, according to The Associated Press.

McAuliffe urged residents who plan to attend -- whether in support or opposition of the rally -- to make alternative plans.

"Many of the individuals coming to Charlottesville tomorrow are doing so in order to express viewpoints many people, including me, find abhorrent," he said. "As long as that expression is peaceful, that is their right. But it is also the right of every American to deny those ideas more attention than they deserve."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is representing the event's organizer -- right-wing blogger Jason Kessler -- in a lawsuit filed Aug. 10 against the city of Chartlottesville and City Manager Maurice Jones. The suit claims that Kesslers first amendment and constitutional rights were violated because on Aug. 7, city officials initially tried to revoke his original event permit, and then changed the location of the event.

The city claimed that this was a result of the high number of expected attendees, and not because of public pressure to stop the rally from taking place, Claire Gastaaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, told ABC News.

While Gastaaga said the ACLU disagrees with Kessler's speech, she criticized city officials for attempting to revoke the permit without due process.

"We think it's important the government make decisions in the sunlight," she said.

A representative for the city of Charlottesville did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for a comment in regard to the lawsuit.

The rally is expected to draw at least 1,000 participants, according to an affidavit from Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas, which was provided to ABC News from the ACLU. Emancipation Park, the original event location, would have been unable to accommodate a peaceful crowd safely, Jones said in an affidavit.

"There is no doubt that Mr. Kessler has a First Amendment right to hold a demonstration and to express his views," the city manager wrote in a statement on Aug. 7. "Nor is there any doubt that we, as a city, have an obligation to protect those rights, the people who seek to exercise them, and the broader community in which they do. We have determined that we cannot do all of these things effectively if the demonstration is held in Emancipation Park."

Large crowds are also expected in downtown Charlottesville on Saturday, the city said, with high numbers of protesters demonstrating against the rally expected to be among those in attendance.

When Kessler applied for the permit on May 30, he proposed the event as a "free speech rally in support of the Lee monument," according to Jones' affidavit. The city has plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park, which was formerly known as Lee Park, according to the complaint.

"Just as the Unite the Right participants have the right to air their views, so do those who want to protest against those views," said Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer in a statement. "Democracy can be noisy, and it can be messy. But by ensuring we protect both public safety and the Constitution through the city manager's decision, I firmly believe that we will emerge from the weekend of August 12 a stronger community than ever."

ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said the organization agrees with Signer.

The white supremacist rally in Charlottesville is the latest indication that the darkest corners of society are emboldened to come forward and openly parade their bigotry on main street, said Greenblatt. We continue to stand with Charlottesville Mayor Signer and those who reject intolerance. Hate has no place in our communities."

On May 13, noted white nationalist Richard Spencer led protesters with torches in a Charlottesville rally against the planned removal of Confederate statues in the city.

Link:
Virginia governor orders National Guard on standby ahead of 'alt-right' rally - ABC News

A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship partner church in Charlottesville, Va., hosted a community prayer service Aug. 8 in anticipation of an alt-right rally this weekend protesting planned removal of a Confederate monument that has the community bracing for violence.

The 50-minute service at University Baptist Church in Charlottesville is one of a series of advocacy events countering Saturdays Unite the Right rally protesting a decision earlier this year to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a downtown park.

Organized by white nationalist Richard Spencer and local activist Jason Kessler, it is expected to be one of the largest white supremacist rallies in recent U.S. history. Congregate Charlottesville, an organizing group, has called for 1,000 clergy and faith leaders to show up in Charlottesville this weekend to confront the protesters.

Charlottesville survived a July protest by the Klan without serious incident, but city officials fear this weekends rally could be more dangerous.

During the 50-minute prayer service, University Baptist Church Senior Pastor Matthew Tennant asked God to keep us from violence as some of the news points to what could be a powder keg.

Jillian Andrzejewski

Jillian Andrzejewski, pastor of Mooreland Baptist Church and 2010 graduate of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, prayed that activists and protesters will express themselves in ways that are kind, helpful and loving and may both sides see each other as humans.

Allison Hager Jackson, an Alliance of Baptists-endorsed chaplain at Legacy Hospice, prayed for healing for all parties involved.

Heal the fear that builds barriers and divides us from our neighbors, she said. Heal the fear that keeps us seated when you would have us stand up alongside the least of these. Heal the pride that allows us to see the sin of others but not our own sin.

We pray that you will heal us that we may heal in our community the systems in which we so often participate that cause people of color and others to be oppressed, Jackson continued. We pray that you will heal the fear that causes police officers to react violently when violence is not necessary, and in doing so heal the rift that exists between police and citizens.

She also asked God to heal whatever brokenness exists within these people of the alt-right that causes them to spew hatred rather than the love that you so freely give to them and all us.

Will Brown, associate minister for community at University Baptist Church, reminded the audience that tensions suddenly coming to a head in Charlottesville are nothing new.

They run deep, Brown said. Many have looked at our nations history of slavery and Jim Crow, of racial discrimination, and call this Americas original sin. It is a stain on our collective conscience that we just cant seem to get rid of. There is no easy answer for this. There is no quick fix. This stain is deeply set.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship does not issue public pronouncements on social issues, but in June the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution denouncing every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Previous stories:

In annual meeting do-over, Southern Baptists denounce alt-right white supremacy

Alt-right isnt new to Christianity, says author Brian McLaren

Clash continues two months after SBC alt-right resolution snafu

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Churches in Charlottesville, Va., brace for alt-right protesters - Baptist News Global

The rally was sparked by Charlottesville's decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park. (ABC7)

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) -- The organizer of a weekend rally that's expected to draw hundreds of "alt-right" activists and white nationalists is suing a Virginia city over its decision to relocate the event.

Attorneys for right-wing blogger Jason Kessler filed the federal lawsuit Thursday against Charlottesville.

The city says Kessler's Saturday event can't take place in its downtown Emancipation Park. Citing safety considerations, they ordered it moved to a park about a mile away.

The rally was sparked by Charlottesville's decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park. Kessler's lawsuit argues moving the rally will "dilute" his message, violating free speech.

The Rutherford Institute and American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia are representing Kessler.

The so-called "alt-right" movement generally espouses a mix of racism, white nationalism and populism.

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'Alt-right' rally organizer sues city over location change - WJLA

In recent months, numerous campuses have been rocked by student protests sparked by the scheduled appearances of alt-right figures such as Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos.

The alt-right activity is part of a larger surge in campus organizing and recruitment by white nationalists. Now, the movement is seeking to capitalize on the publicity and momentum it gained amid its strong support of the Trump campaign.

Some of the recent protests, at Berkeley and elsewhere, have attracted far-left activists known as anti-fascists and have turned violent, igniting a debate over freedom of speech on campus.

In its new publication The Alt-Right on Campus: What Students Need to Know the SPLC advises students to avoid direct confrontation with alt-right speakers and their supporters, many of whom are young white supremacists eager to engage in street fighting with students and anti-fascist protesters.

The guide is a project of the SPLC on Campus program, which currently has chapters at 30 colleges across the country.

The rise of the alt-right has left many students deeply concerned about hate on campus and asking what they can do to make a difference, said Lecia Brooks, SPLC director of outreach. This guide provides answers. It not only shows students how to respond to a possible alt-right event, but how to inoculate your campus against such extremism before these speakers appear on campus.

In addition to offering step-by-step instructions for students to counter the movements influence, the guide explains the racist ideology of the alt-right and profiles its leaders.

As the guide explains, public universities that have a policy allowing student groups to host outside speakers cannot legally bar alt-right speakers except under the most extreme circumstances. The SPLC urges students to hold alternative events that celebrate diversity, inclusion and cultural awareness. In addition, they should speak out against hate and encourage university administrators to issue statements condemning the views of alt-right speakers.

SPLC President Richard Cohen testified in June before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary about the obligation of universities to uphold not only the First Amendment rights of controversial speakers but to speak out against hate and bigotry.

We need to fight speech that threatens our nations democratic values with speech that upholds them, Cohen said in his oral testimony. Its an obligation that university officials have and one that everyone in public life, starting with the president, has as well.

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SPLC releases campus guide to countering 'alt-right' | Southern ... - Southern Poverty Law Center

Something is rotten with liberalisms reigning manifestation, its stench discernible to everyone but itself. A sterile managerialism signposted as what Oscar Wilde decried as the monstrous worship of facts distilled in the form of policy wonkery and modish Vox explainers, had the rug yanked from under it on Nov. 8. It was an unexpected stumble across the Rubicon one in which the ruling consensus was forsaken, crestfallen, and discombobulated within a ruptured sociopolitical milieu that was no longer recognizable.

In an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Emmett Rensin diagnoses liberalisms paralysis as one plagued by the censorious impulse of technocratic reason. Donald Trump was the expression of the id, animated by libidinal whims, repressed desires, and resentments; the liberal establishment was the moralizing superego, directing commands toward appropriate conduct and policing discourse. Upon losing control of the id, the compulsion to fact-check and bellow This is not normal! into the post-truth abyss turned liberals, Rensin proclaims, into the blathering superego at the end of history.

In this political order, transgression and libertinism appeared as cathartic outlets. Irony was weaponized, and guileful wordplay camouflaged bigotry. Such was the transgressive thrill of Trumpism: the enjoyment of publicly stating what is not said openly, which tapped into what Jacques Lacan termed jouissance the desire to go beyond the limits of publicly accepted discourse.

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Unsurprisingly, the shift toward social sadism is echoed in online culture, especially with trolling. The so-called alt-right embraced trolling, shrugging off accusations of racism and sexism by adopting a sardonic dispensation to wring its hands clean from charges of prejudice. You just dont get it, went the customary rebuke.

They know their liberal opponents well, homing in on their conscience and sanctimonious virtue-signaling. Witch-hunting and online harassment is employed as a popular strategy to hound feminists, social justice warriors, and other moralists. Equivalent disdain is reserved for establishment conservatives, branded cuckservatives for having stood pat as the positional gains of minorities emasculated White America.

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Trumps unabashed vulgarity, scorn for political correctness, and occasional deployment of alt-right memes made him a unifying symbol for this vanguard. Making sense of the shifting terrain of far-right politics demands an understanding of a fringe movement that was memed into existence after being thrust into the mainstream spotlight during the Trump electoral campaign.

Is architecture ideological? The NRA thinks so.

In Kill All Normies, Irish journalist Angela Nagle attempts to carry out such a task. Nagle documents the meteoric rise of the alt-right through the turbulent online culture wars. While the movements indecipherable jargon led many to portray the alt-right as conservative iconoclasm as opposed to neofascism, its ideas were imported from a diverse mlange the French New Right, the Identitarian movement, and American white nationalism before getting truncated and popularized through anonymous forums like 4Chan.

As Nagle observes, the early iterations of this assemblage was a strange vanguard of teenage gamers, pseudonymous swastika-posting anime lovers, ironic South Park conservatives, anti-feminist pranksters, nerdish harassers and meme-making trolls whose dark humor and love of transgression for its own sake made it hard to know what political views were genuinely held and what were merely, as they used to say, for the lulz.

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There is an inclination to reduce the alt-rights pranksterism to a pop-cultural spectacle, as opposed to a crucible of virulent ethno-nationalism that needs to be confronted and refuted. While the profusion of irony, memes, and in-jokes does not a movement make, it is important to eschew the revulsion that characterizes much of the response to this nebulous amalgam.

Conservatism, after all, can summon a radical undercurrent when necessary. Fundamentally reactionary as opposed to rigidly traditionalist, it is willing to absorb and redirect the potency of new revolutionary actors toward counter-revolution and new relations of domination. Political scientist Corey Robin identifies this tendency in The Reactionary Mind, where he points out that the right is more than happy to violently upend an anemic ruling class to install a more dynamic one in its place, even if it means using the tactics and rhetoric of their ideological rivals. As Robin notes, While conservatives are hostile to the goals of the left ... they often are the lefts best students.

Indeed, some of Nagles engaging commentary revolves around the emergence of the alt-rights more watered down, media-friendly face that she terms the alt-light. She argues how the alt-right understood the significance of manufacturing an alternative culture and media ecology in response to the establishments cultural dominance.

From Breitbarts Steve Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos to Vice cofounder Gavin McInnes and InfoWars conspiratorial huckster Alex Jones, these digital-savvy alt-light figures flourished in shaping popular culture through new-media platforms. They were the self-styled new punks, fermenting a loyal right-wing fan base that had the benefit of consuming alternative content while steadily accumulating subcultural capital. Managerial liberalisms failure to tackle economic disparities, while paying lip service to a fetishistic form of identity politics, paved the way for virulent forces of reaction to repackage their Weimaresque regalia into an edgier postmodern register.

However, unlike the strategies of the left that they attempt to mimic, the alt-rights meta-politics is saddled with a problem of realization. How do you develop into a mass movement when you are not grounded in organizational struggle? Baiting progressives and racist troll-storms is one thing, but can it translate its success in cyberspace into political power? The evidence so far has been found wanting.

Nevertheless, the alt-right has managed to punch above its weight; the incorporeal battlefield they waged war on has had real consequences. Their mythologized conflict with conformity has them tirelessly hunting for a narrative of self-determination. Yet, by having reached a critical mass without the ability to transfer and regenerate its momentum, it appears that meme magic and Trumps cantankerous tweets will have to suffice for now.

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The limits of the alt-right - The Boston Globe