Torch-wielding group protests Confederate statue removal

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- A group that included a well-known white nationalist carried torches and chanted "you will not replace us" at a weekend protest in Virginia over plans to remove a monument of a Confederate general.

The protesters Saturday night called on officials to halt the removal of a Gen. Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville and swiftly were condemned by the city's mayor, who said the event appeared to hearken "back to the days of the KKK," the Daily Progress newspaper reported.

Among those at the protest were Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who popularized the phrase "alt-right" and is a leading figure in a fringe movement that has been described as a mix of racism, white nationalism and populism.

"We will not be replaced from this park," Spencer told the crowd at a different rally held hours earlier in Charlottesville on Saturday.

"We will not be replaced from this world. Whites have a future. We have a future of power, of beauty, of expression," he said.

Spencer, an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, hosted a postelection conference in the nation's capital last November that ended with audience members mimicking Nazi salutes after Spencer shouted, "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!" Spencer also has advocated for an "ethno-state" that would be a "safe space" for white people

Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer said Saturday's protest was either "profoundly ignorant" or meant to instill fear in minorities "in a way that hearkens back to the days of the KKK."

"I want everyone to know this: We reject this intimidation," Signer said in a statement. "We are a welcoming city, but such intolerance is not welcome here."

Erich Reimer, chairman of the Charlottesville Republican Party, said in a statement the "intolerance and hatred" the protesters are seeking to promote is "utterly disgusting and disturbing beyond words," The Daily Progress reported.

The debate over Confederate symbols has swept through cities across the South since the 2015 massacre of nine black parishioners at a South Carolina church.

The gunman was a self-avowed white supremacist.