DHS/RACISM: “The Department of Homeland Security issued a confidential warning to law enforcement authorities three days before the deadly Aug. 12 Charlottesville protest rally, saying that an escalating series of clashes had created a powder keg that would likely make the event ‘among the most violent to date’ between white supremacists and anarchists…
The Aug. 9 report by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis was done in coordination with local, state and federal authorities at the Virginia Fusion Center. It stated that white supremacists and anti-fascist ‘antifa’ extremists had clashed twice before in Charlottesville, at a white nationalist rally on May 13 and a Ku Klux Klan gathering July 7. At each event, ‘anarchist extremists’ attacked protesters who had been issued permits, leading to fights, injuries, arrests and at least two felony charges of assault and battery.
And both sides were clearly gearing up for an unprecedented confrontation in the weeks leading up to the Aug. 12 ‘Unite the Right’ rally, and a weekend of events planned around it by white supremacist rally organizers and those protesting it.
Three days after the DHS report was released, hundreds of combatants, many of them armed, collided at the rally at Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park, a flashpoint between the feuding groups since the city changed its name from Robert E. Lee Park in June. After a day of violent street fights, a suspected neo-Nazi sympathizer allegedly mowed down a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring at least 19 others.”
-Josh Meyer, “Virginia received DHS warning before Charlottesville rally,” Politico, Aug. 29, 2017 05:36pm