outlets and others associated with it. In other words, this was not an event sponsored by one group to which others were invited. It was an attempt to bring together all these groups with their shared ideologies of racism, antisemitism and Christian nationalism and make them a potent political force.

During the weekend of 11–12 August, the white supremacists who gathered in Charlottesville repeatedly expressed their admiration for Hitler. (Instead of naming Hitler, because this will get them booted from social media sites, they use the number “88”: “H” being the eighth letter in the alphabet, “88” refers to “HH”, or “Heil Hitler”.) One organiser said that if he met Hitler today, he would tell him: “Thank you for your sacrifice, and I hope we have honored you in some small way by carrying on the fight.” Another carried a banner declaring that “Hitler did nothing wrong”.

The swastika was evident at Charlottesville, but with a twist. Some groups at the gathering displayed the “national flag of Kekistan”, which mimics a Nazi swastika flag. In it, the alt-­right “Kek” slogan replaces the swastika in the centre, and the red is replaced by green. This flag was also present at the January 6th insurrection.

Another symbol visible at Charlottesville was tiki torches. The use of fire, and torches specifically, has long been prominent in the history of white supremacy. As Edna Friedberg, a historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, noted, “The Nazis were masters of propaganda who regularly used torchlight spectacles to create drama and show force …Hitler himself made repeated references to torches as symbols of national and racial revolution in his book Mein Kampf. ”  Writing about Charlottesville, she concluded: “The torches carried during a nighttime march in a university town … deliberately echo the smoke of these earlier, racist, and murderous eras.”

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