What is violence? Who gets to define it? Does it have a place in the pursuit of liberation? These age-old questions have returned to the fore during the Occupy movement. But this discussion never takes place on a level playing field; while some delegitimize violence, the language of legitimacy itself paves the way for the authorities to employ it.
On this day, 12 August 2017, 32-year-old anti-racist Heather Heyer was killed and dozens injured in a white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia. Heather was one of thousands of people protesting against a Unite the Right rally of neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan activists and other white nationalists and anti-Semites, when she was hit by a car driven at speed deliberately into the crowd by 20-year-old Nazi James Alex Fields Jr, who was pictured previously on the Unite the Right protest holding a shield emblazoned with the logo of Vanguard America, a far right group. Elsewhere in the city, another group of fascists attacked and viciously beat DeAndre Harris, a young African-American education worker, leaving him with spinal and other injuries. President Donald Trump described the neo-Nazis as “very fine people”. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1186799438171871/?type=3
