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Posted: 2022-08-11T17:56:55Z | Updated: 2022-09-06T16:34:35Z

The hundreds of right-wing extremists and fascists who invaded Charlottesville, Virginia, five years ago this week were unashamed and proud, invigorated by the ascendance of then-President Donald Trump, who had campaigned with open bigotry a call for a Muslim ban, calling Mexicans rapists and still won the election. Some were veteran white supremacists, belonging to older groups like the KKK, League of the South, or the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement. But others were younger keyboard warriors who felt they had helped meme Trump into the White House, and who saw the Unite the Right gathering in Charlottesville as a coming out party for the so-called alt-right, an opportunity to step out from behind their avatars for an IRL show of force.

But after they terrorized the city for two days, and stories of their cruelty spread a torch march across the University of Virginia campus chanting Jews will not replace us, death threats against local synagogues, the brutal beating of a Black counterprotester, and driving a car through a crowd of anti-fascists many Unite the Right attendees found themselves pariahs when they got home.

They were arrested, lost their jobs, kicked out of school and shunned by their local communities. Later, a lawsuit would drive many of the rallys organizers into financial ruin, and some of the groups involved, such as Identity Evropa, Traditionalist Workers Party and Vanguard America, disbanded.

This was due in large part to the work of anonymous anti-fascist researchers who pored over photos and video footage from Charlottesville, compiling evidence to identify the attendees.

Friday marks the five-year anniversary of Unite the Right, and some of those same anti-fascists have a message for all the white supremacists who went to Charlottesville in 2017 and havent yet been identified: We will find you.

A coalition calling itself Ignite The Right launched a website this week featuring an extensive database of every single white supremacist who has allegedly been identified as attending the Charlottesville rally. It also includes photos of many attendees whose names, five years later, remain unknown.

Antifascists are continuing to work towards exposing every single person who participated, the Ignite The Right website declares. We do not forgive. We do not forget.

This project is dedicated to Heather Heyer and all the victims of racism, it says, referring to the 32-year-old who died after a man drove his vehicle into a crowd of counterprotesters.