[21] At around 1:45 p.m., self-identified white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters about 1⁄2 mile (800 m) away from the rally site, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 people.

[40] While the organizers intended for the rally to unite far-right groups with the goal of playing a larger role in American politics, the backlash and resultant infighting between alt-right leaders has been credited with causing a decline in the movement.

[61] Throughout early to mid-2017, tensions mounted as neo-Confederate and alt-right groups' sporadic gatherings in Charlottesville's downtown parks and pedestrian mall were confronted by anti-racist activists, resulting in occasional scuffles and some arrests.

[19] Prominent far-right figures in attendance included Spencer,[83] entertainer and internet troll Baked Alaska,[83] lawyer Augustus Invictus,[84] former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke,[85] Identity Evropa leader Nathan Damigo,[86] Traditionalist Workers Party leader Matthew Heimbach,[83] Right Stuff founder Mike Enoch,[83] Joshua Jordan (otherwise known as Eric Striker) of The Daily Stormer and the Traditionalist Workers Party,[87] League of the South founder and leader Michael Hill,[9] Red Ice host and founder Henrik Palmgren,[88] The Rebel Media commentator Faith Goldy,[89] Right Side Broadcasting Network host Nick Fuentes,[90] YouTube personality James Allsup,[90] Altright.com European editor Daniel Friberg,[91] former Business Insider CTO Pax Dickinson,[92][failed verification] Right Stuff blogger Johnny Monoxide,[93] Daily Stormer writers Robert "Azzmador" Ray and Gabriel "Zeiger" Sohier-Chaput,[94] Daily Caller contributor and rally organizer Jason Kessler,[95] and Radical Agenda host Christopher Cantwell.

[99] Airbnb cancelled a number of bookings and accounts when it learned that they were being used by attendees at the rally, citing a request that users endorse a commitment to "accept people regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age".

[168] Beginning in the morning, ahead of the rally's official noon start time,[169] "protesters and counterprotesters faced off, kicking, punching, hurling water bottles at and deploying chemical sprays against one another".

[143][170] The Associated Press reported that "people threw punches, screamed, set off smoke bombs, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays"; some engaged in combat while "others darted around, trying to avoid the chaos".

[197] Shortly after the collision, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old from Ohio who reportedly had expressed sympathy for Nazi Germany during his time as a student at Cooper High School in Union, Kentucky,[198] was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

[224] Twenty-year-old DeAndre Harris, a former special education instruction assistant[225] from Charlottesville, was beaten in a parking garage after intervening swinging a flashlight in a struggle between Corey Long and white supremacists, an assault that was captured by photographers and video footage.

A. C. Thompson wrote that in "one of countless such confrontations", police watched passively as "an angry mob of white supremacists formed a battle line across from a group of counterprotesters, many of them older and gray-haired, who had gathered near a church parking lot.

When the editor asked him about the "ugly white nationalism epitomized by the racist violence in Charlottesville and Trump's reluctance to condemn it," Bannon said that ethno-nationalists were losers and a fringe element played up too much by the media.

[262] On August 13, the day following the rally, many groups organized vigils and demonstrations in a number of cities across the country and abroad with a variety of goals, including showing support for those against white supremacy, pushing for the removal of Confederate monuments, and denouncing fascism and actions and statements by the president of the United States.

[269][270][271] PayPal suspended accounts of the right-wing extremist groups run by several of the rally organizers for violating the website's terms of service, which forbid raising money for "activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance".

"[305] Republican representative Justin Amash and senators Cory Gardner, Jeff Flake, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz called upon Trump to specifically condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

[309][310] House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,[311] Democratic U.S. Representative Ted Lieu,[312] former federal government lawyers Vanita Gupta and Richard Painter,[313] and others also called for Bannon's firing.

Among those were Senators Bernie Sanders, John McCain, Tim Scott, Susan Collins, Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Flake, Orrin Hatch, Heidi Heitkamp, Claire McCaskill, Joe Manchin, Dean Heller and Tammy Duckworth, and House members Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, Don Beyer, Barbara Comstock, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Will Hurd and Gerry Connolly, as well as Ohio Governor John Kasich and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

"[338][339][340] On August 16, Representatives Jerrold Nadler of New York, Pramila Jayapal of Washington state and Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey unveiled a resolution that the three House Democrats co-authored, which would censure Trump for his "inadequate response to the violence", his "failure to immediately and specifically name and condemn the white supremacist groups responsible for actions of domestic terrorism", and for employing chief strategist Steve Bannon and national security aide Sebastian Gorka despite their "ties to white supremacist movements".

[341] Criticism of the comments also extended to the corporate world; among others, 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch said in an email to friends that was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, "[W]hat we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the president of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people.

(Murdoch's statement drew some criticism from media columnists, including The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin and Erik Wemple, who have accused Fox News Channel for helping bring Trump to the political mainstream and its repeated defense of his administration as well as perpetuating a culture of exploiting female employees and using dog-whistle commentary on its opinion programs.

[citation needed] In an August 18 interview with ABC's Good Morning America, Heather Heyer's mother, Susan Bro, stated that she has not "and now ... will not" meet with Trump after hearing about his statement.

[366] Following criticisms from former vice president Joe Biden in a video announcing that he was entering the 2020 presidential race, Trump was asked by journalists in April 2019 to clarify his remark that there were "very fine people" on both sides of the protests at the rally.

[374] Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Anat R. Admati said that Trump's equivocations on white nationalist groups had "put them in a very difficult position" and caused critical damage to the president's relationship with corporate leaders.

The resigning members stated in a letter to the President, "Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville.

[384] Journalists Paul Waldman[385] and Peter Beinart[386] criticized this argument as an ineffective tactic to defend Trump and it also stated that none of the violence from the counter-protesters justified any moral equivalency between the two sides at the rally.

[406] The Republican National Committee issued a statement saying it was "unified in revulsion at the abhorrent white supremacists demonstration in Charlottesville ... We urge swift and certain justice be meted out to domestic terrorists and groups aiding and abetting through the propagation of hateful ideology.

[424] Douglas A. Blackmon, senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs and author of a book on slavery and its aftermath in the U.S. told The Washington Post: "Trump either does not understand the history of the Confederacy or he's sympathetic to white nationalist views.

[439] A plaque in Montreal that was installed in a Hudson's Bay Company store commemorating Jefferson Davis's brief stay in the city by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1957 was removed following the rally, after many complaints.

Federal prosecutors and investigators charged the four California men – Benjamin Drake Daley, Thomas Walter Gillen, Michael Paul Miselis, and Cole Evan White – with planning violent acts at the Charlottesville rally and carrying out multiple assaults against counterprotesters.

[458] U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney dismissed the charges against Rundo, Boman, and Eason in June 2019, ruling that the federal Anti-Riot Act is "unconstitutionally overbroad in violation of the First Amendment.

[485] On the third anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in August 2020, lawyer Roberta Kaplan and Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, writing for CNN, argued that "it is now clear that the violence and hatred evident at Charlottesville was not a passing moment or a onetime event.