The Women Who Fought the White Supremacists and Won

Karen Dunn is one of the U.S.’s most sought-after lawyers and is widely recognized for securing courtroom victories in difficult cases. In Sines v. Kessler, she won a groundbreaking verdict against the leaders of the neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements in America responsible for the racially-motivated violence in Charlottesville, VA in 2017.

That led to her being featured on HBO MAX’s 2023 documentary, “No Accident,” which chronicled the groundbreaking civil rights trial following the deadly white nationalist rally.

This is the only case where I felt like I was living every day in a bubble of hate and violence.

“It would take me 500 pages to write about everything I thought and felt during the trial,” Dunn told Aish.com in an exclusive interview. “I have tried many cases, including as a prosecutor, and this is the only case where I felt like I was living every day in a bubble of hate and violence due to the evidence of intense racial hatred we presented. It felt surreal.”

“Two of the defendants were pro se [represented themselves] and were able to do their own direct examinations of themselves and cross-examinations of the people they had victimized in Charlottesville. It was also extremely gratifying to watch the defendants brought to justice in a federal courtroom, a place that symbolizes the importance of the rule of law in our society.”

Rally participants in Charlottesville, 2017

Based on her experience immersed in evidence of racial hatred, Dunn has noticed that some of the same white nationalist groups active in Charlottesville are seeking to exploit the current rise in antisemitism. She sounded the alarm.

“Why are white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups popping up at pro-Palestinian rallies across America, including most recently in Washington, D.C.; Orlando, Florida; Boston; and Missoula, Montana?” she asked in a powerful op-ed for MSNBC. “I’ll give you a hint: It’s not because they care particularly about the situation in Gaza. No, for these groups, the large-scale protests across America present a golden opportunity to mainstream the same antisemitic tropes they have been pushing for years and, if they get their way, create new opportunities for extremist violence.”

Dunn checked in on those defendants to see what they said about the Oct 7 Israel tragedy.

Karen Dunn

“Jason Kessler, the lead organizer, wrote that Palestinians have a right to declare that ‘Jews will not replace us.’ Richard Spencer, a longtime leader of the alt-right (an expression he coined), posted that lighting the Roman Arch of Titus in blue and white in solidarity with Israel was ‘a reversal and subversion of Titus’ achievement’ (the arch commemorated the Roman Empire’s defeat of a Jewish rebellion in A.D. 81). Nathan Damigo, founder of the white supremacist organization Identity Europa, posted on Oct. 7: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!’ The next day, white supremacist Matthew Parrott, a co-founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party, praised Hamas’ attack, stating that ‘every military act by the Palestinian forces is an act of freedom fighters’ and comparing the massacre of families to ‘breaking out of a concentration camp to attack your guards.’

And the National Justice Party, founded by white supremacists involved in Charlottesville, responded to the Oct. 7 attacks by marching in front of the White House with signs that said “No White Lives for Israel” and “Zionism=Terrorism,” calling for the ‘destruction of Israel.’ “NJP’s website now encourages people to ‘begin to imagine a world where Israel no longer exists’ in an article titled ‘Four Ways The Destruction of Israel Can Benefit The West.’” she noted.

While white supremacists target all non-white groups and their allies, the unifying animus is a hatred of Jews.

One of the organizers of Charlottesville had a day job as an exterminator; he told his girlfriend he would rather be killing Jews than cockroaches.

“One of the organizers of Charlottesville had a day job as an exterminator; he told his girlfriend he would rather be killing Jews than cockroaches,” said Dunn. “Another organizer said that when his newborn son opened his eyes for the first time, his first thought was of Adolf Hitler. And on the day before James Alex Fields drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of peaceful counter-protesters, he responded to his mother’s texting ‘be careful’ with a picture of Hitler saying, ‘We are not the ones who need to be careful.’

White supremacist leaders know the power of antisemitism, and they use it tactically to fuel the movement. This is why Dunn has been “worried and heartbroken” about what is happening in the Middle East. “For us at home, Charlottesville shows what happens when antisemitism is allowed to metastasize. The violence that inevitably ensues affects all of us.”

Dunn strongly hopes that people don’t normalize antisemitism.

“For starters, we can call it out, wherever and whenever we see it. And we can educate people about what antisemitism is, how it is linked to violence present and past, and we can raise the alarm loudly that antisemitism – just like other kinds of racial hatred -- is a problem not just for one group, but for all of us.”

Activist Amy Spitalnick, who was also featured in the Max documentary when she was the executive director of Integrity First for America, is now CEO of Jewish Council of Public Affairs.

“Hamas’ rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis and others has been celebrated by some as ‘resistance – while some deny it even happened,” she acknowledged. “Jewish people, synagogues, businesses, and institutions have been attacked as ‘retribution’ for Israel’s actions.

Amy Spitalnick

Spitalnick continued: “And make no mistake: this antisemitism didn’t begin on October 7th. We were already facing record levels of hate and extremism, from a cycle of antisemitic mass shootings and hate crimes, to the mainstreaming of white supremacist conspiracy theories and broader extremism. All of it seeks to normalize antisemitism; to tell Jews our safety and our pain don’t count; and to drive wedges between the Jewish community and others at a time when solidarity has never been more urgent.”

Spitalnick said that so much of this antisemitism – no matter the political direction – is rooted in conspiracy theories and tropes about Jewish control and power, often given welcoming homes on social media with real world consequences.

“Countering this hate requires a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach: including swift implementation of the Biden administration’s historic National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism; a focus on media and digital literacy, as well as history, democracy, and civics education; and the recognition that our communities and our democracy are safest and strongest in deep relationship and solidarity with one another.

Her organization put out a study that found that Americans’ concern about antisemitism as a “somewhat” or “very serious problem” has increased by nearly 20 percentage points (62% to 78%) since October 7th.

“This new data makes clear that Americans across the ideological spectrum are concerned about rising antisemitism – a critical first step towards confronting it head on,” she said in a statement on the JCPA site. “We should be clear: antisemitism operates as both a form of hate that targets Jews and a pernicious conspiracy theory that fundamentally threatens the safety of all communities and our democracy. We all have an obligation to call it out, in all of its forms.”

In looking at the research and poll data, Spitalnick noted that the biggest challenge is age, as opposed to ideology. “I’d strongly caution Aish.com readers against framing this as a simple left versus right binary, and more about belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories, which is disproportionately prevalent among younger Americans.”