Vice correspondent: Charlottesville protesters did not discuss Confederate monument, chanted about Jews

The Vice News reporter who followed white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Va., said they were chanting about Jews, not the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue.

“Once they started marching, they didn’t talk about Robert E. Lee being a brilliant military tactician. They chanted about Jews. Like, they wanted to be menacing. It’s not an accident,” Elle Reeve told CBS News’s John Dickerson on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The comments were first highlighted by the Independent Journal Review.

{mosads}The rally, which was billed as a protest against the removal of a statue of the Confederate general, sparked violence with counterprotesters, resulting in one death and numerous injuries. 

Reeve went on to describe the groups she followed as a fringe internet movement that has rebranded itself in recent years. 

“These guys didn’t live together, hang out together. They just swarmed together online. And so this is a movement to hold physical space,” she continued.  

“They’ve taken tactics from left wing organizers and show that they’re strong and they have camaraderie. And they also are focusing on what they call aesthetics. They want to look middle class, successful, good looking. They don’t want to look like the old, as they called it, white trash racist of the old times,” she said. 

The events in Charlottesville have led to a heated, nationwide debate over the future of Confederate monuments. 

Statues commemorating the Confederacy have been defaced and taken down across the U.S. during the past week. 

President Trump weighed in on the issue, criticizing the removal of the “beautiful” historical monuments. 

“This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder is it George Washington next week and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” Trump said on Tuesday.