Romney seems to have overlooked the fact that the counter-demonstrators to the KKK and neo-Nazi contingent at Charlottesville were not generic opponents of racism, but the "Antifa" an anti-capitalist group who espouse an ideology of class-hatred, and who have launched riots in opposition to speeches by figures who are neither neo-Nazis nor Confederate irridentists.
But most of those who rallied against the alt-right in Charlottesville WERE lawfully opposing fascism, and intended to express their opposition peacefully. Those who did not - the antifa - were distinguishable by their bearing arms and wearing masks.
Of course, this was all theater, and the alt-right played their parts to the hilt. A torchlight rally shouting anti-Semitic slogans (yeah, they were tiki torches but the symbolism to Nuremberg '36 was obvious) is no way to garner sympathy for Southern monuments. It is, however, a stick in the eye of the counterprotesters, who acted predictably, and the larger community, who saw this as a rally rooted in simple racism and bigotry, not concern for Southern heritage.
The alt-right came to Charlottesville to cause trouble, and found it. The denouement, with a new civil rights martyr created at the hands of a brain-dead Nazi in a car, will cost conservatism dearly, unless folks like Romney and others speak out forcefully against alt-right hate.
The simple fact is that conservatives have been far more vocal in denouncing alt-right violence than liberals have been in denouncing alt-left violence. I'm proud of that - and proud of Romney and other conservative leaders for speaking up. Two wrongs never make a right.
All and sundry should be also reminded that even lumping the estimates of deaths in African slave trade, the estimate of deaths due to colonialism, the Armenian genocide, death of American Indians due to intentional actions by settlers and various governments, Japanese Imperial brutality toward subject peoples and Naziism all together under the rubric of deaths caused by race-hatred, governments that committed mass murder on the basis of ideologies of class-hatred still have the larger body count (PRC, USSR, Khemer Rouge, and Cambodia alone outrun race-hatred driven murder even under the generous definition I used here, without adding in those who died at the hands of Communists in Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Laos, and the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe).
So left-wing fascists killed more people than right-wing fascists. Who cares? It's no defense of cowshit to proclaim that at least it's not oxshit. It is all antithetical to American values, and the true patriot is he who denounces both sides, and most forcefully those who claim to be on his own.
