Opinion American tragedy

Those who opposed their presence in Charlottesville acted to protect constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms and rights. Liberal democracies ought to protect the right of all to free speech until it is used to incite violence or hatred. The neo-Nazi groups in Charlottesville crossed the clear line that divides legitimate politics from criminality in all democracies. There are many reasons for the rise of neo-Nazi tendencies in the US, among them the loss of blue-collar jobs jobs. Instead of addressing those problems, President Trump is attempting to feed off their toxic energy.

President Trump’s perverse moral compass tells us that freedoms hard-won by large swathes of US’ citizens are under real threat. The country’s founding Constitution treated a black slave as equivalent to three-fifths of a free white; even after the Civil War abolished slavery, African-Americans were disenfranchised for over a century through the southern states, and subjected to brutal violence.

The country’s institutional racism was hailed, in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, as a model from which Germany ought to learn. It has only been in the past half century that civil liberties have moved forward, and even now racial equality is distant. Having won power on the back of support from the far-right — kept on the margins by both the US parties — President Trump seems willing to undo those gains to keep power.

His actions have been called tragic. They are not. Tragedy could be invoked if the US President did not understand what he was doing. Trump, in fact, understands precisely what he is doing. He is doing the wrong thing, knowing he is doing the wrong thing — a condition Greek playwrights referred to as akrasia. The fractures he is inflicting on a country already wounded will, sadly, long outlast his presidency.