ed tonight -- we are inside the charlottesville protests. the white supremacist ready to die for his convictions. >> we're doing the lord's work. >> and the political activist saying he's shining light on the face of evil. >> why do you videotape, though? >> because people need to know who they are. >> on a day launched by fighting in the streets culminating in a domestic terror car attack, killing a young woman and injuring 19. we're with the new and old faces of hate in america. white nationalist richard spencer. >> white people are ruling right now. >> and former kkk grand wizard david duke. >> we're telling the truth. about the ethnic cleansing of america and the destruction of the american way of life. >> their racist ideologies now

boiling over into violence. the threat of bloodshed growing with their numbers. >> announcer: this special edition of "nightline," "hate among us," will be right back.

>> announcer: this is a special edition of "nightline," "hate among us." good evening and thanks for joining us. >> it was a weekend of street battles and stark displays of

racism, exploding into a deadly act of domestic terror. tonight we examine the hateful groups that now appear to be banding together. why are they now emerging from the shadows, emboldened and growing in numbers? here's abc's eva pilgrim. >> reporter: hate no longer hides behind hoods. >> you will not replace us! >> reporter: this was the scene in the liberal college town of charlottesville, virginia on friday. reminiscent of images from a dark american past. >> [ bleep ] this is our town now! >> reporter: hundreds of white nationalists from across the country descended on the university of virginia's campus ahead of a planned demonstration to protest the removal of the statue of confederate general robert e. lee. >> white lives matter! white lives matter! >> reporter: they quickly clashed with counterprotesters. people from both sides ready to fight. it would be the start of a

bloody 24 hours. tonight, as divisions seemed wider than ever, president trump returned to new york city. >> new york hates you [ bleep ] donald trump! >> reporter: the welcome, anything but warm. earlier today the president spoke from the white house directly condemning hate groups for the first time since the events over the weekend. >> racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the kkk, neo-nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant that everything we hold dear as americans. >> reporter: but some even in his own party saying those words came too late about an incident that has become a new american flash point. ♪ let it shine, let it shine, let it shine ♪ it's early saturday morning in charlottesville. on the one side 26-year-old matt

heimbach, one of the leaders of a white nationalist group preparing for today's unite the right demonstration, thought to be the largest gathering of white supremacists in the u.s. in decades according to the southern poverty law center. >> we're here to stand for robert e. lee because they're removing the robert e. lee statue. we're here to say we're defending our heritage. >> shame on you! >> reporter: on the other side -- >> no hate, no fear. white supremacy is not welcome here. >> reporter: darren lamont jenkins, leader of the one people's project. >> we are here today because a number of white supremacists decided to hold this massive rally, the third one that they've had in i guess as many months. it's supposed to be one of the larger ones. >> reporter: jenkins' organization monitors and publishes information about alleged racist and supremacist groups. >> is this guy wearing a hitler -- yes, he is. i'm just going to take a picture of him. >> why do you videotape them? >> because people need to know who they are. >> reporter: his group has joined with many others to counter the white supremacist

message. female like matt heimbach see it differently. >> we're doing the lord's work. what is there to be nervous about doing the lord's work? >> reporter: "nightline" co-anchor byron pitts first met heimbach three years ago. he's a young man who back then had been called the future of the white supremacist movement by someone who ought to know. a former grand wizard of the kkk. >> do you see a young david duke in matt heimbach? >> if you combine honesty, sincerity with intelligence, i think he has the potential to be quite an effective leader for these ideas. >> racist, racist, anti-gay. >> do you consider yourself a racist? >> sure. so what? i call it natural. >> being a racist is natural. >> loving one's people is natural. >> reporter: in 2014 we watched as he and his tiny contingent protested at indiana university and got sprayed by water. >> get out of here. >> you don't want to have a reasonable discussion. you want to come and you want to push people off. >> reporter: but like the

national movement he belongs to heimbach seemed to have a new confidence and now this weekend the bearded, helmeted heimbach, surrounded by hundreds of supporters, seemed very different. >> shields up! >> hey! >> are you scared to die today? >> i wouldn't be here if i wasn't. >> reporter: his group enters the melee. counterprotesters and white nationalists clashing again. >> get the [ bleep ] out of charlottesville. >> reporter: the crowd beating one another with sticks and metal rods. i asked one of the white nationalist protesters why bring weapons if this was a peaceful protest? >> because we were afraid the police might not defend us. and they didn't. >> they ripped my flag off, tried to grab it. three, four people started hitting me with some kind of sticks. >> reporter: local and state police respond in riot gear, using pepper spray, trying to

push demonstrators back. >> leave the immediate area or you will be arrested. >> reporter: graphic images like this showing 20-year-old deandre harris being beaten with sticks going viral. >> we were walking down. they bum-rushed us and they just beat me with the poles. >> reporter: just before noon virginia governor terry mcauliffe declares a state of emergency. >> hey! >> reporter: then that terrible moment. [ screams ] when the driver of this gray dodge mows down a group of marchers who were protesting the rally. he rams into one group, then puts his car in reverse and accelerates, running over several more before fleeing the scene. >> the car just plowed through hundreds of people, downtown charlottesville. >> hit like two or three other cars and pinned people between the cars. smashed into people. >> reporter: the driver is

identified as 20-year-old james alex field from maumee, ohio. just before the attack fields was caught by our abc cameras chanting a message of white power. 19 people were injured. 32-year-old heather heyer was killed. heather's mother told us her daughter was there protesting white supremacy. >> i'm extremely proud that she to stood for what she believed in, and now she's given her life for it. >> reporter: shortly after a virginia police helicopter monitoring the rally crashed outside charlottesville, killing two. fields was arrested and faces several charges, including second-degree murder. he has not yet entered a plea. the justice department and fbi are also opening a civil rights investigation into the incident. >> this is a case that's very, very high-profile. mr. sessions has made it really, really clear that he is going to be tough on crime, and i expect

him to carry it through. >> reporter: fields's mother, who learned of the incident on camera -- >> did it hurt anybody? >> reporter: -- said she knew cher son was driving the eight hours from ohio to virginia for a rally but didn't know what for. >> i didn't know it was like supremacists. i thought it had something to do with trump. >> the premeditated violence that our community experienced today was completely unacceptable. >> [ bleep ] you nazi -- >> reporter: but some critics found the police response unacceptable as well. >> at the point that it turned violent why didn't you guys clear the streets completely? why allow any protesters at that point to remain on the street? >> we did clear the park. we were following a number of groups, ensuring that they were being peaceful. but it was a challenge. it was certainly a challenge. we were spread thin once the groups dispersed. >> do you think the city did everything they could to protect the people here? >> we had 1,000 law enforcement personnel on the ground, city of

50,000 people to deal with, thousands of people coming here. i am not going to criticize or second-guess our first responders. >> reporter: as the horrific scenes of hatred and violence played out on saturday, the first white house response came not from the president but from the first lady, who tweeted "our country encourages freedom of speech, but let's communicate without hate in our hearts. no good comes from violence #charlottesville." but when the president finally spoke, he seemed to blame both the white nationalists and the counterprotesters. >> we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. on many sides. >> when the president failed to condemn neo-nazis and white supremacists by name originally, the white supremist felt as if he had given them a pass. >> reporter: his response drawing criticism, even from members of his own party.

republican senator cory gardner tweeted, "mr. president, we must call evil by its name. these were white supremacists, and this was domestic terrorism." reporters pushing the president even further. >> mr. president, do you want the support of these white nationalist groups who say they support you, mr. president? did you denounce them strongly enough? >> reporter: it wasn't until today, two days later, that the president finally called the hate groups out by name. >> the average american should be distressed that it took so long for the president of the united states to condemn the ku klux klan and neo-nazis after demonstrations which resulted in death in charlottesville, virginia. >> reporter: tonight police in charlottesville vowing to make more arrests as they pore over videos of the violent clashes from the weekend. >> we're all still grieving in charlottesville, we're still praying, but we're also starting to get back on our feet and look toward the future.

>> reporter: the country now struggling to do the same. for "nightline" i'm eva pilgrim in charlottesville, virginia. when we come back, we'll take you inside the ideologies now polarizing america. with my moderate to severe crohn's disease i kept looking for ways to manage my symptoms. i thought i was doing okay. then it hit me... managing was all i was doing. when i told my doctor, i learned humira is for people who still have symptoms of moderate to severe crohn's disease even after trying other medications. in clinical studies, the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb,

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>> announcer: this special edition of "nightline," "hate among us," continues. we're stand informing our heritage. we're uniting the white nationalist movement to come together to stand for our people and fight as one. >> reporter: it's 2017 and racism has come out of the shadows. bigotry in broad daylight. hate among us.

>> we're telling the truth. we're talking about the ethnic cleansing of america and the destruction of the american way of life. >> reporter: david duke joining these brazen new faces of hate. >> there's no point nen gauging them. they're disgusting freaks. >> reporter: exchanging white cloaks for khakis and ray-bans. >> you will not replace us! >> reporter: protesting the removal of a confederate statue, tiki torches ablaze. >> white lives matter! >> reporter: it's a growing movement uniting under the banner of white nationalism. we track down richard spencer, self-proclaimed scholar and one of the event's organizers. >> these people are on drugs. they are [ bleep ] lunatics. and they're not worth getting stabbed over. >> reporter: he's the man credited with coining the term alt-right. propelled onto the national stage after this video went viral of spencer at a so-called alt-right conference exalting president trump's win. >> hail trump. hail our people. hail victory.

>> reporter: some in the crowd performing a deeply disturbing nazi salute. we confronted him about it at the end of last year. >> i said hail trump and i held up a glass of whiskey. there are some people, a half dozen people in the audience or so who gave a roman salute. >> it's not a roman salute. you know that. it's a nazi party salute. are you trying to normalize racism? >> yes. i'm trying to normalize racism as you call it. i do not want the alt-right to be a fringe movement. i want the all the rite to be a dominant movement. >> reporter: he even seemed to predict that this extremism would lead to bloodshed. >> of course that's a possibility. i think the current paradigm that we are living under is going to lead to blood and tears, period. >> you're predicting a race war, basically. >> i don't know exactly what's going to happen. but yes, i do think that it will be a crack-up predominantly on racial lines. ♪ >> reporter: yet it was people of all races who marched against spencer and the racism he espouses. this simmering white separatism

may have boiled over this weekend, but for this country it is nothing new. helping lead the protests, david duke, the former grand wizard of the ku klux klan. >> we're not anti-black so much as we're pro white. >> reporter: he's a fervent supporter of president trump. "nightline" spoke with him last october. >> for duke and trump. trump disavows you. does that not bother you? >> he reluctantly did so. he's fighting a different race than me. i don't judge him. i believe in making america great again. i go a bit farther than trump. >> you want to make america white again. >> i'm not saying make america white again. i'm saying preserve the principles and the people who made america great in the first place. >> mr. trump has energized the white supremist movement. people like david duke endorsed him, which is an unusual thing because usually white supremeists don't want to have anything to do with elections. and when he won, they celebrated. charlottesville, unfortunately, is the culmination of all of

that celebration, i'm afraid. >> you will not replace us! >> reporter: neo-nazi websites like the dealy stormier praised trump's initial muted reaction to charlottesville, writing, "trump's comments were good. he didn't attack us. he just said the nation should come together. nothing specific against us." but after two days of criticism the president today condemned hate groups by name. >> racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the kkk. >> eliciting a different response. >> president trump, please, for god's sakes, don't feel like you've got to say these things. it's not going to do any good. they hate you. >> reporter: but it's been difficult for trump to distance himself entirely from the support of white nationalists. his controversial chief strategist steve bannon during his tenure at breitbart referred to the publication as a platform for the alt-right. the president's former communications adviser

suggesting bannon has to go. >> you've got this sort of bannon-bart influence in there which i think is a snag on the president. >> to people who are members of white supremacist groups the presence of steve bannon in the wh white house is very comforting. >> you will not replace us! >> reporter: the roots of this latest spate of violence runs deep, harkening back to this country's oldest divide. after dylann roof murdered nine people at a historic black church, ties to the daily stormier emerged along with images of him posing with the confederate flag. it sparked renewed debate over symbols of the confederacy. when the city of new orleans pushed to remove four confederate monuments, protests broke out. >> these monuments celebrate a fictional sanitized confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for. >> reporter: three of the monuments brought down without warning in the middle of the

night. across the country more than 700 similar monuments stand on public land. the majority in the south. >> for the white supremacists they view the battle now as trying to maintain their history that they're proud of. the monuments are just an excuse for trying to self-promote and get people out. >> reporter: protesters in north carolina today taking matters into their own hands. >> there's a lot of emotion around confederate statues. >> it is important to put these monuments in context and to make it very, very clear that the confederacy was about protecting slavery as an institution. and i say that as someone whose ancestors all fought for the confederate army. >> reporter: what many consider our country's original sin, racism, that old dark stain that must be confronted before it can be cast out. >> for more on the violence in charlottesville tune in to "20/20" friday for a full hour special, "the great divide." we'll be right back.

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