Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer held onto a candle and hope that racists cannot gain a foothold in his college town at the start of this week, one night after white nationalists evoked the days of the KKK with a torch-lit rally to save a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Candlelight vigil against hate in Cville, Signer (D) wrote on Twitter after the Sunday event. These are the kind of torches I like to see.
The hopeful mood did not last long.
Signer, a Jewish author and lawyer who became mayor in January 2016, soon drew a hail of racist and anti-Semitic assaults on Twitter. They began Sunday and kept coming Monday.
I smell Jew, one message said. If so, you are going back to Israel. But you will not stay in power here. Not for long.
[Alt-rights Richard Spencer leads torch-bearing protesters defending Lee statue]
The attacks were only part of the fallout from a startling weekend in Charlottesville, where white nationalist Richard Spencer led two rallies Saturday. His appearances continued to reverberate Monday in the Virginia governors race, as the candidate who based his campaign around Confederate symbols remained conspicuously mum.
Corey A. Stewart, one of three Republican gubernatorial contenders, made the preservation of the states Confederate memorials a rallying cry for his campaign. There is no indication that he attended the rallies. But unlike the two other Republicans and two Democrats in the race all of whom condemned Spencers explicitly racial appeals Stewart did not comment as the events made national news.
Only a jerk would talk politics on Mothers Day, Stewart tweeted Sunday although earlier in the day, he had tweeted about his plans to cut taxes and create jobs.
Gillespie, the front-runner in the GOP primary race, chided Stewart for his silence on the ugly display of hateful rhetoric and intimidation tactics.
In a blurry, live Facebook video on Monday evening, Stewart denounced a laundry list of targets: fake news like The Washington Post; weak establishment Republicans like his chief GOP rival, Ed Gillespie; his Democratic rivals, for not condemning their partys long history of racism; sanctuary cities; corporate monopolies like Dominion Virginia Power; and Charlottesville City Councilman Wes Bellamy, who stepped down from the Virginia Board of Education over a series of tweets he made between 2009 and 2014 that included gay slurs, references to sexual assault and anti-white comments. Stewart made no mention of Spencer.
[Do Corey Stewarts Confederate antics help Ed Gillespie or hurt the GOP brand?]
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello, a Charlottesville native, went on Monday to Lee Park, where the statue stands, and called for an end to Lee-Jackson Day as a state holiday recognizing the Confederate leaders and for a state commission on racial healing and transformation. The other Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, also supports scrapping Lee-Jackson Day.
Once an obscure Internet figure promoting white identity, Spencer rose to prominence during Donald Trumps presidential campaign. He coined the term alt-right referring to a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state. Trump denounced the alt-right, but Spencers followers have counted his victory as a win for the movement as Trump espoused hard-right stances on undocumented immigrants, Muslims and political correctness.
[Lets party like its 1933: Inside the disturbing alt-right world of Richard Spencer]
On Saturday, Spencer led two rallies in the town where he once attended the University of Virginia. He was protesting a City Council vote in February to remove a statue of Lee from the downtown park. A court injunction has halted the removal for six months.
What brings us together is that we are white, we are a people, we will not be replaced, Spencer said at an afternoon protest, which he broadcast via Periscope video. You will not replace us. You will not destroy us. You cannot destroy us. We have awoken. We are here. We are never going away.
At a rally that night, dozens of torch-bearing protesters chanted You will not replace us and Russia is our friend. Spencer tweeted a photo of himself standing in the crowd carrying what appeared to be a bamboo tiki torch.
Stewart has also held several rallies at the Lee statue and elsewhere, criticizing the planned removal as historical vandalism and unfurling the Confederate flag at several events. He is chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and was chairman of Trumps Virginia campaign until he was fired in October for participating in a protest against establishment pukes at the Republican National Committee headquarters.
Signer voted against removal of the statue, saying in a written statement ahead of the vote that he would prefer to add monuments to civil rights victories to tell the full story of race through our public spaces.
Id rather rebut them and overcome them than purge the public realm of irritants to our values, he said in an interview Monday.
Signer said the Twitter attacks were the first time he had faced anti-Semitism in public life although he definitely experienced attacks from trolls on Twitter after writing some pretty critical pieces about Donald Trump.
A U-Va. lecturer and author of a book about demagogues, Signer has written two opinion pieces on how the president fits that description, including one for The Washington Post.
I absolutely believe this is linked to the sort of politics that the Trump campaign trafficked in, he said. If you remember that closing argument ad, when they talked about global financial conspiracies keeping regular people down, there was very clear messaging.
Signer said he was not upset by what he called the politics of bullies.
In a time when youve seen legitimacy conferred on a really toxic politics of intimidation from the top down, including the sort of blessing of the alt-right movement from the White House, I think its a sign youre doing the right things when these trolls try to attack you from anonymous accounts, he said.
On Twitter, Signer responded to the attacks with a mix of defiance and humor.
Here is what this great country faces in this age of @realDonaldTrump-a sitting mayor subjected to anti-Semitism. I will not be intimidated, he said in one tweet.
This garbage white supremacy wont even be a footnote in our history. #leave #resistance #welcomingcity, said another.
To someone offering a supportive tweet Mr. Signer, I am so embarrassed that you received this message from an American he replied: Well, lets not be too sure. Could have been a Russian.
Fenit Nirappil contributed to this report.
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