President Trump held a rally on Tuesday night in Phoenix, whipping the crowd into a frenzy and denouncing the media between chants of “lock her up.” Trump even said the word “Antifa” for the first time in public, a reference to the anti-fascist groups that have formed to fight against neo-Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. And there was one group that got his message loud and clear: White supremacists.
Many prominent white supremacists in the US saw the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia as a major turning point, at least from a media relations point of view. A 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, died after a neo-Nazi terrorist drove his car into a crowd of counter protestors. And white supremacists took a more measured tone in the aftermath, making sure to denounce violence, knowing that aligning yourself with death isn’t great for the cause of creating a white ethno-state. But President Trump’s speech last night seems to have changed all that.