Charlottesville And The Perils Of Collectivism

PETER CVJETANOVIC STANDS in a sea of tiki torches, his mouth wide open, teeth partially bared. You can almost hear the snarling scream from the photograph.

- Eric Boehm

Among the hundreds of white nationalists and Confederate sympathizers who gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the night of August 11, Cvjetanovic stood out. His angry visage, captured by a photographer covering the rally, became one of the most memorable images to emerge from a surreal, chaotic, tragic weekend.

Days later, after the photo went viral, Cvjetanovic told a local TV reporter in his hometown of Reno, Nevada, that “I’m not the angry racist they see in that photo.” 

It sounds ridiculous. If he’s not an angry racist, why was he marching with neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis—apparently without pondering how many people with similarly consonant-heavy names were butchered by the original Nazis—on a warm summer night?

The so-called “alt-right” movement germinated in online forums and grew to a state of perpetual adolescence during Donald Trump’s run to the White House. Now some of its members have marched under Nazi and white supremacist flags in the streets of an American city. One of them is charged with second-degree murder after driving his car into a crowd of counter protestors, injuring 19 people and killing a young woman, Heather Heyer.