Curious about what the “Unite the Right” rally that took place in Charlottesville in 2017 and the January 6th insurrections have in common? Tim Heaphy’s discussion, “How to Save Our Democracy”, hosted by The Blue Ridge Center, unravels the similarities between these two historically significant events and what they say about America.
Timothy J. Heaphy is a founding partner at Heaphy, Smith, Harbach & Windom LLP, specializing in white-collar criminal defense, and a former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia under the Obama administration. His expertise and experiences focus on being a lead investigator of the Charlottesville riot, concentrating particularly on officials’ responses. He also served as the lead investigator for the House Select Committee on the January 6th attack and was the previous University Chief Officer. Included in a 220-page report issued in November 2017, Heaphy and his team, following a structured methodology, presented a factual summary of the event, along with assessment of its strengths and failures, recommendations for the Charlottesville community, and a detailed timeline to members of the city council.
They concluded that the “trust in government diminished” after the city failed to adequately prepare to protect free speech and public safety. An “unlawful assembly” was declared before the permitted event began, while “Unite the Right organizers and white supremacists” were committing a forced encroachment into anti-racist counter-protestors’ groups, ultimately leading to “repeated acts of violence and death.” Heaphy attributed these circumstances to the fact that law enforcement had ample resources and intelligence but lacked a unified command and operational plan.
Following the January 6th attack on the Capital, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 503, establishing the Select Committee to Investigate. According to Heaphy’s sources, it had been discovered that “President Trump and his co-conspirators devised and executed a multi-part plan to disrupt January 6th joint session and prevent the transfer of power.” 62 cases were filed and 61 were dismissed or rejected. Several criminal referrals were also filed, such as the “obstruction of an official proceeding,” “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” and “false statements”. As a result, 14 recommendations were provided, resulting in reforms of the Electoral Count Act, which have since been enacted into law.
The analysis then segwayed into a detailed description of similarities in the findings between the Charlottesville riots and January 6th attacks. For instance, he argued that “neither Charlottesville nor January 6th were intelligence or resources failures” as both had ample notice of possible violence on open sources and multi-agency response deployed ample assets. Instead, it is the lack of communication and failure to synthesize intelligence among agencies. For example, the FBI’s First Amendment restrictions state that the FBI will not act unless information is “sufficiently ‘specific and credible’ to open a preliminary investigation.” Additionally, his team addressed how the role of “implicit bias” contributed to the “failure to accurately assess danger posed by middle-aged white men.”
Heaphy continued to emphasize on how social media have significantly transformed the political landscape, especially the fact that social media platforms are businesses designed with addicting algorithms that “allows misinformation to proliferate” with “content likely to engage the user,” including the “notion that the election was stolen” despite there being “no evidence to suggest that.” Despite the quantity of misinformation proliferating on social media platforms, the content is ultimately the user’s responsibility, and therefore social platforms are not legally liable for the spread of misinformation. In this context, he explained how “Unite the Right” organizers utilized online presence to build affinity groups to form membership and attendance recruitment programs, similar to insinuation tactics associated with January 6th riots.
As a result, the “radicalization of people in Charlottesville and false belief of election fraud” spread like wildfire and invoked aggressive and violent emotions in the minds of those who participated in the aforesaid events.
The underlying issues that incited the January 6th and Charlottesville riots were ultimately metastasized. Residents grew increasingly concerned over the value of maintaining statues of Robert E. Lee and other symbolic figures of the Confederation, which served as the “original impetus” to be expanded into discussions of race and nationalism, arguing how “some people were angry that the government did not protect their white supremacy.” Similarly, circulating ideas of election fraud became the “original impetus” for the January 6th attacks, where ideas broadened to include COVID restrictions, race, and “broad anti-government views.”
Heaphy then proceeded towards the idea that both events revealed that the underlying reason for American division is between “those who believe in institutions” intended to serve the public good through education and research, and those who do not. Disagreements over established facts, such as perceptions of policing during the Charlottesville riots and preconceived sincere belief in election fraud, stem from a “lack of confidence [beyond] government to media, higher education, [and] science.” January 6th and the Charlottesville riots were explosions of these sentiments, he argued.
“The government is not equipped to solve this problem” as the “lack of true political competition exacerbates division” through gerrymandering districts, which leads to political extremism. Cynicism has two possible responses: Anger, as shown on January 6th and Charlottesville; and Apathy, through low voter turnout and a lack of participation. Apathy, Heaphy explained, is the “biggest threat to democracy” as 66% of registered voters participated in the 2024 Presidential election, which gave an “outsized power to unpopular views.” He asked the people to “be curious, not judgemental”, identify ways to manifest your commitment to democracy, and find points of common cause. Participating in civil life, through civic associations, churches, schools, and recreations fosters a shared experience through microsolutions, which further unifies people across the political spectrum. “We are more alike than we are different,” Heaphy concluded.
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