The usually quiet college town of Charlottesville has became a bloodied symbol of America’s roiling racial and political divisions.
A blistering Twitter thread about "white people oppression" has gone viral, gaining almost half a million likes.
User Julius Goat shared an image of neo-nazis brandishing burning torches at a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a suspected neo-nazi mowed down protesters on Saturday.
He followed it with a series of powerful tweets skewering social inequality and exposing the reasons behind the white nationalist backlash.
His emotive words have struck a chord around the US and across the world after 30 people were injured and one killed in a car attack on anti-racism protesters at the rally.
The Twitter user goes on to list the other injustices that white, middle-class men have never suffered from the travel ban on Muslims to police violence against black people to historic efforts to prove non-white intellectual inferiority as well as church burnings and hangings.
Then he examined the "we will not be replaced" rallying cry of the white supremacist protesters.
He said he would "love to see these people get all the oppression they insist they receive, just for a year".
That might mean a world "where you ACTUALLY can't say Christmas", where "the name 'Geoff' on a resume puts it in the trash" or where a polo shirt makes people so nervous it could get you kicked off a plane, he said.
It could mean a world where these men suddenly get a 20 per cent pay cut, "and then 70 women every day telling them to smile more," he added. Or one in which if they turned up on a university campus with torches and started fights "the cops would punch their eyes out."
"Put that in your torches and light it," concluded Julius Goat.
His excoriating words triggered a huge response on social media, with users thanking him for "well spoken truths".
Twitter user Jean Keegan shared a quote: "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality looks like discrimination."
But another user said he was simply being "told 'shut up white male' as if that isn't the hate speech!"
Gothalion said he was "disgusted" at what he was seeing, adding, "The world is a dark place and it's in our back yards."
Many social media users called for the white nationalists pictured at Saturday's rally in Virginia to be named and shamed. One of the men, Peter Cvjetanovic, 20, has now spoken out in his own defence, insisting he's not a racist but concerned about the protection of white culture.
The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands in the centre of Emancipation Park the day after the Unite the Right rally devolved into violence. Photo / Getty Images
Statue that sparked a rally
Organisers of Saturday's Unite the Right rally said it was staged to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate commander General Robert E Lee from a park.
Lee was a Confederate general during the American Civil War and surrendered to Union General Ulysses S Grant in 1865.
The rally itself stemmed from a long debate over public memorials and symbols honouring the pro-slavery Confederacy of the US Civil War.
But according to James Curran, a history professor at the University of Sydney, Charlottesville isn't the first time the removal of confederate statue has angered voters in southern states and become a flashpoint.
"The same happened in New Orleans in May," Prof Curran told news.com.au.
"This has been a longstanding bone of contention in how the civil war is remembered and whether or not it remains appropriate to continue to celebrate the heroes of the Confederacy - like General Robert E Lee or Jefferson Davis - who were fighting to defend the Southern way of life, a way of life that of course wanted to maintain the institution of slavery."
However Prof Curran said statues like these are seen as the last remnants of an era that celebrated white supremacy and racism.
"And certainly a case could be made that some white nationalists and supremacists feel emboldened by Trump's election to challenge the dismantling of these statues in more strident and violent terms, as we saw in Charlottesville over the weekend," Prof Curran said.
It also wouldn't be the first time this exact statue has sparked protests in Charlottesville either.
