President Donald Trump shocked America with his moral equivalence when, against the backdrop of a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville and the murder of a counterprotester, he declared, there were “very fine people on both sides.” His remarks were enough for Trump’s opponents to brand him a racist. After all, even if many at the “Unite the Right” rally did not subscribe to the neo-Nazi vision of some participants and merely wanted to protest the erasure of Confederate history from public spaces, the fact that Trump appeared to legitimize their gathering was enough to confirm guilt.

After winning the presidency, President Joe Biden used the Charlottesville march to draw a sharp distinction between himself and his predecessor. “The forces of hate and violence were summoned from the shadows as Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists descended on a historic American city. With torches in their hands and veins bulging from their necks, they spewed the same antisemitic bile that was heard in Germany,” he declared.