An alleged attacker of the Charlottesville automobile is the subject of a lawsuit for murder | American News

The man who allegedly hit a car in a crowd of protesters at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, should be tried Monday for the murder of Heather Heyer.

Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal, was one of the local residents who protested against neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups who descended into the quiet university town for a "Unite the Right" rally on August 12, 2017. Dozens of other protesters were injured, many of them seriously, during the car bombing.

James Alex Fields, a 21-year-old white man who was photographed walking with the neo-Nazi group Vanguard America, faces a charge of first-degree murder, multiple charges of injury and death. assault and separate hate crime charges before the federal government.

As a high school student in Ohio, Fields idolized Hitler and Nazism. His views on white supremacy were a "known problem," said one of his professors to the press after the attack. Her mother told The Associated Press that she knew her son was going to Virginia to attend a rally, but had "thought it had something to do with Trump."

The jury selection for the Charlottesville trial is scheduled to begin Monday and last two to three days.

The lawsuit comes as the threat of white supremacist violence is causing more and more concern around the world. The attack against the car took place two months after a white man drove a van in a crowd of Muslims near a mosque in Finsbury Park, in north London, making a man and 12 wounded. That happened 14 months after the murder of West Yorkshire Labor MP Jo Cox by a man obsessed with Nazism and white supremacy.

The Americans have recently been confronted with what appeared to be a major attack on white supremacy: the shooting on October 27 in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which killed 11 people. Robert Bowers, the 46-year-old white man, appears to have posted regularly on an extremist social network, accusing the Jewish people of trying to introduce "wicked" Muslims and other "invaders" to the states. States, and suggesting white Americans and "Western civilization" were heading "towards a certain extinction".

Donald Trump, who reacted to the Charlottesville attack by saying that there were "very good people" on both sides, sparked protests during his visit to Pittsburgh. The protesters accused the president, whose speeches and politics were praised by white supremacists, of emboldening a growing white nationalist movement.

"You yourself have qualified the killer for evil, but the violence of yesterday is the direct climax of your influence," wrote members of Bend the Arc, a national Jewish organization.

Trump's "two-sided" comments after Charlottesville sentenced Susan Bro, Heather Heyer's mother, said she would not speak to the president. "You can not take off this one by shaking my hand and saying," I'm sorry, "she said.

Law enforcement officials at the local and federal levels also face criticism because what critics say is a failure motivated by political considerations to be adequately monitored and responded to to white supremacist extremism, even as resources are devoted to monitoring attacks inspired by the Islamic State and other extremist Islamist groups.

The series of deadly attacks and the pace of violent public protests and street fights have highlighted how white supremacist groups are recruiting and organizing online, highlighting how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other Other companies have provided platforms for radicalization.

On the occasion of the Charlottesville Rally's anniversary this summer, survivors of the car attack have called on other Americans to do more to combat racism.

"We are responsible for this period of history," protesters Constance Young, 35, told protesters at an anti-racist gathering that drew thousands of people. "If we do not stand up and say," Not here, not now, not now, "this violence will continue to happen under our watch."